What are input filters?

Input filters are special markup for an input field that Conferences i/o will recognize and account for.

Input filters & multiple choice polls

Presenters often create Polls with long response options. That’s one of the nice things about our web platform, that you have the flexibility to show a very precise set of choices for an audience to respond to.

But when it comes to presenting these results, via Presentation Mode, longer response choices do not play well with the screen, particularly with our Pie Chart display mode.

One solution is simply to use Bar Charts, but even these can still run over the vertical space of the screen in Presentation Mode. (We are working on making the views more dynamic to prevent this).

Alternatively, you can use an Input Filter for Poll Response Choices. This pattern allows you to specify a long form of the answer for attendees to respond to, and a short form for viewing in the results.

Example pattern

Short version || Longer version of the response choice

What’s happening here?

Conferences i/o looks for the special || markup (those are two vertical bars). When two vertical bars are present, the input filter takes effect. In this case, || is a separator for the short and long forms.

The long form of the poll choice appears when an attendee is selecting their response, and also in any spreadsheet data exporting. The short form of the poll choice appears in any result chart (both pie charts and bar charts), cleaning up its display.

Let’s try it on our example poll question.

What else do I need to know?

• Input filters for multiple choice polls are optional.

• You can mix and match the use of input filters within the same poll. That is, you can use it for some choices, all choices, or no choices. Conferences i/o will know what to do.

• You can add input filters after the fact without affecting responses (though you shouldn’t change the order of the responses).