Ballots App Overview

Ballots

1. What it is

Ballots lets you run structured, auditable votes on documents or people. A ballot can be a simple Yes/No decision (approve a policy, confirm a candidate) or a multi-option Election (choose among up to 10 candidates or documents). Every vote is attributable, every change is logged, and the voter roster is frozen at publish so late membership changes cannot alter an in-progress vote.

• Enablement: Ballots requires a license. An admin enables it from the Apps Marketplace; it is not active by default.
• What it is not: Ballots is not a survey or a poll. It produces a binding outcome (Approved, Rejected, Winner Declared) with an audit trail. For lightweight opinion-gathering without an outcome, use the News Feed poll or a Survey.

2. Standing it up

1. Go to Apps Marketplace and enable Ballots for your business.
2. Open Ballots → Settings. Review the Who Can Create Ballots? setting — the default is Any network user can create. To restrict creation to admins and specific groups, choose Only admins and members of a group and select the group(s).
3. Under Label for Voting Action, confirm or customize the three vote-button labels (default: Affirmative / Negative / Abstain). These apply to every Yes/No ballot.
4. Under Default Auto-Approval Setting, decide whether Yes/No ballots should auto-approve at close when the affirmative share meets a threshold (default: Off, threshold: 60%). This applies organization-wide; creators cannot override it per ballot.
5. Under Defaults for New Ballots, set the two defaults that creators can still override per ballot: Allow voters to change their vote before close (default: On) and Show live results to members while a ballot is open (default: On).
6. Under Ballot Notifications, enable or disable the six notification toggles (see §5 below).
7. The Ballots dashboard widget automatically appears for members who have unvoted open ballots. No separate widget configuration is needed.

What silently does nothing until you also do a second thing: the Only admins and members of a group creation restriction requires you to also select at least one group. If you choose that option and leave the group picker empty, only admins can create — no one else gets the permission, with no warning.

3. How it fits together

Ballot types — two dimensions, four combinations. Every ballot has a subject (what is being voted on) and a style (how voters choose). The subject is either Document or Person. The style is either Yes/No (single-choice: Affirmative, Negative, or Abstain) or Election (voters pick from multiple options). Combining them gives four shapes:

Subject	Style	Example
Document · Yes/No	One document, approve or reject	“Approve the updated travel policy”
Document · Election	Up to 10 labeled options, pick a winner	“Choose among three vendor proposals”
Person · Yes/No	One person, affirm or reject	“Confirm the new safety officer”
Person · Election	Up to 10 candidates, elect a winner	“Vote for Employee of the Quarter”

Once a ballot is published, its subject and style are locked and cannot be changed.

Voter roster — frozen at publish. When a ballot is published, the app resolves the selected group into a concrete list of members and snapshots it. From that point, the roster is immutable to group membership changes. Someone joining or leaving the group after publish cannot vote and is not counted. Admins can still toggle individual members’ voting rights through the Manage Voters action.

Statuses and lifecycle. A ballot moves through a defined sequence:

Draft → Scheduled (if a future open date is set) → Open → Closing Soon (last 24 hours, a display state) → Closed → one of: Approved, Rejected, Winner Declared, or Declined.

The lifecycle job runs every 10 minutes to open scheduled ballots, send 24-hour closing reminders, close expired ballots, and auto-approve eligible Yes/No ballots. Ballots also self-heal when viewed — if a scheduled ballot’s open time has passed, it transitions to Open the moment anyone opens the list or detail page, without waiting for the next job tick.

Auto-approval (Yes/No only). When auto-approval is turned on in Settings, a Yes/No ballot that closes with an affirmative share at or above the threshold is automatically approved. The affirmative share is measured against all eligible voters, not just those who voted — so a ballot where 1 of 87 voters said Yes reads ~1%, not 100%. Elections are never auto-approved; they require a manual resolution.

Comment policy. Each Yes/No ballot has a per-choice comment policy: the creator can set the comment for each choice (Affirmative, Negative, Abstain) to Optional, Required, or Not allowed. The default is Optional for Affirmative and Abstain, Required for Negative. Elections have a single comment policy that applies to the whole vote.

Discussion thread. Vote justifications are mirrored into a real, repliable discussion thread (the Comments tab on a ballot). When a voter re-votes, the same comment is updated in place so replies survive. Admins control who can view and who can author comments separately: All members, Voters only, or Admins only.

Result visibility and availability. Two independent controls determine who sees results and when. Who can view results restricts visibility to All members, Voters only, or Admins only. Result availability determines timing: Real-time (results update as votes come in) or After ballot closes (results are hidden from everyone until close). Both are set per ballot by the creator.

Election seats. For Election-style ballots, the creator sets how many selections each voter may make. The default is Single choice (pick one); the maximum is 10 selections. The winners are computed by top vote tally — the system declares the top candidates as elected, not a manual pick by the admin.

Audit trail. Every consequential action on a ballot — created, opened, edited, vote recorded, voter list changed, vote value changed, closed, manually approved, auto-approved, re-circulated, deleted — is logged with a timestamp, the person who did it (or “System” for automated actions), and a description. The full trail is viewable in the Ballot History modal and exportable to Excel.

Roles. App Admin, Admin, and Super Admin share the same elevated access: they see every ballot in the business on the Dashboard and My Ballots list, can access Analytics and Settings, and can act as creator on any ballot (resolve, manage voters, change votes, re-open, re-circulate). Regular members see only ballots they created or are eligible voters on. The creator of a ballot always has the same action permissions as an admin on that ballot.

Navigation. The app has four tabs in the sidebar: Dashboard (all members), My Ballots (all members), Analytics (admin only), and Settings (admin only). A mobile-optimized view is available at /m/apps/ballots.

4. Running it

Creating a ballot

1. Go to Ballots → My Ballots and click New Ballot.
2. Select a group — its members at publish time become the frozen voter roster.
3. Enter a title (required, up to 100 characters) and optional description.
4. Choose the subject (Document or Person) and style (Yes/No or Election). For a Person Election, select up to 10 candidates.
5. Set the comment policy, voting instructions, open/close dates, result visibility, and whether revoting is allowed.
6. Click Save as Draft to save without publishing, or Save and Publish to freeze the roster and open (or schedule) the ballot.

Resolving a ballot

After a ballot closes, the creator or an admin resolves it from the ballot detail page:

• Yes/No: Approve, Reject, or Decline. If auto-approval is on and the threshold is met, the ballot resolves automatically at close.
• Election: Approve (the system computes the winner by top vote tally) or Decline.

Re-opening and re-circulating

• Re-open sets a new close date and moves a resolved ballot back to Open. Existing votes are kept.
• Re-circulate starts a fresh round: all existing votes are permanently deleted, the roster is re-snapshotted from the current group membership, and voters vote again.

Managing voters and changing votes

• Manage Voters (creator or admin): view the frozen roster and toggle individual members’ voting rights between Can Vote and Cannot Vote. On a resolved ballot, the roster is read-only.
• Change Votes (creator or admin): record a first-time vote on behalf of a member, or change an existing vote if revoting is enabled. A comment is required for every change. On a resolved ballot, recorded votes are read-only.

Reviewing analytics (admin)

Go to Ballots → Analytics. The analytics dashboard shows all-time metrics across the organization:

• Ballots Run — total ballots created.
• Avg. Turnout — average turnout percentage across all ballots.
• Auto-Approved — percentage of closed Yes/No ballots that were auto-approved.
• Avg. Time to Decide — average calendar days from open to outcome (Approved, Rejected, or Winner Declared).
• Participation over Time — weekly turnout trend (last 12 weeks).
• Outcome Mix — Affirmative / Negative / Abstain breakdown across all Yes/No ballots.
• Fastest and Slowest — the five quickest and five slowest ballots to reach an outcome.
• Highest Turnout — the five ballots with the highest participation rate.
• Most Active Voters — the five members who cast the most votes.

Exporting data

• Export Votes downloads the voter roster with each member’s vote and comment.
• Export History downloads the full audit trail.
• Export Analytics downloads a summary of all ballots with status, turnout, and days open/to decide.

All exports are Excel-format files.

5. Settings

Setting	Where	Default	What it changes
Enable Ballots AI Agent	Settings → Ballots AI Agent	On	Members can work with Ballots from Ask AI — look up pending votes, cast a vote, or (admins) resolve and re-circulate.
Who Can Create Ballots?	Settings → Who Can Create	Any network user can create	Controls whether all users or only admins and members of selected groups can create ballots.
Label for Affirmative / Negative / Abstain	Settings → Label for Voting Action	Affirmative / Negative / Abstain	Changes the Yes/No vote-button labels across all ballots.
Auto-approve Yes/No ballots at close	Settings → Default Auto-Approval	Off	When on, Yes/No ballots auto-approve at close if the affirmative share meets the threshold.
Default Auto-Approval Threshold	Settings → Default Auto-Approval	60%	The affirmative percentage (of all eligible voters) required for auto-approval. Applies to every ballot — not per-ballot.
Allow voters to change their vote before close	Settings → Defaults for New Ballots	On	Pre-sets revoting on new ballots. Creators can override per ballot.
Show live results to members while a ballot is open	Settings → Defaults for New Ballots	On	Pre-sets result availability on new ballots. Creators can override per ballot.
Notify when a ballot opens	Settings → Ballot Notifications	On	Sends an email and Inbox action request to every voter when voting opens.
Notify when a ballot is closing	Settings → Ballot Notifications	On	Sends a 24-hour closing reminder to every voter.
Notify when a ballot is edited	Settings → Ballot Notifications	Off	Notifies voters when a ballot’s details are changed.
Notify when a ballot is re-circulated	Settings → Ballot Notifications	On	Notifies voters when a new round begins.
Notify when a ballot is approved	Settings → Ballot Notifications	On	Notifies voters when a ballot is approved, either automatically or manually.
Notify when a user is added as a voter	Settings → Ballot Notifications	On	Notifies a member when they are added to a ballot’s voter roster.

6. More help

• Ballots FAQ — specific setup and operating questions
• Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Ballots from these articles.