Example polls
Paste any of these into the message box in Slack.
Choice poll. The date poll. Pick every date you can hit. Closes in a day with one reminder.
/poll "Which launch date can your team hit?" "Tuesday next week" "Thursday next week" "Monday the week after" "None of these" close after 1 day remind 2 hours after posting
Premium: closing automatically, reminders
Close automatically: after 1 dayReminder: 2 hours after posting
Choice poll. The go/no-go check a few hours before launch. One vote each.
/poll "Go/no-go for the release this afternoon?" "Go" "Go with a known issue" "No-go" limit 1 close after 4 hours remind 1 hour before closing
Premium: vote limits, closing automatically, reminders
Limit votes: 1 per personClose automatically: after 4 hoursReminder: 1 hour before closing
Survey (3 questions). A readiness survey for team leads the day before.
/poll "Launch readiness" "One answer per team lead." close after 1 day --- "Is your part feature-complete?" "Yes" "Nearly" "No" limit 1 --- "Is it tested?" "Yes" "Partly" "No" limit 1 --- "Anything that could block the launch?" short text optional
Premium: surveys (several questions), closing automatically
Close automatically: after 1 day
Picking the date
Ask "Which launch date can your team hit?", not "When should we launch?" The first asks about readiness, the second about preference.
Offer two to four real candidate dates, each with the weekday, and let people pick every date they can hit. Then pick the earliest date that everyone can make. Add a "None of these" option so a blocked team can say so instead of skipping the poll.
The go/no-go check
Run it a few hours before launch, in the release channel, with one vote per person (limit 1, Premium) and a short close (close after 4 hours, Premium). Give a middle option, "Go with a known issue", so people can flag a risk without blocking.
Keep it named, not anonymous. If someone votes no-go you need to know who to talk to.
Reminders and deadlines
A poll that closes with half the votes in is worse than no poll. Add a reminder before closing (remind 1 hour before closing, Premium) so the poll reposts at the bottom of the channel. For the date poll, a one-day close with a reminder a few hours in is usually enough.
What to do with the results
Post the decision in the thread with the date and the owner. If you are going against a no-go vote, say why. If the date poll shows one team blocked on every option, that is the real conversation, not the date.
Questions
Can a poll close at a specific date and time?
Not from the /poll text. close after takes a duration (for example 4 hours or 1 day) counted from when the poll posts. You can also close a poll by hand in Slack at any time.
Should the date poll allow more than one pick?
Yes. You want to know every date each team can hit, so leave the vote limit off. Use limit 1 for the go/no-go, where one answer per person is the point.
Can I post the go/no-go poll automatically before launch?
Yes, on Premium. Add schedule with a time at the end of the poll text, for example schedule tomorrow 9am, and it posts then.
Used by
Related
- How to close a Slack poll automatically
A poll that never closes never quite decides anything: votes trickle in, the result shifts, and nobody knows when to act. An automatic close fixes the deadline up front. In Simple Poll you add close after and a duration, and the poll closes on its own. Automatic closing is a Premium feature; anyone can close their own poll by hand.
- How to limit votes in a Slack poll
By default, a Simple Poll lets each person pick as many options as they like. That's right for "which days can you make?" and wrong for "which date should we pick?". A vote limit caps how many options each person can choose: limit 1 for single choice, limit 2 or more for "pick your top two". Vote limits are a Premium feature.
- Meeting time poll for Slack
When you need to find a slot that works for a group and calendars alone don't tell you who can really make it.
- Feature prioritization poll for Slack
When you have more candidate features than capacity and need the team, or your stakeholders, to put them in order.
- Slack polls for product teams
Product managers spend a lot of time getting a room to agree. A well-built poll does part of that work in Slack: it shows where people actually stand before the meeting, so the meeting can be about the disagreement instead of discovering it.