### Creating polls

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

• Select File New Poll in the top menu. The action form ‘Add Poll’ has three sections where you specify the new poll

• In the section ‘General’ you enter name, heading, optional tags and description of the new poll. The heading is used when presenting the poll to participants, by default the name of the poll is taken as heading.

Participation in the poll is only possible during the time frame of the poll start time and end time of the voting period. Please note that checking boxes ‘from now’ or ‘forever’ will override any dates entered.

Under access you specify whether the poll is to be a public poll and whether and when poll results are accessible to participants.
Public polls are not only directed to the members of the workspace containing the poll, but to the general public. 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.

Several options govern the presentation of the poll:

• You may have the questions numbered, starting from number 1.

• 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/bscw/poll.css

• 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.

You may specify the width of the questionnaire in which it is to appear in the external page.

Important: The external Web page must include the insertion point for the poll as the pattern #poll#. The external Web page is only used for presentation, not for participation in the poll. Participants will continue to use the BSCW poll object to participate in the poll or the link given above for public polls.

• In section ‘Questions’ you may enter the questions of your poll. Select a type of question and click [Add] check. At present, you can select from seven types:

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 Yes/No/Uncertain – choice of predefined answers ‘Yes’, ‘No’ or ‘Uncertain’.

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

o Text – free text answer.

o Multiple Dates – choice of several dates for an appointment from up to eight proposed dates. Participants may select one or more dates.

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 participants 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.

Continue to enter new questions until your questionnaire is complete. Questions already entered may be removed using. You may change the order of the questions by moving the questions up and down using or .

• In section ‘Attributes’ you may enter your own attributes for the poll.

• Confirm with [OK] to create the new poll.