You view or change the content of your ballot using the Questions tab of your poll.
This is the most powerful part of BallotBox, and as a result, this article is longer than most. However, we have placed help boxes next to most of the controls within BallotBox – just look for the question mark inside a blue circle. You can click on one of those at any time for a reminder about what that particular control does.
The Button Bar. At the top of the ballot editor, there is a button bar:
From left to right:
- Undo: Reverses the most recent change you made to the questionnaire.
- Redo: Re-does the most recent change that you “undid.”
- Save: Your changes to the ballot are saved only if you click this button.
- Preview Ballot: Shows you what your voters will experience if the ballot is launched in its current state.
- Preview Results: Shows you what your poll results will look like if the ballot is launched in its current state.
- Settings (gear icon):
- Ballot Type: You may select an election or a survey. This change only affects certain language that your voters will see through the voting process.
- Features: Some ballot features are only available with certain subscription plans. The options are Basic, Multiple Page, and Advanced.
- Only the Basic features are available to free subscriptions.
- Any paid subscription may use the Multiple Page features.
- Only the Gold and Platinum subscription levels may use the Advanced Features. You can get an overview of the Advanced ballot features from the How It Works page of our site.
- Note: if you select ballot features that are not available under your subscription, you will be given an opportunity to upgrade to a plan that does allow those features.
- Import: This function replaces your current questionnaire with the questionnaire that you are importing. Please see the Import Dialog paragraph below.
- Export: You can export your questionnaire as a file you can save on your local computer. For example, if another organization asks you for a copy of your questionnaire so that they can use it as a starting point, you could export that questionnaire and then email that other organization the file.
Import Dialog Box. Click the Import button, and you will have these options:
- If you have a Previous Poll you want to use as your starting point, you may select it here.
- If another BallotBox customer has given you a questionnaire file to use as your starting point, select Choose File and navigate to it
- If you would like to use one of our templates as your starting point, click From Template. Even if you decide to create your questionnaire from scratch, we recommend that you look at these examples for ideas about how BallotBox works, and how best to use its capabilities.
Tip: A great way to learn the Ballot Editor is to import and study our template questionnaires, and to experiment.
Q&A Components (Advanced Ballot Features Only). If you enable the Advanced ballot features, just below the button bar, you will see Q&A Components. You can create any ballot without using Q&A Components, but this powerful feature makes certain types of ballots with repeating questions, or repeating Choices for different questions, easier to create and edit. Here are two examples where Q&A Components are useful:
- You can create a set of choices that can be used in different questions: You could want to use the same set of choices for multiple questions. For example, a bar association may want to ask how many lawyers are in the voter’s local office, and separately, how many lawyers are in the voter’s entire firm. If those choices are put into a Q&A Component, if you decide to change the various choices, you can just edit them in one place. If you create this type of Q&A Component, when you edit a question’s type in the ballot, this Q&A Component will appear as a “type” of question you can have.
- You can create a list of questions: If you are creating a survey to evaluate a number of individuals on the same metrics, you should consider putting each of those metrics into a Q&A Component. For example, a bar association conducting a judicial evaluation will evaluate a number of judges using the same metrics. Similarly, an HR evaluation could use the same metrics for multiple people. By using a Q&A Component, if you decide to modify the questions being used throughout the ballot before you launch the poll, you can just edit it in one place – the Q&A Component – and it will be automatically updated throughout your ballot.
Page Controls. The initial title of the ballot page will be “Untitled,” in large italics. If you click on that, you can change the name of the page.
- If you have a single page ballot (and you will, if you have a free account), the page title will not be displayed to your voters, whether you leave it as Untitled or not. It will display on your ballot results, though.
- If you have a multi-page ballot, you should use helpful page titles. The page title will be displayed both to your voters and on your ballot results.
Adding ballot pages. If you are using the Multi-Page or Advanced ballot features, by selecting that using the ballot settings (gear icon) button in the ballot editor’s button bar, you will have an Add Page button at the bottom of the editor.
Voter Groups. If you are using the Advanced ballot features, by selecting that using the ballot settings (gear icon) button in the ballot editor’s button bar, and if you have set up one or more Voter Groups, you will see a control just below the Page Title that lets you determine whether that ballot page will be displayed to all voters, or whether only Voter Groups that you select will be able to see it.
Displaying Based on Answers to Prior Questions. You can set a ballot page to display only if the answer to a ballot question on a previous page meets the criteria you set. You will only see this control if all of the following conditions are met:
- You are using the Advanced ballot features for the questionnaire you are editing by selecting that using the ballot settings (gear icon) in the ballot editor’s button bar
- The ballot page you are editing is not the first ballot page in the questionnaire
- A prior ballot page has a question of the type Multiple Choice (Single Answer) or Multiple Choice (Multiple Answers) – those are the only question types that can be used to condition the display of a subsequent ballot page
Repeating Ballot Pages. If you set a ballot page to display based on the answer to a question on a previous ballot page, you can select “Repeat for each selected choice.” This option will make the current ballot page appear for each Choice that the voter selects in response to the previous question. For example, imagine you want to get input from each voter with respect to a list of individuals, but you only want to present the ballot page to a voter if he or she has had a personal, direct interaction with that individual within the previous 12 months. On one ballot page, you could have a Multiple Choice (Multiple Answers) question that asked, “Please check the box next to each of the following names if you have had a personal, direction interaction with that person in the last 12 months.” The Choices would be the list of all of those individuals. Then (if your subscription allows Advanced features), you can set up a ballot page that is conditioned on that previous question, and set to repeat for each selected choice. As soon as the voter clicks on a name, a page will be added to that voter’s ballot to ask a set of questions about the selected individual.
Editing, copying or deleting a ballot page. To the right of each ballot page’s Page Title, you will find edit, copy, and delete buttons.
Question Controls. Within each ballot page, you may edit or move any existing questions, or you can use the Add Question button at the bottom of that page. When you click to Add Question to a ballot page:
- Question Title: This is the question being posed to the voter. It will appear on the ballot and in the results.
- Question Type: Available settings for all question types.
- Multiple Choice (Single Answer)
- Multiple Choice (Multiple Answers)
- Multiple Choice (Order of Preference)
- Numeric Rank
- Text
- Multi-line Text
- Information / Instructions
- Help: This is additional guidance for the voter. It is not displayed in the poll results.
- Restricted Access (Advanced ballot features only): If you check this box for any question in your ballot, you will be able to edit your Officers for this same poll to set who will be able to see the results for the restricted access questions. This feature requires a Platinum subscription.
- Non-Anonymous (Advanced ballot features only): If you check this box for any question in your ballot, you will be able to see individual responses from each voter who responded to a non-anonymous question once the poll is unlocked. This feature requires a paid subscription.
Other configuration options depend on the question type. Please see the context help next to each control within the ballot editor (the question mark in a blue circle) for additional information about each of these controls.