Q&A · Open text · Upvotes

Q&A and open text: the questions everyone actually has

Your audience submits questions and others upvote them — what rises to the top is what the room is actually thinking about, not who reached the microphone first. Plus the open-text slide for everything that can't be ticked. No sign-up, no participant accounts, in rooms of any size.

Start a Q&AAll formats

No credit card · Free self-hosting · Open source (AGPLv3)

Only you4 questions

Questions from the audience

  • 34votes

    What happens to the Nord site?

    Open
  • 27votes

    Is the training budget staying?

    Open
  • 26votes

    Will there be a summer party again?

    Open
  • 21votes

    When does the new intranet arrive?

    Answered

Sample session · not real data

Participant view

The list is not published yet. You only see what you submitted yourself.

The presenter switch under the stage publishes the list — after that you can upvote here and watch the question move.

Your contributions

You haven't submitted anything yet.

PresenterThe default: the list is yours. Participants see only their own contributions.

What the Q&A does

A queue that sorts itself

  • Questions across the whole talk

    The Q&A is a layer over the deck, not a single slide: you enable it for the presentation, and questions arrive while you're on any slide at all.

  • Ordered by relevance

    Open questions first, then the most upvoted, and on a tie the one that has waited longest. The order comes from the server — every view shows the same list.

  • One vote per person

    An upvote can be taken back but not stacked, and nobody votes for their own question. Identically worded questions fold into one and collect the votes.

  • Yours first, the room's second

    Whether the list goes to the audience or stays with you is deck state — and the default is the withholding one. Until it's published, a participant sees only their own submissions.

  • Mark as answered

    A question you've dealt with gets marked answered — visible to everyone and reversible at any time. So the room knows what's already been covered.

  • Approve questions first

    Switch approval on and every new question waits until you approve it. Until then it's visible only to people who can edit the presentation — not even the person who asked can see it.

How the Q&A runs in a town hall meeting

The open-text slide

When a question has no answer options

Alongside the Q&A there's the open-text slide: one question, free answers, collected and shown. What it does:

  • Answers appear as individual cards or as a grid that grows — the layout belongs to the slide, not to chance.
  • Participants can upvote answers; identically worded submissions fold into one entry carrying the vote count.
  • You set how many answers one person may submit: one, up to five, or unlimited.
  • Collecting without showing works here too — the slide fills, the screen stays empty until you reveal.
  • Individual answers can be deleted. The slide in the room and every export show the cleaned-up state afterwards.
  • Reactions and a live chat can be switched on as well, when the room should be able to say something alongside.

Staying honest

What approval doesn't do

You switch approval on per presentation; it's off by default. It only works one way: an approved question can't be taken back, and there's no way to reject one. Whatever you don't approve stays in your list and shows up nowhere else. A single question can't be deleted either. Questions only go when you reset or delete the whole presentation. And switching approval off mid-session doesn't release any question that's still waiting.

Where omul loses today

The order

Sorting happens on the server, not in the browser

Which is why the stage and every phone in the room show the same list in the same order — and why the question you upvoted above moves for everyone at once.

  1. 1Open questions first — answered ones drop down and fade back.
  2. 2Then the most upvoted. One vote per person, none for your own question.
  3. 3On a tie, the one that has been waiting longest.

Curtain and approval

Withholding is the default, and it is enforced on the server rather than in the browser. In the product you can also hold back every new question until you approve it — others call that “moderated Q&A”. This demo only reproduces the curtain, not the approval step.

The other formats

Combine them in one deck

Formats mix inside a single presentation: a poll, a word cloud, a quiz, one after another.

Frequently asked questions about Q&A and open text

How do I start a Q&A?

You enable the Q&A for your presentation — it then applies to the whole deck. Participants join with the 6-digit code and submit questions on their own device, no matter which slide you're on.

Can participants upvote questions?

Yes, once the list is published. Each person has one vote per question and can take it back; nobody votes for their own question. Identically worded questions fold into one instead of appearing twice.

Can I approve questions before they appear?

Yes, if you switch it on. Approval is a setting of the presentation, right beside the Q&A switch, and it's off by default. With it on, every new question waits until you approve it. Until then it's visible only to people who can edit the presentation — not even the person who asked can see it — and nobody can vote for it. A question can't be rejected or deleted on its own: whatever you don't approve stays in your list.

Do participants see all the questions?

Only if you publish the list. Anyone who can edit the presentation always sees it; everyone else sees it while it's published, and otherwise only their own submissions. That's decided on the server, not in the browser.

Are the questions anonymous?

There are no participant accounts, and nobody is recognised across sessions. Within one session each submission carries a pseudonymous participation id, which never reaches a client view — pseudonymous is not the same as anonymous. And a question's text stands as typed.

What's the difference between the Q&A and the open-text slide?

The Q&A is a layer over the whole presentation, for the audience's questions to you. The open-text slide is a single slide with your question to the audience — free answers, as cards or a grid, optionally with upvotes.

Get started

Let the questions arrive before anyone raises a hand

Switch on the Q&A, share the code — and answer what has the most votes. No setup, no credit card, no sign-up for your audience.

Start a Q&A for free

No credit card · Free self-hosting · Open source (AGPLv3)