Public results link

A public results link shows a published summary of a poll's results to anyone holding the link: no admin login, no per-person rows, and no submission-order metadata. It's optional and separate from the respondent poll link; what the page shows is a signed document you chose to publish on a date, not a live tally.

#On by default for new polls

New polls share results back with the people who answered. When you create a poll, Share results back with respondents is on, the results link is shown to respondents, there's no PIN, and the live response count is off. You'll find all four in the poll builder's Distribution step, under Advanced options.

That doesn't publish anything. The page stays empty until you click Publish results, and only grouped totals ever appear on it. What it changes is that the people who answered know where to look:

• The link sits on the poll page, the thank-you page after someone answers, and the page people see once the poll has closed.
• Until you publish, it says "Results appear here once leadership publishes them."
• If you set a PIN, it adds "Ask the poll owner for the PIN", and you hand the PIN out yourself.

Speak-up polls start with results off, because a report there is for the person who handles it. Polls you created before this change keep the settings they already had. To turn it off for a poll, untick it in the builder, or switch off Share results publicly on the poll page.

#When to use it

• Town halls or team meetings where everyone should see the same charts after enough people respond.
• Leaders who should see the result without workspace access.
• Transparency programs where aggregate sharing is part of the plan, not a substitute for admin review when you need cohort filters or exports.

Public results show poll-wide aggregates. The demographic and roster filters stay in the signed-in app, and they open only once the poll closes. To show one manager one group's numbers after close, use Share a slice instead: it hands over a fixed aggregate snapshot of that group only.

#What the public page shows, and does not

• The published summary: charts and percentages per question, with an As of line giving the date it was published, the wave number if the poll is part of a series, and the response count at that time.
• A signature check, said out loud either way: "Signature checks out" when the document verifies against your workspace's published key, and "We couldn't verify this" with the reason when it doesn't.
• Open text questions as recurring-word themes and a count. The written answers themselves are never on this page, and neither is any AI-drafted summary of them.
• The cut catalog, if the poll carried roster attributes or demographic questions and you published after it closed. A document published while the poll is collecting carries no cuts, and polls that never close carry none at all. Every cut in it clears five responses, or the poll's minimum group size if that's higher, and cuts that could be worked out by subtraction are left out without a reason.
• You said, we did, if you have published actions for the poll: your commitments and their status, with nothing anyone wrote attached. This shows even before you publish numbers.

The link can't open individual responses or anonymous replies. The page receives the one published document and the key that opens that document, nothing else: no responses and no key to the poll.

A published summary counts only the answers released to you when you published. While a poll is open, a few are always held in reserve, so a summary published mid-poll is a little behind the response count; one published after close counts everyone. How batched release works.

#Publishing is a deliberate act

Turning the link on gives readers an empty page that says the workspace hasn't published results yet. The numbers arrive when you click Publish results on the poll's results tab. Your browser computes the aggregate from the responses it has decrypted, seals it, signs it with your workspace key, and stores that one document with us. Our server can't build the summary itself, because we don't hold a readable copy of any response. Republishing overwrites; there's one current document per poll.

The first publish is always yours to make. After that, when the poll closes or a wave of a series closes, your browser can republish the final numbers on its own the next time you open the results page, as long as the poll has no results PIN and your workspace encryption is open on that device. Automatic publish at close and per wave covers the rules, and Publishing results as a signed document has the full walkthrough.

#The five states a reader can land on

• Not published yet. The link is on and nothing is published. The page says so and nothing else: not whether anyone has answered, and not how many.
• Below the floor. A published summary still never shows for a poll with fewer than three responses. The page says "Results not yet available" instead.
• Results PIN. On a PIN-gated poll, a form before anything opens. The PIN decrypts the summary in the reader's browser.
• Published and verified. Title, "As of <date>", the count, the signature sentence, then the charts.
• Published, not verified. The same page under a warning that names the reason, most often that the document went out unsigned.

#Enable from a published poll

1. Open the published poll. Open the published poll in Polls and unlock your poll keys if prompted; only the poll's owner can change these settings while the poll is open.
2. Enable public sharing. Find Share results publicly on the poll page and switch it on. In the poll builder the same setting is Share results back with respondents, and new polls start with it on.
3. Configure the results PIN. Require PIN to view results follows the poll's setting, and new polls start without one. To use one, set a results PIN of at least four characters first. The PIN seals the published document, so you enter it when you publish and readers enter it to open.
4. Copy the results link. Copy the public results URL to share with your audience.
5. Show the link on the poll page if needed. Show respondents the results link is on by default for new polls. Respondents then see the link on the poll page, the thank-you page and the closed page.
6. Publish the summary. On the results tab, click Publish results; until you do, the page reads "not published yet".

We don't read your answers, and nothing we store links an answer to the person who gave it. The document is sealed in your browser and opened in the reader's.

#Security notes

• Treat the URL like a capability: anyone with the link (and PIN if set) can view the published summary.
• Turning public results off clears the published document as well as the link. Turning it back on gives you an empty page until you publish again.
• Public viewers never see individual ballots, access-code linkage, or per-response timestamps. The page doesn't receive any response ciphertext at all, only the one published document.
• If the poll also offers anonymous replies, the app shows a warning where the two settings meet. See Replying to an anonymous report.

#FAQ

#Related

• Publishing results as a signed document
• Automatic publish at close and per wave
• Verifying a published results document
• Sharing your poll