Guides for hosts.

Your first poll in five minutes

From nothing to a result on the big screen.

1. Sign in and open Sessions.
2. Under New session, type a name, for example “Staff meeting, 13 Nov”, and choose Create session. Every session gets its own six-character code and QR code.
3. Choose Add starter questions to drop in eight ready-made questions, or write your own under Add a question.
4. Choose Open presenter view and put that window on the big screen, or share it in your call.
5. People scan the QR code, or go to the address shown and type the code.
6. Press Start first question, or the right arrow key. Results appear as people answer.

When you are done, choose End session. Results are saved by themselves.

What voters see

Worth knowing before you ask a room to get their phones out.

1. They scan the QR code on the screen, or open defib.live and type the six-character code. There is no app, no account and no name.
2. The question appears. They tap an answer, or type one.
3. They can change their answer until voting closes. The latest answer replaces the earlier one, so nobody is counted twice.
4. If a phone loses signal or goes to sleep, the page reconnects by itself and shows the current question.
5. When the session ends, each phone shows that person’s own summary: what they answered beside how the room answered. Nobody else can see it.

You can try all of this yourself in the public demo at defib.live/try.

Pulse on a Meet, Zoom or Teams call

Video compression blurs small text and moving backgrounds. The call layout is built for that.

1. Open the presenter view and choose Pop out, so it has its own window.
2. Switch on Call layout. It keeps the QR code and join address large, makes the text bigger and turns off background decorations and movement.
3. In your call, share just that window or tab.
4. Choose Copy join link and paste it into the meeting chat, for people who cannot scan a screen they are looking at.

A lightning round

A set of questions back to back, each on a timer. Good for the last five minutes.

1. On the session, choose what to run: the unasked questions, the ones held for the end, five random questions from your bank, or bank questions for one type of meeting.
2. Choose how long each question gets.
3. Start it. Each question opens with a countdown, closes by itself, shows its result for a few seconds, and the next begins.
4. When it finishes, a report is saved. Save it as a PDF, download a CSV, or copy it as a prompt for an AI assistant.

Opening or closing a question by hand stops the round.

Send your first Offbeat

For a decision or a check-in that does not need everyone in a room at once.

1. At the top of Sessions, press Offbeat, then create one and add your questions.
2. In the sending panel, pick who gets the link and tick email.
3. Choose how long people have: 24 hours, 3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks, or a date and time you pick.
4. Choose Send Offbeat. Every question opens at once and people step through them from the link, with no sign-in.
5. When the time is up it closes by itself, saves a report and emails you the results.

Offbeat cannot tell who has answered, because it does not record who opened the link. That is why the optional reminder goes to everyone.

Paste a list, get a question bank

Write questions wherever you think of them, then bring them in together.

1. Open Question bank and paste your questions into the box: one per line, with any options on the lines underneath.
2. Choose Turn into questions. Pulse guesses each type and shows a preview.
3. Fix anything that looks off, then save. A hint such as [rating] at the start of a line overrides the guess.
4. Give questions a type of meeting, such as “Retro”, and filter by it later.
5. On the Sessions screen the bank is a drawer: drag a question onto the list, or onto On screen now to put it live.

The templates on this site are written in exactly this format.

Close the loop: you said, we did

People answer honestly when they see answers used. This is the habit that makes the rest work.

1. After a question, write down on the session what you will do about the result.
2. Open actions follow you from meeting to meeting, visible only to you.
3. When you mark one done, its wording is shown to the room on the join screen of your next meetings, for six weeks.
4. On the Analytics page, tracked questions chart any question you have asked in more than one meeting.

Small Doses: breakout groups in a click

A room of twenty says little. Groups of four say a lot, and nobody has to count off or move chairs.

1. In a live session with at least three people in the room, press Small Doses.
2. Write the prompt or keep the ready one, pick how many people per group (three to eight) and how many minutes, then press Start.
3. Each phone shows its colour group, the prompt, the clock and one shared box. The group writes one takeaway together, with no names on it.
4. Press Bring everyone back. Every group’s takeaway lands on the big screen, and you can hide one before you talk it through.
5. The takeaways are kept with the meeting: in the report, the exports and each person’s own summary.

Silent Start: ideas before opinions

For the meeting where two people do all the talking. Everyone writes first, so the loudest idea is not the only one.

1. In a live session, type what you want ideas about in the Silent Start box and pick two, three or five minutes.
2. Every phone gets a box for up to five short ideas. Nobody sees any idea during the quiet time, you included: only the countdown and how many are in.
3. When time is up the ideas are sorted into a few groups. Rename a group, move ideas, or hide one before anyone sees the list.
4. Press Vote on these. The groups become a question, and everyone picks up to three.