Our club would benefit from this exact request.

I apologize if we have miscommunicated in this regard. We do not set out roadmap in stone so we have a rule not to promise anything in terms of upcoming features. Things can always change based on the ongoing feedback we receive from clients/market situation and this is exactly what happened with Polls. We always try to emphasize that people should only sign up for Wild Apricot if they see that it currently offering them enough value to justify the cost of subscription, not because of something we plan to add.

Great. And now we are in the process of researching survey tools and evaluating their cost. Because I need one more thing like this on my plate. Because I wasn't promised that this would be available by now, nor that I was buying into a software program that would make my life easier as a Society Secretary.

Sorry to be sarcastic, but this really ticks me off.

Unfortunately based on the feedback from user surveys we ended up revamping our priorities and had to postpone polls. We are still considering adding this to Wild Apricot but it's not likely to be done in 2011.

Dmitri:

I am confused by this comment as the last response to Wild Apricot having polls for board elections was that it was a top 50 item if you scroll up in this Polls wishlist forum. We used balloteer.com and paid $85 and got on phone support and uploaded Member ID's from Wild Apricot in a comma format in excel. The balloting was secret and if I had to compromise I would say if it has to be secret then so be it. I was originally concerned about a group of lawyers wanted to verify votes. I can understand you not wanting to deal with that. Setting up a basic election has to be one of the more straightforward things you can do. I reiterate that it would be great marketing for you to set yourself apart. We shouldn't have to go to another company to do this. Like other things you have put out you can always improve on them with comments in user forums. For now, it is obvious that you have a lot of interest in polls, especially for board elections as we do. Thank you for getting this back on track!

@all who need this feature,

If you are an avid google user, you can use a google form to create a poll and then embed the HTML on your website. Here is an example of one that I did: http://sweatlanta.org/WOWSurvey

If you use the WA columns to change your page layout, you can embed the form into one smaller column to make it look like a quick poll.

Again, I understand this solution adds yet another piece of software to the mix, but I like linking members to our own website vs. linking them to an external website.

Unfortunately, a simple survey like this does not have the functionality to do secret and controlled voting like one user requested. A work-around for that I can suggest is to use a random-code generator and assign a code for each member. You e-mail each member their code, and then they must use the code in the first survey question on the ballot (ballot admin has to back-check...but most vote-swayers will not go to this much trouble). In the past we have used member ID numbers, which are not easily accessible by most members.

That is very unfortunate. It's something we really need as part of our basic functioning as an academic society. So, now we need to use outside polling software.

It has not been scheduled yet so unfortunately not for quite a while.

Any idea when this might feature will be implemented? We too have a need for a poll in which members can vote only once and secretly.

Comments from another user:

"....For the election, we need a way to limit it to certain membership levels and that each one can only vote once and secretly. It could work like a poll, but must also be controlable and valid...."

It would be helpful to allow members to add comments to their votes. For example, if we have a poll where one of the options is to vote "none of the above", it would be informative if members could explain why they chose to vote for none of the above. Another example would be if we conducted a poll where, unbeknown to us, one of the questions we posed was ambiguous or open to multiple interpretations. It would be helpful for us — and save our members frustration — if they could add a brief message letting us know a particular question was problematic.

My two earlier posts on this topic addressed functionality that might relate to board elections. I want to now address another possible use for polling. This arrises if a group of members are collaboratively working on a multi-sectioned document. Perhaps different users have proposed different language for certain sections. It would be very handy to be able to put the entire draft document up on the website. Where two or more different versions were proposed for a particular section, we would list each and provide a small voting box, where people could indicate which version they preferred. The key here is that they don't have to go to some separate voting page of the website. This way, people coould read the draft document straight through, casting votes as they go along.

Thanks!

Not every member should be allowed to participate in every election. For example, we are an advocacy organization that pretty much allows anyone to join us. To avoid a takeover situation where opposition interests signs up numerous new members who then vote in an unfriendly board, we restrict voting to a select group of long-term members.These cannot be identified by membership level. We identify them using the groups functionality. Accordingly, it would be very helpful if polling functionality allowed us to limit voting to members of a specific group. That group would essentially be the "voter list" for the election.

Polling would be tremendous for organizations that must conduct board or officer elections. PLEASE include functionality for Instant runoff voting. In elections with three or more candidates running for a single office, it ensures no one wins without having a majority vote. A cumbersome method of accomplishing this is to have runoff elections if no one wins a majority in a first round of voting. Instant runoff voting accomplishes the same thing but with a single round of voting. It works by allowing voters to order their preferences for candidates. In a four-candidate election, people wouldn't vote for just one candidate. Instead, they would chose one candidate as their first choice, another as their second choice, etc. Here is a description: http://www.instantrunoff.com . See also Wikipedia. To be useful in board elections, the math can be generalized to apply instant runoff voting to elections to fill multiple seats.

This is a feature that our club would find highly desirable. It has been requested often by our Board Members.

We are now almost half-way through 2010, is there any sign that a basic poll functionality will be available this year?

Regards,
Ian
worthing and adur chamber of commerce.

We could definitely use internal and external polling. Currently we are doing it through icontact but we would love to get away from icontact and into Wild Apricot.

Thank you!

I would use a polling feature so members (not public visitors to our website) could rate different companies. On our website we have a "products and services guide" for our members - it lists companies the members may hire to do work for them. It would be great if members could also respond to a poll about companies they worked with and the poll results be visible to all other members. Something similar to the star-rating on the WA forums.

The poll question would be something like - How would you rate ABC company?
The response choices could be - Excellent, Good, Average, Fair, Poor.
If there was a comments field as well, that would be superb.

I think it would only work if there was an unlimited (or set the limit high, such as 200) number of active polls because each company listed on the Guide would each need a separate poll. And of course the results must be visible to all members. Each poll would be placed near each company's entry on the Guide.

Thanks, Anne

@lawyersunite

Thanks for your feedback. We've collected your suggestions and added them to our notes. Not all of them might make it in right away, but we are committed to continual improvement and enhancement of every feature we develop.

This is one of high priority items: We have 50 that we are planning to do in 2010. It won't be in our 3.5 release - we are planning some big items for that and just won't have the resources. But we are putting the finishing touches on the design of it before sending it to our developers for estimation right now. When we have the description finalized and the screens ready, we'll post them here to collect any feedback before we start coding.

I am surprised this is not a top priority for you as your marketing department could be advertising this as a great feature to save time. I would probably be one of many quotes you would have to select from to advertise how much of a time saver your voting feature is. If done correctly we hope to do our entire election process with this feature. It does away with the need for a separate meeting or for someone to go to a location to vote. The set up time should be minimal. We would really hope that you push this to be released by summer for those of us who have end of the year elections. This is our first year with Wild Apricot and we expect to have almost 200 members and despartely need an efficient election process. We could be so much more productive at the meeting we usually have voting at if the voting had already been taken care of online without the necessity of someone to count votes. Many groups like ours do not have a paid administrative assistant.

While I like the idea that we can track who has voted, there may be a time when there is a close race or a dispute over a vote that requires a review of the actual votes. While many members will want to know their vote is confidential, a process could be set up that requires an extra step to see those results. Perhaps you could have a feature that would email the membership letting them know a certain person had accessed the votes. After all someone could have voted for the wrong person. You could also require 3 people to log in to allow and give approval to 1 person to see the results. In general many people many not trust an online process that cannot be reviewed.

I hope you make this a top priority.