Voting on Submissions

End users can engage and promote Submissions by voting on the ones they like. Administrators can customize the vote settings for their initiatives in Site Setup > Ideas > Voting. This article provides an overview of how voting can be configured, to give you the best outcomes for your particular use case.

Table of Contents

• Voting Methods
  • Simple Voting
  • Restrictive Voting
  • Chips Voting
• Resetting Votes
• Additional Options
  • Promote Reason/Demote Reason
  • Auto-promote on Submission
  • New Voting Buttons

Voting Methods

There are three different types of Voting methods that Admins can choose from: Simple Voting, Restrictive Voting, and Chips Voting. Depending on how you want to configure your Initiative, each of these Voting options offer different experiences for your Users.

Simple Voting

Simple Voting allows Users to up-vote any idea they feel is worth promoting. With this option chosen, Users will see a Voting icon overlaying the Idea image in the top-left of the View Idea page.

This allows Users to provide one vote onto the Submission, indicating they support this idea. This option can also be paired with the Demote Voting option which can be enabled within the same Setup page. Note: Demoting a Submission only removes a point from the Submission, not from the Submitter or Submission Team. 

Restrictive Voting

Restrictive Voting limits the number of Votes for each User to one per Initiative. Each User will only have one Vote they can apply to only one Submission.

If a User navigates to another Submission within the Initiative and up-votes it, the Vote will be removed from the first Submission and applied to the second Submission.

Chips Voting

Admins can give users a different voting experience by enabling the Chips Voting option. 

With Chips Voting enabled Admins set the number of "chips" that each user is allotted and the number of "chips" that each User can allocate to a Submission. Admins can also choose to return all "chips" to the respective voters once a Submission reaches a certain Status.

For more information on Chips Voting, see our full article here.

Resetting Votes

Administrators can reset votes for their initiatives. This is particularly useful when managing ongoing initiatives, in order to periodically clear votes so that users can re-evaluate submissions from scratch.

In Site Setup > Ideas > Voting, a "Reset All Votes" button will appear at the top of the page.

Selecting this will display a confirmation popup explaining what will happen when votes are reset. On confirming, votes for all submissions in the initiative will be cleared. Some things to note:

• For initiatives using chip voting, chips will be returned to all voters
• For initiatives with the "Submitter auto-promote on submission" feature enabled, resetting the vote will retain the submitter's original vote
• User reputation points and activity stats will not be affected

Administrators can view a record of the votes at time of reset from Site Setup > Exports > Votes, in the "Select a Report" dropdown menu. Each time votes are reset for an initiative, a new report will be generated and made available in the Votes exports section.

Additional Voting Options

Displaying Vote Buttons and Counters

Admins can choose whether or not to display voting buttons and counters for their end-users.

The "Enable Vote Count" option is available under Site Setup > Ideas > Voting. When enabled, voting buttons and counters will appear in View Idea and Idea Boards.

Note: Vote history and Vote total data will be retained if the option is disabled.

Promote Reason / Demote Reason

Admins can enable the option(s) Promote Reason or Demote Reason on the Voting Setup page. This will require all Users to provide a reason why they are promoting or demoting a Submission. A pop-up box will appear when a User chooses promote/demote.

After a User provides a reason for their vote, these reasons can be viewed within the Votes tab on the View idea page.

Auto-promote on Submission

When "Submitter auto-promote on Submission" is enabled, submitters will automatically add their vote to their own Submission after it is created. This feature is only applied to Simple voting.

New Voting Buttons

Voting Buttons have an updated look and feel that can enabled in Site Setup > Voting > Voting, under "New Voting Buttons". This will update the look and feel of the vote buttons for your initiative, as well as allow more customization using custom CSS (described below).

Changing the Voting icons using CSS

CSS code snippets can be applied to custom CSS to change the new voting UI icons on Idea Cards (Idea Boards) and View idea.

// Thin arrow
.f-card-voting .f-vote-arrow-container .f-view-idea-up-vote .fas:before {
content: "\F062";
}
.f-card-voting .f-vote-arrow-container .f-view-idea-down-vote .fas:before {
content: "\F063";
}

// Thumbs
.f-card-voting .f-vote-arrow-container .f-view-idea-up-vote .fas:before {
content: "\F164";
}
.f-card-voting .f-vote-arrow-container .f-view-idea-down-vote .fas:before {
content: "\F165";
}

// Hearts
.f-card-voting .f-vote-arrow-container .f-view-idea-up-vote .fas:before {
content: "\F004";
}
.f-card-voting .f-vote-arrow-container .f-view-idea-down-vote .fas:before {
content: "\F7a9";
}

// Plus Minus
.f-card-voting .f-vote-arrow-container .f-view-idea-up-vote .fas:before {
content: "\F067";
}
.f-card-voting .f-vote-arrow-container .f-view-idea-down-vote .fas:before {
content: "\F068";
}

Important Things to Note

• Admins cannot transfer votes from one idea to another.  
• Having additional rounds of voting is not supported. A workaround to consider is moving ideas to other Initiatives and initiating voting there.