Chat+ allows you to drive engagement with your audience during the event with tools like Chat, Q&A, and Polls.
These instructions are for the Virtual Stage 2.0. For VS 1.0 instructions, click here.
Chat
Attendees can enter conversation using the Chat portion of the Chat+ module. Each event has two chats, the Event Chat and the Stage Chat.
Event Chat is visible to attendees and is where most of the conversation happens.
Stage Chat is only visible to Hosts and Presenters. This is a good place to pass messages after your event is live.
Chat Reactions
All users can react to messages in the chat by clicking the 3 dots next to the message and choosing a reaction.
Pinning Messages
Hosts are also able to pin important messages. Pinned messages appear at the top of the chat for all users. To pin a message select the 3 dots next to the message and click "Pin to top".
Add to Overlay
Hosts can bring even more attention to chat messages by adding them as overlays to share on the Virtual Stage. This is a great way to highlight audience insights or make announcements more visible. To add a message as an overlay, select the 3 dots next to the message and click "Add in overlays". In the Overlays tab for the event, the message will now appear as a Text Overlay. Toggle "Show" to share the message with your audience.
Q&A
The Q&A feature will allow your attendees to ask questions publicly or privately to the Presenters and Hosts on stage. Event organizers can collect questions within their Q&A tab before and during a live event. We offer a variety of advanced Q&A settings including Anonymous Q&A and Moderated Q&A.
Submitting Questions
When Q&A is enabled any user can submit a question by clicking on the Q&A tab for the event, adding their question in the "ask your question" section, and submitting it.
Answering Questions
When a question is answered by the Presenters during the event you can click the 3 dots next to the question and select "Mark as Answered".
For questions that can be easily answered in text form, such as "Is this webinar being recorded?", you can select "Answer by text" and add the answer. This way all the attendees can see the answer in the Q&A tab.
Anonymous Q&A
When Anonymous Q&A is enabled attendees can choose to submit their questions anonymously. Questions will show "Anonymous User" as the submitter.
Moderated Q&A
When Moderated Q&A is enabled questions will appear as Pending. When a question is Pending it is only visible to Hosts. Hosts can then Approve, Reject, or Delete the question. Once a question is approved you can interact with it like other questions.
Add to Overlay
Hosts can share questions on the Virtual Stage just like chat messages. To add a question as an overlay, select the 3 dots next to the message and click "Add in overlays". In the Overlays tab for the event, the question will now appear as a Text Overlay. Toggle "Show" to share the question with your audience.
Polls
Uses Polls to collect audience feedback during the event. Polls can be published immediately or saved ahead of time. Hosts can create Polls on the Polls tab by following these steps:
Select "Create new poll"
Add a poll question
Add poll options
Choose advanced settings
Decide if results should display when the poll is launched or when the Host closes the poll later.
Percentage of votes is shown by default. Toggle this option to show the number of votes instead.
Publish poll or Save for later
Once the poll is published attendees will see it in the Polls tab and the chat.
Attendees can choose one option and vote.
Chat+ Settings
Enable/disable Chat+ tools in the Settings tab for the event in the Virtual Stage or Admin Dashboard.
Virtual Stage 1.0
Q&A
The Q&A feature will allow your attendees to ask questions publicly or privately to the Presenters and Hosts on stage. Event organizers can collect questions within their Q&A tab before and during a live event. We offer a variety of advanced Q&A settings that offer your attendees anonymity when submitting questions and your team the ability to screen questions before making them visible to the public.
Submit & Answer Questions
Once a question is submitted, it will be visible for your entire audience to view. If another attendee at the event also would like to hear the answer to a submitted question, they have the ability to 'up-vote' the question - this way your Presenter or Host can prioritize the most popular question(s) and prevent repeat questions! If you do not want questions submitted to be immediately visible, you as a Host can enable 'Approve Q&A' within the settings of a Virtual Stage (see below).
Submitted questions can be answered either on stage by the event Host or Presenter or they can be answered via text by the Host.
Once a question is answered, you can then mark the question as answered, and move on to the next.
Approve Questions
Upon enabling the feature, Hosts can review all submitted questions in the Pending Approval tab of the Q&A section of their stage (see below)
When a question is pending approval, a Host of an event can do the following:
Approve the question — make the question live
Reject the question — make the pending question disappear (this will not notify the user that submitted it)
Upon approval, the question will be moved to the Live tab and will be visible to all Attendees
Once a question is live, Hosts can take all actions on any given question including:
Mark as answered
Answer by text
Delete — this is a hard delete and the question will not be available in your engagement analytics
Anonymous Q&A
Similar to Approve Q&A, a Host can enable Anonymous Q&A through the Advanced Settings of your Virtual Stage
When enabled, an Attendee has the option to check the Ask anonymously box prior to submitting their question
When a question is submitted anonymously, the user's name and photo will be hidden in the event (& in your event analytics within your Sequel.io dashboard)
Pro-tip: you can enable Anonymous Q&A and Approve Q&A at the same time!
Polls
Hosts of an event can create Polls for your attendees before and during your live event. Creating a Poll before your event allows you to collect any relevant information you may want or engage with your audience before going live, for example, if you would like to know beforehand what brought your attendees to the event or what they are most excited to take away — you can create a poll for this!
When creating a poll, you simply write out a question and the multiple-choice answers before submitting it. You can add anywhere between 2 to 10 possible answers to a poll.
When creating a poll, you have the options to the following Advanced Settings:
Delay showing poll results: by checking this box, hide the poll's results from your audience after they vote. You have the option to publish the results to your audience at a later time!
Hide the total number of poll participants: by checking this box, you are electing to hide the total vote count at the bottom of the poll. Your audience will only see the % distribution of votes among the options!
You can prepare all of the polls for your event at any time before going live and publishing to your audience by simply selecting Save for later next to the publish now button. This will save your poll in a Saved tab where you can open the poll at any time.
When a Poll is finished, you can Close it to leave the results visible to the audience or Archive to remove it entirely from the audience view (but a Host can still see it in the Archived tab!)
Chat
The Event, Private, and Circle (in Networking Hub) chat provides all Attendees a public and private space to interact with one another. Learn more about the different Chats here.
All Hosts have the ability to delete individual messages from the Chat spaces.
The Event and Circle chat can be cleared within your Sequel.io Admin Dashboard. To learn more about how to delete or clear the Chat - check out this article.
The Chat can be collapsed by all attendees to limit any distractions from the event
Reactions
Chat Reactions and Live Reactions provide your audience the ability to react to an individual message or the stage with a specific emotion, quickly showing acknowledgment or expressing how you feel in a lightweight way.
Chat Reactions
Your audience has an option of 6 emoji chat reactions to choose from
Chat reactions are integrated into your event analytics for deeper engagement analysis
A Host can enable or disable chat reactions in real-time within the Event Settings of a Virtual Stage
Live Reactions
Similar to Chat reactions, your audience will have an option of six different emojis to select within the stage
Once selected, the emoji will float up on the side of the Virtual Stage in real time!
Live reactions are integrated into your event analytics for deeper engagement analysis
A Host can enable or disable chat reactions in real-time within the Event Settings of a Virtual Stage
Are you interested in disabling any of our core Chat+ features for your event? You can do so within our Advanced Customization Suite! To learn more about customization, check out this article.