How to setup a live real-time polls using Google Docs

Posted on May 2, 2008 at 5:29 am

I don’t think many people noticed, but Google Docs released a new feature a while back that lets you create live polls instantly and share the data with the participants while the poll is going on! That’s pretty neat! They can see the live data of the responses as people fill out the form.

Basically, you have to create a Spreadsheet and then setup a form on the spreadsheet. I’ll go through the steps to do this as it’s pretty easy to do and very cool!

How to create a real-time survey/poll

First step is that you need to log into your Google Docs account and create a new spreadsheet.

Now click on the Share tab at the far right of the screen. It’s between the Discuss and Publish tabs.

Name your spreadsheet something that represents the type of poll you are creating, i.e. “Best Game Console” or “Best Looking Celebrity”. Click OK and you’ll be brought to the share options.

Under the Invite People section, you need to choose “to fill out a form” radio button, then click Start editing your form.

A new window will pop up that lets you create your form. It’s pretty self-explanatory in that you can create a text question, multiple choice, check boxes, or a list. You can continue to add as many questions as you like.

Click Done when you are finished and you’ll see a preview of the form. Click Next to choose who you want to send it to. You can choose from your contacts or you can simply copy the link at the right and send that in an email.

To see the form itself, click on Go to live form at the top right. Now to see to the data coming in, simply close the pop up window to get back to your main window. You can now click the X at the right to get back to the main spreadsheet itself. You should now see that it says this spreadsheet is receiving entries via a form.

Go ahead and fill out the form yourself and you’ll see the results show up automatically in the spreadsheet!

Pretty neat! You can keep the form open as long as you like and the data will be updated automatically! Even as the data is coming in, you can create formulas and charts to graphically represent the data! Enjoy!

[tags]google docs, create live polls, create real-time polls, live surveys, real-time surveys[/tags]

» Filed Under Google Software/Tips

Comments

7 Responses to “How to setup a live real-time polls using Google Docs”

andymurd said on : May 2nd, 2008 at 10:08 am

You can get an RSS feed of the results too. Handy for manipulating it with Yahoo Pipes.

The one complaint I have with this method is that you can’t automatically show an updated graph of the results. It would be nice to show visitors the poll and then the results after they’ve filled in their answers, but hopefully Google will update it and it will realise its full potential.

I tried a similar experiment with a poll running on Google Spreadsheets here:

http://www.mmmeeja.com/blog/we.....-poll.html

It was published back in February and people still visit and fill it in every day!

akishore said on : May 2nd, 2008 at 10:33 am

Hi Andy,

Actually, you can setup a real time graph of the incoming results too! I didn’t show that in my post, but Chris does in his video.

http://googledocs.blogspot.com.....asily.html

You have to setup the live in a different way in order to show visitors a live results graph also, but it works very well! Watch the video of how he does it.

Ajay said on : May 2nd, 2008 at 11:34 pm

Good post dude

gcw said on : May 3rd, 2008 at 3:15 am

sounds like an awesome feature.

akishore said on : May 4th, 2008 at 2:20 pm

Ajay, GCW – thanks guys! Glad you found it useful!

Nil.. said on : January 22nd, 2010 at 5:26 am

Thanks dude .. this was really helpful! Setting up a live poll like this is really cool.

技巧：利用Google Docs进行在线调查 | GENMICHA | 趣站酷软 Says:

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May 4th, 2008 at 5:35 pm