Sometimes you would like to use the collective power of your entire company or office to help you out with an important decision. Or you would like to get your team’s opinion on what restaurant to go to for the team’s annual party next month.
For this, we’ve created the option to quickly and easily create and share polls within your network, business unit, local department and groups.
For those users with the permissions to create a poll, a new option is available and accessible from the regular flow of creating an update. If the user selects the option to create a poll from there, they will be redirected to the poll creation screen. On this screen, there will be a couple of fields that the user can use to create a poll.
1. The Question
Each poll revolves around a central question you would like to ask your colleagues. Therefore we allow you to add a question to your poll, which will be highlighted on the timelines of the recipients of your poll.
As we believe it’s best to keep this question short and to the point, there is a maximum length of 80 characters set for this field.
Good to know:
- The question has a maximum length of 100 characters.
- Your question can only contain plain text.
- The question is a required field and without it, you can’t submit your poll.
2. The Description
If the 100 character question is not enough to outline the question your poll is trying to answer, you can also add a description to your poll. In this description you can add all the clarification you need to make sure the recipients of the poll understand your question before answering it.
Good to know:
- There description has a maximum length of 255 characters.
- Your description can only contain plain text.
- The description is an optional field.
3. The Answers
A poll would not be useful if there would be nothing to vote on. So lastly you can add between two and 25 answers to your poll. You can simply start adding answers to your poll and we will make sure to add new rows as you need them, or clear them when you no longer need them.
Good to know:
- Each answer has a maximum length of 255 characters.
- Your answers can only contain plain text.
- Your poll requires at least 2 answers.
- An answer is alway anonymous.
Your poll can have a maximum of 25 answers
Once the poll has been posted to either the network or a specific group, its recipients can start interacting with the poll. In the case of polls posted in groups, the same visibility and interaction rules that apply to updates and news items apply to polls as well.
Voting
You can vote on one of the answers by simply clicking on it. Once you’ve voted, you will be taken to a view that shows you the current standings.
Please note that it’s no longer possible to vote on a poll that has already ended.
Changing your vote
If you’ve changed your mind, you can simply change your vote by clicking on the answer you would like to change your vote into. It will automatically be changed from your original answer to the new one. That’s all.
Please note that it’s no longer possible to change your vote on a poll that has already ended.
Retracting your vote
In some cases, you might want to completely retract your vote from a specific poll. To do so, you can select the Retract vote option from the poll’s options. Please note that it’s no longer possible to retract your vote on a poll that has already ended.
Comments and likes
As usual with any Speakap message, you leave a like or a comment on any poll that has been posted to one of your groups.
We understand that after posting your poll, you’re still far from done. It might turn out to include some vague answers, or you simply want people to stop voting on your poll. Therefore, we offer the following options to manage your poll:
Editing your poll
If you made a small typo, want to add or remove an answer or want to add a description to your poll, you will be able to edit it at any time. Simply select the Edit poll option for your poll and you will be redirected to a screen where you can change the question, description and questions, but also add or remove answers from your poll.
If you save any changes to your poll, we will indicate that it's has been edited and allow users to see what you have changed. We do this to give users full transparency on what changes. This because it might affect their answer on your initial question.
If you remove one of the answers, all votes that have been cast on that answer will be deleted. This means that users who casted their vote on it will be able to vote again.
Ending your poll
At one point, you have collected enough input, or have reached a moment at which you no longer require the input from your colleagues. At that point you might want to close the poll so users can no longer vote on it.
If you think you’ve reached this point, you can select the End poll option for your poll. At that point, a couple of things happen:
- Voting on the poll will be closed. It will no longer be possible to cast a new vote, change a vote or retract a vote.
- The respondents of your poll will receive a notification that the poll they have voted on has ended.
- The poll answers will be sorted on results, meaning that the one with the most votes will be placed on top.
Please note that once you end a poll, you can no longer edit it or open it again.
Locking your poll If at any point you want to prevent any activity on your poll, you can choose to lock it. This means that, when locked, users can no longer perform the following actions:
- Vote on your poll
- Change or retract their vote
- Comment on your poll or any of its comments
- Like your poll or any of its comments
You can always choose to unlock your poll at any moment to start allowing interaction again.
Deleting your poll In some extreme cases, you might want to delete the entire poll. To do so, you can select the Delete poll option for your poll. After confirming, your poll will be deleted from our servers.
Please note that this action is irreversible and all comments and votes on your poll will be lost upon deleting it.
Permissions
We understand that you might not want all your employees to be able to post polls within your network, so we’ve created a couple of configurable permissions for polls, that allows you to control which users can post polls and to which groups.
Roles
To assign this permission to a role, you can take the following steps:
- Go to Network Settings;
- Go to the Roles section;
- Open the role you would like to assign this permission to;
- Add the desired permissions to your role.
Right now, we support the following permissions:
- Post polls to the network
Create a poll and address it to the entire network. - Post polls to any group, business unit or department
Allows a user to create a poll and address it to any group, business unit, global department or local department within the network regardless of being a member of that group. - Delete polls
Allows a user to delete any poll posted on the network. By default you can only delete your own polls.
You can assign these permissions to any role within your network. By default, the network administrator role within your network already has these permissions assigned to it. Next to this, group administrators automatically have these permissions for their group and all its sub-groups. For example:
- Business unit administrators can post a poll to the entire business unit, all its local departments and sub-groups.
- Local department administrator can post a poll to the entire local department and its sub-groups.
Group & Organisation permissions
Next to the permissions on the network level, each individual group administrator (including Business Units, Local and Global Departments and regular groups) can decide whether they want to allow their members to be able to create a post on its timeline.
You can configure this in the preferences section of the group’s settings window.