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How to Create a Voting Form

You can create a Voting Form in Member365. Submissions to a Voting Form are always anonymous, even if your Contacts vote while logged into their Member Portals.

Votes in Member365 are similar to Surveys, but the analytics of a Voting Form are always anonymous whereas Survey responses can be tracked.

When creating a new Voting Form, or any Form in Member365, remember that none of your changes will go live if you do not click the ‘Publish’ button at the bottom of the screen!

Create a new Voting Form

1. From the Member365 Administrator Dashboard, click ‘Modules’ at the top of the page.

2. Select ‘Surveys & Voting‘ from the drop-down menu that appears.

3. On the page that follows, click ‘+ Create’.

4. Choose to create a Voting Form when prompted by clicking the relevant ‘Create‘ button.

Image showing the option to create a Survey or a Vote, indicating the 'Create' button for the Voting Form.

Tab One: Setup

You will specify the general settings of your Voting Form under its Setup tab.

Name & Category

Add a name for your Voting Form, and select its Category. Create a new Form Category by clicking the ‘+ Add’ button if necessary.

Image showing the Setup tab of a Voting Form, indicating the fields to specify the name and category of the form.

Form Categories are simply for your own organizational purposes, and don’t have any other bearing on how the Voting Form will function in the system.

Configuration

The ‘Lock Form’ toggle will prevent this Voting From from being deleted as long as the toggle is ON.

The ‘Show form questions and answers in the member portal’ toggle will allow you to show certain Contacts the results of this Voting From from within their Member Portals if the toggle is ON.

Image showing the toggle for locking the form, and the toggle for allowing the setup of analytics in the Member Portal.

If you allow Contacts to view the Voting Form’s results from their Member Portals, you must later configure which Contacts will have access to those analytics, and which will not.

Consult this Knowledge Base article to learn more if you wish to enable that toggle.

Open/Close Dates

Use the calendar icons to specify the ‘Open On’ and ‘Close On’ dates for your Voting Form.

Contacts cannot submit responses to your Voting Form before the Open On date, or after the Close On date.

Tab Two: Messages

After configuring the basic settings for your Voting Form, it’s time to write its relevant messages!

Image showing the 'Messages' tab of a Voting Form, showing a text box for the Instructions, and a sub-tab for the Submit Message.

Use the text editor to create a message for your Voting Form’s Instructions, then switch to the next sub-tab and configure your Submit Message.

The ‘Instructions’ of your Voting Form display on its first page, before the respondent begins.

The ‘Submit Message’ displays on the screen after the respondent submits their answers.

Both of these text boxes must be filled out, or you will not be able to save your Voting Form!

Tab Three: Questions & Answers

Click ‘Launch Form Question Editor‘ to build your Voting Form!

Image showing the 'Launch Form Question Editor' button when creating a Voting Form.

We have a Knowledge Base article on the Form Question Editor if you are unfamiliar with how it works. Remember to ‘Save’ every question you configure, and remember to ‘Save’ the entire series of questions before returning to your Voting Form’s settngs!

Tab Four: Access

The series of sub-tabs under the Access tab will help you configure the Voting Form’s audience to any subset of Contacts you wish!

Image showing the 'Access' tab of a Voting Form setup, where we see sub-tabs for Members, Organization Categories, Contact Demographics, Contacts, List Access, and Public Link.

Members

This sub-tab displays a series of check boxes, representing each Membership Category in your system. If you check a box, all Active Members of that Category will be able to submit to your Voting Form.

Organization Categories

You can create and assign categories for Organizations in Member365. You can choose to give Voting Form access to Contacts who belong to Organizations of a specific category.

Contact Demographics

Contact Demographics allow you to classify Contacts in a way that’s independent of Membership Category or Membership Status. You can assign Voting Form access to Contacts of a specific demographic.

Contacts

The Contacts sub-tab allows you to assign Voting Form access to individual Contacts on a case-by-case basis! Type their name or email address in the search field to allow them to vote in the Voting Form.

List Access

Use the drop-down menu if there is a specific Contact List that you wish to be able to vote in your Voting Form.

Copy the HTML code from the Public Link sub-tab to embed your Voting Form on your own website, and to share access to the Voting Form with whoever you wish.

Vote submissions through the Member Portal are indeed anonymous, but Members can still only vote once.

If you share your Voting Form’s Public Link, however, then anyone can vote. You would lose the ability to stop someone from voting twice from different computers, unless you set up your own way to track responses with the questions themselves or on your own website.

Tab Five: Alerts & Reminders

Configure how your Contacts will see the Voting Form, through their Member Portals or via email.

Portal Alert

Toggle ON ‘Add alert to portal dashboard’ for a link to this Voting Form to display on the Member Portal.

Only Contacts who have been granted access from the ‘Access’ tab will see the alert and a link to the Voting Form upon logging in.

Image showing the toggle for the dashboard alert turned on. We see a text area to add custom messaging to the alert.

Use the text area below the toggle to add your own custom messaging for the dashboard alert that will accompany the Voting Form link!

Email Invitation

Toggle ON ‘Send invitation to contacts’ to configure an email that contains a link to your Voting Form.

When you click to Publish your Voting Form, all Contacts who you have assigned access in the ‘Access’ tab will receive this invitation email with a link to the Voting Form.

Please note that in the Send Invitation to Contacts feature sends out invites once you have Published this form. In order to send to Contacts in your system, please make sure to add them under the "Access" tab. Once the form has been published future Contacts added to this form can be notified VIA the "Alerts & Reminders -> Email Reminders" tab and by setting up scheduled reminders.

Submission Email

Switch to the ‘Submission Email’ sub-tab if you would like to configure an email that sends to respondents after they vote in your Voting Form.

Image showing the 'Submission Email' sub-tab under the 'Alerts & Reminders' tab of a Voting Form's settings.

Tab Six: Credits

Use the ‘Credits’ sub-tab if you wish to turn this Voting Form into an Activity in your Continuing Education Module.

Specify the amount of Credits and the Activity Level as needed.

Image showing the 'Credits' tab of the Voting Form configuration.

If your organization does not use Continuing Education, you can ignore this tab!

 

Remember that none of your changes will go live until you click ‘Publish’ at the bottom of the screen.

Image indicating the 'Publish' button.

Congratulations, you now know how to create and configure a Voting Form in Member365!

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