Using and managing Q&A

The Q&A tab within the activity panel offers an excellent space for collecting audience queries and facilitating interactive sessions during presentations. This comprehensive guide covers both attendee experience (how to ask questions, upvote existing questions) and organizer/moderator management of the Q&A feature (how to answer or delete questions, mark questions as answered, announce Q&A session, and set up Q&A moderation).

Q&A permissions and limitations

• Only event Organizers and Moderators can approve, answer, highlight or delete questions.
  • Organizers can manage Q&A at any level of the event.
  • Moderators can control Q&A within their moderated Session or Expo Booth.
• Speakers with a speaker profile created for them can answer Q&A event-wide.
• Q&A can be specific to a particular area (Stage, Session, Expo) or event-wide.
• In Sessions, questions can be highlighted and brought on screen.
• Q&A is not integrated into the RingCentral Events Backstage powered by StreamYard. For more information, see our guide Using Backstage powered by StreamYard.
• It's not possible to disable the option to ask questions anonymously.
• When replying to a question and navigating away from the Q&A tab, the draft will be lost and you will have to type your answer from scratch.
• Character limit for questions and answers: 750.
• Limit for number of questions per event segment: 500.

Asking a question

To ask a question:

1. Navigate to the desired event area where you want to ask a question. This could be the event-wide Q&A or the Q&A tab within a specific Session, Stage, or Expo Booth.
2. In the activity panel, go to Q&A.
3. Click Ask a question.
   
   
   
4. Toggle Ask anonymously if you prefer to be anonymous.
5. Click Ask to post your question.

Upvoting a question

To highlight particular questions and increase their visibility, attendees can utilize the upvote feature. To upvote a question, click the Thumbs up icon located under the desired question. To remove the upvote, simply click Thumbs up icon once again. 

Filtering questions

To filter questions, use the 2 drop down menus at the top of the Q&A panel: 

From the left hand menu you can choose:

• All Questions (default)
• My Questions
• Answered
• Unanswered

From the right hand menu you can choose:

• Latest (default): Questions will be listed in the order they've been posted.
• Popular: Questions will the highest number of upvotes will be listed first.
• Category: When 10 questions are posted in the Q&A tab, our AI system will automatically categorize them. The AI will generate up to 5 categories based on the topics of the questions. Each new question will be placed into an existing category or categorized under 'Other' if it does not align with any of the predefined categories.

Answering a question 

To answer a question as an Organizer/Moderator in writing: 

1. Click Reply under the question. 
2. Enter you question. 
3. Click Reply to post your answer.

Marking a question as "answered"

Once an question has been answered, it can be marked as "Answered" by an Organizer/Moderator to keep the Q&A panel organized. 

Click the Menu icon ••• next to the question and select Mark as answered.
✔ The question will be marked as "Answered" and will be displayed after unanswered questions.

The question can be marked back as unanswered in the same way:

Moderating Q&A

When the moderation feature is turned on in the event settings, questions from attendees will have to be reviewed by Organizers or Moderators before they are displayed publicly.

• As an Organizer/Moderator, you will see all of the submitted questions waiting to be approved. 
• As an Attendee, you will only see the questions that you have submitted and are waiting to be approved. If you submitted a question anonymously, you will no longer see this when it is pending approval. 

• To enable/disable Q&A moderation in a multi-track event:

  1. Go to Event Dashboard > Venue > Venue Controls (or to Event Dashboard > Setup > Access and settings for Onsite events).
  2. Under Activity Panel > Q&A moderation, select the Enable Q&A moderation check box. 
  3. Click Save.

  

• To enable/disable Q&A moderation in a Webinar event:

  1. Go to Event Dashboard > Setup > Basics.
  2. Under Activity Panel > Q&A, toggle Q&A moderation. 
  3. Click Save.

  

To approve a submitted question (it is marked as "In review"), click the Menu icon ••• next to the question and select Approve. Alternatively, click Delete question if you don't want to publish it.

Making a Q&A announcement

To get more engagement on the Q&A tab, consider sending a notification to prompt attendees to participate. To announce Q&A, navigate to the Q&A tab and click Announce Q&A: 

For more information, refer to the article on Announcing Q&A.

Deleting questions

Organizers and moderators can delete all questions and answers but attendees are only able to delete theirs.

To delete a single question:

1. Click the Menu icon ••• next to the question and select Delete question.
   ✔ A small pop-up will appear asking you to confirm your choice. Click Remove to continue.

To remove questions in bulk (e.g when a new segment is starting):

1. Click the Menu icon ••• next to the filter at the top of the Q&A panel and select Delete questions.
2. Select the Select All check box or select each question individually.
3. Click Delete selected.
   ✔ A small pop-up will appear asking you to confirm your choice. Click Delete questions to continue.  

Question and Answers report

To generate and download a report for the Q&A, go to Event Dashboard > Analytics > Reports: The report contains the questions, the questioner, the number of upvotes on each question, the response, the respondent, the time the questions were asked, the time the questions were responded to and if the question was removed by the Organizer. Here you can learn more about it: Q&As Report 

Disabling Q&A

To disable the Q&A tab across the event and within segments of the event, refer to our dedicated guide on Disabling Q&A.