AI Features
NextGenPoll includes an AI-powered summary feature for open-text questions. After a session, the AI reads all participant responses to a Long Answer (or Short Answer) question and produces a concise, neutral summary — saving presenters from manually reading hundreds of responses.
AI features require AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY and AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT to be configured by an administrator. If these are not set, the AI summary buttons will not appear. See Environment Variables for setup.
AI Summary for Open-Text Questions
What it Does
The AI summary reads all collected text responses for a single question and returns:
- A short narrative summary of the key themes and opinions expressed.
- Any notable outliers or contrasting viewpoints if present.
The summary is generated per question (not per poll) and is cached — subsequent requests return the stored result without calling the AI again unless you explicitly regenerate.
How to Generate a Summary
- After a session has collected responses, open the poll results view.
- Navigate to a Long Answer or Short Answer question.
- Click Generate AI Summary.
- The summary appears below the Word Cloud chart within a few seconds.
To regenerate a summary (e.g., after more responses come in):
- Click Regenerate Summary on the same question.
- The previous summary is overwritten with the new one.
You can steer the AI with a one-time custom prompt when regenerating. Click the Custom instructions toggle before clicking Regenerate and enter guidance such as "Focus on the technical concerns raised" or "Summarise in three bullet points".
Per-User AI Settings
Each presenter can save their own default AI instructions that will be used for every summary they generate, without needing to enter them each time.
Accessing AI Settings
Navigate to Account Settings → AI Settings (or call GET /api/me/ai-settings directly from the API docs).
Configuring Custom Instructions
| Action | How | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| View current settings | Open AI Settings | Shows your custom instructions (or the system default if none saved) |
| Save custom instructions | Enter text → click Save | All future summaries you generate will use these instructions instead of the default |
| Reset to default | Click Reset to Default | Removes your custom instructions; reverts to the system default prompt |
Default Instructions
The system default prompt instructs the AI to produce a neutral, structured summary that identifies the most common themes, notable disagreements, and any actionable insights in the responses. Your custom instructions replace — not append to — the default.
Which Question Types Support AI Summary
| Question Type | AI Summary Available |
|---|---|
| Long Answer | ✓ |
| Short Answer | ✓ |
| Single Choice | — (use chart visualizations) |
| Multiple Choice | — (use chart visualizations) |
| Numeric Answer | — (use histogram stats) |
| Slider | — (use histogram stats) |
| Ranking | — (use Ranked Table) |
Privacy Considerations
AI summaries are generated by sending the collected response text (without any user identifiers) to Azure OpenAI. The two-table anonymity model ensures no participant identities are ever sent to the AI service. See Anonymity & Deduplication for details.