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.
The trick is to poll the right people on the right question. Ranking is for trade-offs, single-choice is for decisions, scales are for confidence. Here is when to use each.
Paste any of these into the message box in Slack.
Ranked poll. Stakeholder ranking ahead of quarterly planning.
/poll "Rank these for Q3. Input for planning, not a final call." "Bulk export" "SSO for small teams" "Mobile notifications" "Usage dashboard" "Public API webhooks" ranked close after 3 days
Premium: closing automatically
Close automatically: after 3 days
Choice poll. A design review where nobody sees the votes until you close it in Slack.
/poll "Which onboarding flow should we build? Mockups in the thread." "A: checklist" "B: guided tour" "Need another round" limit 1 hide results
Premium: vote limits
Limit votes: 1 per personShow results: hidden until poll closes
Survey (3 questions). Mid-quarter OKR confidence, one scale per objective.
/poll "Q3 check-in" "Anonymous. How confident are you we hit each one?" anonymous close after 2 days --- "Activation rate to 40 percent" scale --- "Ship the new billing page" scale --- "Halve time to first poll" scale
Premium: surveys (several questions), closing automatically
AnonymousClose automatically: after 2 days
Choice poll. Naming poll that lets people add their own ideas.
/poll "What should we call the new insights tab?" "Insights" "Trends" "Pulse" allow-options
Free
Allow options
A ranked poll asks stakeholders to put a short list in order. It is the best way to see what sales, support and engineering each think matters most, side by side. It is a bad way to decide the roadmap, because a vote ignores effort and strategy.
So say what it is in the description: "Input for Q3 planning, not a final decision." Keep the list to five to seven items you would genuinely build, and run it separately per group if you want to compare how sales ranks things against how support does.
When two directions are on the table, post both as options with hide results. People
vote before they see where the room is going, and you get their first read instead of an
echo. Link the Figma file in the question. Ask for the one thing that tipped them in the
thread, because the reasons are worth more than the count. See the
design review vote.
Halfway through a quarter, ask the team how confident they are in each objective on a 1 to 5 scale, anonymously. The mean and median tell you which goals the team privately thinks are gone. That is the conversation to have in the next planning meeting. The OKR confidence template runs one objective per question.
Naming a feature and picking a launch date are the two decisions most likely to drag on
in a thread. Give them an end. A project name poll with
allow-options collects suggestions and votes in one place. A
launch date poll with limit 1 and close after (both
Premium) gives you one date per person and a firm deadline.
When you have more candidate features than capacity and need the team, or your stakeholders, to put them in order.
/poll "Which feature should we build first next quarter?" "CSV export" "SSO login" "Offline mode on mobile" "Bulk edit" "Audit log" ranked close after 3 days
Premium: closing automatically
When you have two to four design directions and want fast, structured input from the team before you commit to one.
/poll "Which homepage hero should we ship? Mockups are in the message above." "A, photo hero" "B, illustration" "C, product screenshot" limit 1 hide results anonymous
Premium: vote limits
When you want an honest, regular read on whether the team believes each key result will land, early enough to change course.
/poll "How confident are you that we hit KR1 (reach 2,000 weekly active teams) this quarter?" "Will miss" "Unlikely" "Coin flip" "Likely" "Will hit" scale anonymous
Free
When a project, team, channel or internal tool needs a name and you want ideas from more people than the ones in the room.
/poll "What should we call the new internal analytics project? One or two words, easy to say out loud."
Free
When a release or launch needs a date the whole team can commit to, or a clear go or no-go before you ship.
/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
Let everyone give input; keep the decision with the people who own it. A ranked poll is a fast way to gather input at scale, as long as you say up front that it is input.
Add hide results. Voters cannot see the tally while the poll is open, and you reveal it
when you close the poll in Slack. Close it by hand rather than with close after: a poll that closes on its own keeps hidden results hidden. A ranked poll hides results until close by default.
When you have more candidate features than capacity and need the team, or your stakeholders, to put them in order.
When you have two to four design directions and want fast, structured input from the team before you commit to one.
Ranked-choice voting asks each voter to put the options in order of preference instead of picking just one. The term usually means instant-runoff counting: the last-placed option is eliminated round by round until one option has a majority.
When people can see a running tally, they tend to pile onto the leading option or skip voting once the result looks settled. Hiding the results until the poll closes gets you each person's own answer. In Simple Poll it's one keyword, and it works on every plan.
Engineers will answer a poll if it takes ten seconds and replaces a meeting. They will ignore one that reads like an HR form. The polls that stick in engineering channels are short, tied to the sprint, and end in a decision someone acts on.
Simple Poll is the #1 polls and surveys app for Slack. 945,000+ teams use it. Free to start: type /poll and your first poll is live.