Only Poll Everywhere apps offer true integration with PowerPoint on Windows and Mac. And on Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10. And in Office 2010, and Office 2013, and… you get the idea.

We also have apps for Keynote and Google Slides.

Note: For the sake of simplicity, I’ll reference PowerPoint throughout this article. But all of the following apply equally to PowerPoint, Keynote, and Google Slides.

 

What does “native integration” mean for an app, and how does it help me create interactive PowerPoint presentations?

This is what “native integration” means and how it makes our apps special…

1. Portability. Seamlessly update and sync your polls, wherever you work.

When you use Poll Everywhere apps, there is no uploading your deck, no reinserting polls, and no saving multiple versions.

Let’s say you’re a college professor who wants to edit your PowerPoint presentation at home, on a Windows machine. When you arrive at work, you want to edit that same presentation on your work machine, a Mac.

Hardware-based polling platforms can’t do that, because the programs only store your data locally, on the machine you’re working on. You’d have to reinsert every slide you changed at home when you get to work (and vice versa).

Not ideal.

Poll Everywhere syncs seamlessly on all platforms. So begin working at home in PowerPoint on Windows, switch to a Mac at work, then stop at the coffee shop on the way home and fire up Poll Everywhere for iPad.

It works where you do1

You can even add poll activities as you’re presenting with a feature we call “on-the-fly.” True integration means true portability.

2. Word clouds, donut charts, and our full range of audience-engaging activities.

Animated word clouds are one of our most popular visualizations. And only Poll Everywhere puts them directly in your slideware presentation.

Why? Because most integrations rely on Microsoft’s own built-in charts for PowerPoint… which is great if all you want are bar charts and line charts.

But if you want to use Q&As to find and eliminate knowledge gaps, or clickable images to get to know the audience, or word clouds as formative assessment tools, or even show a live donut chart, you’ll need Poll Everywhere for that.

3. Live polls and content side-by-side in the same deck. Seamless presentations with no A/V switching.

If you’ve ever tried to use another tool to create an interactive PowerPoint presentation, you know the drill. Start your presentation, then alt-tab to the other tool. Then alt-tab back. And on and on it goes. (Some less sophisticated  alternatives try to hide it behind a ‘remote control’ PowerPoint app, but it’s still just an alt-tab in disguise.) Or worse, upload your presentation to someone else’s content system and have to manage your presentation from there.

This is where native integration truly earns its keep. Poll Everywhere activities live in your presentation, side-by-side with your slides. Just advance through your presentation as you normally would, and when you get to a poll activity slide, it will automatically activate.

When that happens, that poll activity will instantly be displayed on the screens of every audience member. They don’t have to do a thing but input their response and watch it suddenly appear onscreen.

And you never have to worry whether you and the audience are on the same page.

As an added bonus, poll activities living side-by-side with other slides means it’s a breeze to organize dozens — or even hundreds — of poll slides before the show, right from PowerPoint.

 

4. A decade of experience. Across an array of platforms, configurations, and security settings.

Poll Everywhere has spent the last decade working in concert with IT departments of all sizes, deploying to hundreds of thousands of users.

Because Poll Everywhere works with virtually any setup, our Customer Support specialists have ten years of experience in handling virtually every known configuration of Windows and Office (or macOS and Office).

If native slideware integration is what brings educators, trainers, and presenters to Poll Everywhere in the first place, exceptional support is what keeps them coming back year after year.

5. Consistency. It’s why they call us Poll Everywhere.

Poll Everywhere’s native integration means that no matter which slideware application you add your Poll Everywhere activities to, everything will still look and feel like Poll Everywhere.

In technical terms, that’s referred to as the user interface (UI). In reality, it simply means that everything is where you expect it to be… no unpleasant surprises, no learning curve as you try to navigate an unfamiliar layout.

No one wants to come home to find all their living room furniture rearranged. And no one wants to learn confusing new software just because they switched from Google Slides to PowerPoint.

Poll Everywhere feels like home, no matter where you hang your hat.

 

There you have it.

Some other platforms can claim some of these five benefits: portability, word clouds, no complicated A/V switching, years of experience, and consistency.

But only Poll Everywhere’s apps can deliver all of them to your presentation – which we think is kind of a big deal.