Adding Pigeonhole Live to your Google Slides Presentation

The Pigeonhole Live for Google Slides add-on lets you manage and embed Pigeonhole sessions into your presentation, directly in Google Slides. With this add-on, you can present your slides, and engage your audience through Q&As, Polls, Quizzes, and more, all from the same window. Your audience would be able to automatically follow along and engage with the sessions on their devices.

How to install Pigeonhole Live in your Google Slides account?

Head to Chrome Web Store OR In Google Slides > Extensions > Add-ons > Get add-ons. Search for "Pigeonhole Live" and click Install.

You can now access the add-on anytime through the Extensions tab.

How to use the Google Slides Add-On?

Connecting your Pigeonhole Live account to Google Slides

In your Google Slides presentation, go to the menu > Extensions > Pigeonhole Live for Google Slides > Open the sidebar

If you do not have an existing Pigeonhole Live account, click Create an account, and you will be redirected to the Pigeonhole Live website to complete account creation.

If you have an existing Pigeonhole Live account, select Log in, and you will be redirected to a new window to complete your login.

Enter your email address and password to log in to your Pigeonhole Live account.

If your login is successful, you will be redirected to select a workspace in the Pigeonhole Live side panel on the right. Here, click on the workspace containing the Pigeonhole sessions that you intend to add to the presentation.

Then, select an existing Pigeonhole which contains the sessions that you have created for this presentation.

If you don’t have a Pigeonhole created for this presentation, click on Create Pigeonhole Event, and you will be redirected to your Pigeonhole Live Workspace to create a Pigeonhole.

Pigeonholes must be created on the Dashboard before being able to add sessions in Google Slides.

If available, sessions within the Pigeonhole will be displayed on the side panel. Sessions are then ready to be added as slides to the presentation or edited if necessary.

If you have made any changes to your sessions from the Dashboard but are not seeing the changes in Google Slides, click the refresh button to update changes.

At the top of your sessions you will find the Sign-in instructions card. Click on this card to add a slide in your presentation with instructions for your attendees to join your Agenda via the Audience Web App.

Inserting Pigeonhole sessions into your presentation

In your selected Pigeonhole, all sessions will be displayed on the sidebar. Upon hovering, an orange icon will indicate that a session can be added as a slide. Sessions that are greyed out will not be able to be added as a slide. At the end of this section, you can find a reference list of sessions and their associated actions.

To quickly add a session, you can click on the session card to automatically add the session as a slide. You can add the same session multiple times within the same presentation deck.

If applicable for your event, you may also hover on the different areas of the session to view more information on Tracks, long session titles, and more actions.

If you are looking for a specific session, you may use the filter function to narrow down your selection. Click the magnifier icon to find a list of filter items such as Tracks, Status, and Type.

User access rights

Please note the following user access rights when collaborating using the Slides Add-in:

	Able to manage Pigeonhole sessions in Google Slides	Able to give a presentation in Google Slides	User needs to download and install
User in the same Pigeonhole Live workspace	✔️	✔️	Pigeonhole Live for Google Slides add-on
User NOT in the same Pigeonhole Live workspace	❌	✔️	Pigeonhole Live for Google Slides add-on

 

If you would like to invite a user to collaborate by adding sessions from your workspace to your presentation on Google Slides, you will need to issue them a user licence on Pigeonhole Live and add them to the desired workspace.

The following lists the available actions for different session types and statuses.

Session types	Expected behaviour
Live Q&A, Polls, and Survey sessions	Can be added to Google Slides and projected using the Pigeonhole Live Add-on.
Ended Q&A, Polls, and Survey sessions	Can be added to Google Slides and projected using the Pigeonhole Live Add-on, if the option “Responses can be viewed after Q&A has ended” is enabled
Regular, Break, and Chat sessions	Cannot be added to Google Slides as they cannot be projected.
Hidden sessions	Hidden sessions cannot be viewed or directly accessed from the Audience Web App. However, these sessions can still be added to Google Slides and projected using the Pigeonhole Live Add-on. Tip: Hide your sessions if you only want attendees to view or participate in a session during your presentation.

Editing a session in your presentation

To edit a session in your presentation, hover over the menu icon on the session card in the Pigeonhole Live side panel and select Edit in the dropdown menu.

Edit a session by clicking the menu icon > edit that appears when you hover over the session

You can edit settings relevant to the session type:

Session information

Session type	Click on the drop-down to change the session type. You can choose between Q&A, Multiple Choice Poll, Quiz, Assessment, Word Cloud, Open-ended Poll, Survey, and Chat. Note: Changing the session type will cause you to lose the content and settings of the current session.
Session name	Edit the session name by clicking on the textbox.
Session duration	Click on the date picker to adjust the start and end time of the session. You can also set the session to be always open by clicking on that option below the date picker. If you are not able to select your desired session time, you may need to check the details of your Pigeonhole.
Optional settings
Nest Under	Click on the drop down to select a parent session to nest this session under to create session groups.
Description	Add or edit the description of the session by typing in the textbox.
Location	Add or edit the session location by typing in the textbox.
Speaker	If there are existing speaker profiles in your Pigeonhole, you click on the speaker you wish to add to the session. Then, click Select speaker to confirm. If there are no speakers added to your Pigeonhole you will need to create a new speaker. Click on Add speaker and you will be redirected to your Pigeonhole Live Dashboard to create a new speaker.
Track	If a session is part of a track, the track name will be reflected here. Tracks must be created from the Pigeonhole Live Dashboard. Learn more about setting up event tracks

Questions

Note: This section is only applicable for Poll and Survey session types.

Edit

To edit a question, hover over the menu icon on the question card, and click on Edit in the dropdown menu.

You can edit the question and answer options for your polls, quizzes, and surveys.

Then, click Save to save your changes.

Duplicate

To duplicate a question, hover over the menu icon on the question card, and click on Duplicate in the dropdown menu.

Edit the question and answer options for the duplicate question and click Save to save your changes.

Delete

To delete a question, hover over the menu icon on the question card, and click on Delete in the dropdown menu.

Select Delete in the confirmation prompt.

Settings

Under the settings section, you can adjust the settings for your session. The type of settings available will be different for different session types.

A session’s settings can vary according to the session type. Above shows the settings for a Q&A session

Learn more about the different sessions

Deleting a session from your presentation

To delete a session from your presentation, hover over the menu icon on the session card in the Pigeonhole Live sidebar and select Delete in the dropdown menu.

Check all the boxes in the confirmation prompt and select Delete session.

The session will be deleted and the corresponding slide in your presentation will be automatically removed.

Clearing responses for a session

Before an event begins, you can test out how your sessions would function as it would during the actual presentation. You might find it useful to run the presentation, and simulate how your audiences would experience the event on their Audience Web App by answering your poll questions. After you are done testing, you can then select the sessions that you have tested with, and reset your test responses. In this way, you can ensure that your post-event Insights consists solely of actual answers from your attendees.

Hover on the session you would like to reset responses for, click More, and select Clear response.

Upon confirmation, all responses for that session will be permanently deleted.

Hiding a session from your presentation

To hide a session from your attendees’ view, hover over the menu icon on the session card in the Pigeonhole Live sidebar and select Hide in the dropdown menu.

What happens to sessions that are created, edited, or deleted after the Pigeonhole has been added to a Google Slides Presentation?

If a new session is created, or an existing session is edited or deleted from your Pigeonhole Live Dashboard, you can sync the changes directly on the Google Slides add-on.

From the side panel, click on the refresh icon.

When the agenda refreshes:

• A newly created session will be added in the side panel. Follow the steps above to add the session into your presentation.
• Any edits on existing sessions will be reflected on the sessions in the side panel, as well as the cover slide in your presentation.
• Deleted sessions will no longer be displayed in the agenda on your side panel. The cover slides for the respective sessions will indicate that the session has been deleted and will not display the session details.

Pigeonhole Menu

To access settings and insights on your Pigeonhole, click on the menu icon on the top left-hand corner of the Pigeonhole Live side bar.

Edit Pigeonhole Information

Click on the edit icon on the banner to edit your Pigeonhole (event) name and passcode.

Note: You will be able to view your event start and end date from this page, but you can only edit the event dates from your Pigeonhole Live Workspace.

Make the required changes to the information and select Save changes. Or select Cancel, to cancel any changes you have made and return to the menu.

Customise appearance

To customise the appearance of your Pigeonhole, click on Customise appearance. You will be redirected to your Pigeonhole Live Workspace to make any changes to the appearance of your Pigeonhole.

Learn more about customising the appearance of your Pigeonhole

View insights data

To view the insights and analytics of your Pigeonhole session, click on View insights data. You will be redirected to your Pigeonhole Live Workspace to view insights data on your sessions and attendees.

Learn more about Pigeonhole Insights

Switch Pigeonhole

To set up your presentation using a different Pigeonhole, click on Switch Pigeonhole.

Note: Existing session slides from the original Pigeonhole will be deleted once you switch Pigeonhole. This ensures that audience engagement takes place within a single Pigeonhole for comprehensive data collection and representation in Pigeonhole Insights.

You will be redirected to the Select Pigeonhole page in the Pigeonhole Live side panel. Select the Pigeonhole you would like to use in place of the current Pigeonhole to set up your sessions or select Create Pigeonhole Event to create a new one.

Note: You will be redirected to your Pigeonhole Live Workspace to create a new Pigeonhole Event.

Once you have selected a new Pigeonhole, click on Switch Pigeonhole in the pop-up menu to confirm your selection.

Move Pigeonhole to Trash

To delete the entire Pigeonhole, click on Move Pigeonhole to trash. You will be directed to select a new Pigeonhole for this presentation, or redirected to your Pigeonhole Live Dashboard to create a new Pigeonhole.

Do note that if you have added sessions from the Pigeonhole as slides to your presentation, the existing Pigeonhole slides will be automatically deleted as well.

Presenting a Google Slide with Pigeonhole Live Add-on

To present a Pigeonhole session that has been added to your slides, click the Present button on the Pigeonhole Live sidebar to ensure the live results load in the session slides.

When a Pigeonhole session is the currently presented slide, attendees who have joined the Pigeonhole will be redirected via autocasting and their Audience Web App will reflect the same session, and they can participate in the session or view results according to instructions from the presenter.

When a regular slide (non-Pigeonhole) or the Join Instructions are presented, the Audience Web App for attendees will go back to the last session that the attendee was previously on, and attendees would be free to explore the Pigeonhole on their Audience Web App.

Note: Due to Google Slides technical limitations, using the Present button to present might result in certain functionalities like slide animation, gifs, and hyperlinks (including embedded videos), not working as intended. 

Who will be captured via autocasting?

Currently presented Pigeonhole session	Attendees who will be redirected	Recommended usage
Parent session without nested sessions	Attendees who are already in the parent session will be captured (the back button on their Audience Web App will disappear)	Having attendees focus on that single parent session without navigating to other sessions.
Parent session with nested sessions	All attendees in the session group including any attendees are currently in any of the nested session will be redirected to the parent session	Having audiences follow a Q&A and nested polls by a single speaker for example
Nested session in a session group under a parent	All attendees in the session group including any attendees are currently in the parent session will be redirected to the nested session	Having audiences follow a Q&A and nested polls by a single speaker for example

Hence, since autocasting ensures attendees and a presenter in a session group are on the same page, an event can have several concurrent presentations across multiple session groups.

It is recommended that a presentation should use either all non-track sessions, or use sessions that are in the same track. It is not recommended to have a mix of sessions as this may cause a discrepancy in how your attendees engage with the sessions on their AWA.

Learn more about autocasting

Commonly Encountered Issues

If you encounter any issues or challenges, read our article on commonly encountered issues using Pigeonhole Live on Google Slides. 

Privacy and Security

Pigeonhole Live does not access, collect, or store any data beyond what is strictly necessary for the add-on to function as intended. Learn more about privacy and security with Pigeonhole Live for Google Slides.