An explanation of how to create and configure the Voting engagement
Voting Engagement allows the use of a voting system within a facilitation. The goal is to enable a group of people to come up with a list of priorities or objectives collaboratively. This is accomplished through a guided process of gradually narrowing down a list of ideas or options. In an in-person workshop setting, a facilitator would typically do this with sticky notes and voting dots and be able to manage the process themselves from the number of votes each person gets and how many rounds of voting the group would go through. The voting engagement looks to replicate that in-person process.
Creating a new Voting Engagement
To create a Voting engagement, navigate to the “Engagement library” page of the “App information” section. Click on the Engagements tab and the Add new engagement button, then select from the dropdown Voting Engagement.
Configuring a Voting Engagement
On the “Details” tab in the configuration interface of a Voting Engagement you can add a heading, which will be displayed on the engagement card, and customise the text shown on the button before and after the engagement is completed.
You will see a preview of the 2 states of the card on the right-hand side of the screen. The initial state of the card is displayed to users before the voting is initiated and during the voting process. The completed state of the card is displayed to users after the voting process is terminated by the facilitator.
To set up the voting options go to the “Voting options” tab. Here you can add a primary question and optional supporting text to give users more context about the vote. Next, you can select how many votes each user can use during the voting process. The votes per person can be any number between 1 and 10. Finally, you need to add at least 1 voting option in order to save the voting engagement. You can add additional information to each voting option if you want to give users more details about what the voting options mean. The additional information will be accessible to users through an info icon displayed on the left of the voting option text. You can add as many voting options as needed.
You can preview the voting screen users will see on the right-hand side of the configuration interface.
Published locations tab
This tab shows a list of the locations where this engagement has been published. Please note that you cannot publish Voting engagements from this interface for now.
It’s important to note, however, that the controls for a facilitator to properly run the Voting Engagement will only be accessible through the Facilitation interface. So we recommend to use the Voting Engagement exclusively as part of a Facilitation.
Once you are happy with the configuration, click Save in the top right-hand corner.
Running a Voting Engagement
1. Add the Voting engagement in a Facilitation
To run a Voting Engagement, you have to add it to a Facilitation first. In the facilitation interface, go to the “Design Facilitation” tab, click on the “Add new engagement” button and select the Voting Engagement you created from the dropdown list. Once the facilitation is published and the attendees have joined you can go forward and run the Voting Engagement.
2. Edit the Voting Engagement before publishing
Once you are ready, go to the “Run Facilitation” tab. Before publishing the Voting Engagement you can edit the primary question and supporting text, the number of votes per person, the voting options and their additional information. You will also be able to add more voting options and toggle the visibility of added voting options using the switch on the left-hand side of each option. If the visibility of a voting option is switched off users won’t be able to see it on their screens.
3. Voting in progress
When you are ready to publish the Voting Engagement, press the “Publish” button on the Voting Engagement card. This will automatically start the voting process and users will be able to vote on the voting options. While the voting is in progress you won’t be able to edit the contents of the engagement. During an ongoing vote you will be able to see users’ votes appear on the right-hand side of each voting option.
To be able to edit again press the “Pause vote” button. Pausing the vote will also reveal to users the number of votes collected on each voting option. While the vote is paused, users won’t be able to cast votes.
4. Reorder voting options
You can change the order of voting options by clicking on the “●●●” icon in the top right corner of the voting options list. You will see 3 available ways to reorder in a dropdown list.
- High to low votes - this will reorder options based on the number of votes received from users from highest votes number (at the top) to the lowest votes number (at the bottom).
- Low to high votes - this will reorder options based on the number of votes received from users from lowest votes number (at the top) to the highest votes number (at the bottom).
- Randomise options order - this will reorder options at random regardless of the number of votes collected.
If there are no votes collected, the only available reordering option will be “Randomise options order”.
5. End the Voting Engagement
Once you are ready to complete the voting process press the “End voting” button at the top right corner. Ending the vote will disable editing and restarting the vote for that Voting Engagement. Also, users will no longer be able to vote and will see the number of votes collected at the time of completion.
