Poll Everywhere Data Retention Policy

Last updated: May 2, 2023

Users: Admins & Presenters (Teachers, TAs, other staff)
Teams: Groups of users for collaborations co-teaching
Activities: Polls and Surveys
Participants: Students or other respondents
Course Groups: A grouping of students tied to a Canvas Course
Activity responses: Short answers, multiple choice responses, clicks on images, upvotes/downvotes
Profile information: Email addresses, cell phone numbers

Users and Participants: Not deleted from the at-large Poll Everywhere system, just removed from the UW instance. They can be added back to the UW instance if necessary. Activities, responses and profile information are retained.
Teams: The team itself is permanently deleted. There is no impact on user data (activities, profile info, responses)
Course Groups: Can only be deleted by the presenter who created the group. Does not affect participants’ account. Can be recreated using Canvas integration.
Activities: Retained in a “Trash” bin for 90 days, then permanently deleted. Responses are retained until the poll is permanently deleted.
Activity responses: There is no way to manually delete responses; they can be cleared from an activity but will be archived.

After 1,100 days (~3 years)

  • Participants: Identifiable information (email/phone #) will be anonymized (no longer associated with responses) after 3 years of inactivity (no login or response).

After 1,825 days (~5 years)

  • Users: Will be suspended after 5 years of inactivity. The user’s activities and results will be deleted.
  • Activities: Any activity will be deleted after 5 years if there are no results received nor updates applied.
  • Responses: Will be deleted after 5 years regardless of user or participant status.

Login to Poll Ev is SSO-based using a UW NetID; access depends on the status of the UW NetID in Identity Access Management.

Automatic data retention rules continue to apply to roles, activities and responses.

Teams can be manually deleted only by a Poll Ev Admin.