Creating and editing polls

To create a new poll in the current folder you proceed as follows.

•      Select  File    New    Poll  in the top menu. Enter name and optional description of the new poll and confirm with [OK].

•      In the ‘Edit Poll’ form that is shown now, you can specify the questions of your poll, de­termine the voting period and set several configuration options.

•      Click [Add question] to add a new question to your poll. In the ‘Edit Question - Add Question’ form you first select the type of question you have in mind. Currently there are five types of questions:

o  single choice – choice of several answers from which the voter may select ex­actly one.

o  multiple choice – choice of several answers from which the voter may select one or more.

o  yes/no – choice of predefined answers ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

o  rating – choice of predefined ratings on a number of predefined subjects with a variable range of possible ratings.

o  text – free text answer.

•      Enter your question in the ‘Edit Poll - Edit Question’ form. For single and multiple choice questions you predefine answers, for rating questions you predefine the sub­jects to be rated. Enter one answer or subject per line into the ‘Answers’ or ‘Subjects’ text fields. Check ‘Response is mandatory’ to force voters to answer your question. You may allow for additional other and comment fields for some types of questions, so that voters may answer the question other than with one of your predefined answers and may add further comments to their answer. For rating questions you specify the range of rating values and their labels. Confirm with [OK].

Back to the ‘Edit Poll’ form, you can add further questions as described above.

In the ‘Questions’ table of existing questions, the buttons in the ‘Action’ column let you re­arrange the sequence of questions using and , remove questions using  and edit ques­tions using . To finalize your poll, specify the following options.

Heading      
Heading of the poll as it appears to voters, by default the name of the poll.

Width of screen area       
Width is a minimum width for the graphical display of questionnaire and results.

Start and End        
Voting is only possible between start time and end time of the voting period. Please note that checked boxes ‘from now’ and ‘forever’ will override any dates entered.

Public poll    
Check this option if the poll is to be anonymously accessible. Note that anonymous voters must use the public link     
    http://your-bscw-server/pub/bscw.cgi/poll-id
where poll-id is the object id of the poll – to be found as the last number of the URL shown in the address bar of your browser when you open the poll.

Number questions 
Activate this option to have the questions appear numbered, starting from number 1.

Voter may view polling results   
You may choose if and when the results of the poll may be accessible to voters.

Use external Web page as HTML framework for poll - enter URL (optional)        
Instead of presenting the poll in the default BSCW view, you may present the poll em­bedded into a Web page of your choice, e.g. to add some background information about the purpose of the poll or some motivation to participate in the poll.

Use non-default styles - enter URL (optional) 
You may specify a link (URL) to a style sheet to override the default BSCW styles for your poll. By inventing your own styles you may change the appearance of the poll pre­sentation, e.g. colours or fonts used in the questionnaire. You will find the default BSCW styles at       
    http://your-bscw-server/bscw_resources/styles/poll.css

Confirm with [OK] to create the poll.

If you cannot finish the definition of all the questions of your poll in one go, you can take up entering or editing questions later on by

•      selecting   Edit  in the action menu of the poll. This brings up the ‘Edit Poll’ form where you can edit the poll as described above for the creation of a poll.

If you plan to edit a poll, e.g. to add more questions, you should make sure that the voting period does not start before you have finished editing. Otherwise, the outcome of the poll might get invalid due to an in-between change of questions. In any case, when you try to edit or delete a question, that has already got a response, or when you try to add a new question to a poll, that already got a response, you are being warned that the poll may become invalid. The other options of the poll may be edited freely also during the voting period. This way you have, e.g., the possibility to end a poll, that was specified to run ‘forever’.

Polls cannot be viewed when the voting period has not yet started. If you want to have a pre­view of your questionnaire before actual voting starts, create the poll in one of your private folders, check ‘from now’ as the start time of the poll and view the questionnaire by opening the poll object:

•      Select   Open  from the action menu of the poll or click on the poll entry in the folder listing. This will show the questionnaire. Hit [Go back] when you have finished viewing. You shouldn’t submit a vote now.

When you are satisfied, you can enter the intended start time and transfer the poll via cut and paste to the workspace where you want the poll to take place.