Recording Zoom Sacrament/Stake Conference Attendance

[swigginton]

A Church letter issued today provides instructions for determining meeting attendance. They recommend either estimating based on the number of connections or using chat or text to send a message.
If using Zoom, a much easier way is to create a Poll. When we start our sacrament broadcast prelude, we launch a poll with the following:

How many people in your household are watching today?
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
More than 8
<Submit>

Viewers submit their response when they join the meeting. We keep the poll running throughout the meeting, so those who join late still see it. We then get a Poll Report from Zoom and can easily sum the responses. Much better and easier than enabling chat in Zoom or sending text messages to the clerk, as they recommend in the letter.

[familyman81]

A few weeks ago, I started asking users to log in with their name (not device name) and then put the number attending in parenthesis. i.e. John Smith (5)

[gwong]

How do you enable Polling? I looked at the Zoom help center and thought I had enabled polling, within Settings, but I don't see the poll option in my Zoom toolbar when I launch a meeting.

[drepouille]

Well the poll idea didn't work very well today. Only half of the people connecting to the meeting responded to the poll, despite my multiple promptings. Some reported in the chat window, while others said they couldn't figure out how to use the poll. One brother sent me a text message. One sister responded after I closed the poll and showed the poll results at the end of the meeting. I think many people just connect to listen to the meeting, so they never see anything on the screen.
I will try using the poll again next week, but if we can't get more people to use the poll, I'll just go back to using the chat window. 

[drepouille]

A few weeks ago, I started asking users to log in with their name (not device name) and then put the number attending in parenthesis. i.e. John Smith (5)

I have begged folks to rename themselves, but most of them can't figure out how to do the simplest things in the Zoom interface. I think most of them just listen to the meeting, and ignore anything they might see on the screen.

[Biggles]

Once a month I send out an email a survey to all the adult members, in the ward, requesting their attendance numbers per household. I’ve found that at least a third, who participated in the Zoom meeting, don’t respond. I have now resorted to taking screenshots during the meeting, so I can then do a tally at my leisure.

[swigginton]

How do you enable Polling? I looked at the Zoom help center and thought I had enabled polling, within Settings, but I don't see the poll option in my Zoom toolbar when I launch a meeting.

Here's how to create a poll:

1. Enable Webinar polls in the settings (on the Zoom website)
2. Create the poll. You can do that on the fly, but it's easier to do one time in the webinar configuration. Then it will be there for all future sacrament meetings.
   1. Near the bottom of your webinar settings, select "Polls/Surveys"
   2. Tap the <Add> button to add a new poll
   3. Type the question (e.g., "How many people in your household are watching today?"
   4. Choose "Single Choice" as the poll type.
   5. Enter the answer choices. We do 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,More than 8 as our choices
   6. Save the poll.
3. When you start the webinar, tap the <Polls> button. You need to be a webinar host. The poll window will open.
4. Tap the <Launch Poll> button to start the poll. You'll begin to see results appear as people start responding.
5. Close the poll window. You don't need to end the poll. Just let it run for the entire meeting. When attendees submit their response, the poll window goes away and those who join late can still respond.

You get the poll results in the "Reports" section on the Zoom website. It's a CSV file, so you can open in Excel or Google Sheets and sum the results column. You'll need to change to a number for those who said, "More than 8".
Here's the link to Zoom's Webinar Poll instructions:
https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articl ... r-webinars

[swigginton]

Only half of the people connecting to the meeting responded to the poll, despite my multiple promptings. Some reported in the chat window, while others said they couldn't figure out how to use the poll. One brother sent me a text message. One sister responded after I closed the poll and showed the poll results at the end of the meeting. I think many people just connect to listen to the meeting, so they never see anything on the screen.
I will try using the poll again next week, but if we can't get more people to use the poll, I'll just go back to using the chat window. 

You won't get poll responses from those who call in via telephone and on a few devices that can't seem to properly respond (Android TV seems to have an issue), or if they choose the "Skip" button when they see the poll. We download both the Attendee report and the poll report following the meeting. We see how many people responded to the poll and also look at the "Unique Viewers" in the Attendee report. The difference in those numbers is those who didn't respond. We estimate about 2 to 2.5 per device and use that to add the summed poll numbers.
You can keep the poll running the entire time of the meeting. No need to stop it and you will catch the late-comers. Ending the meeting stops the poll.

[drepouille]

I opened the Poll before the first person connected to the meeting, and closed the poll after the Amen of the closing prayer.

I wonder if participants who do not use the Zoom app are able to see and respond to a Poll?

[swigginton]

I wonder if participants who do not use the Zoom app are able to see and respond to a Poll?

I believe that's the case. I don't think polls work in the browser. We get about 90% response rate to our attendance polls, and we've encouraged members to use the app for a better experience.