Polls

Ask your clients what they actually want and get a real answer, with polls they vote on right inside their client area.

What it does

Guessing what your clients want, or chasing opinions through email and support tickets, wastes everyone's time and rarely gives you a real answer. Polls puts a proper voting screen right inside your client portal: you write the question and the options, your clients vote while they are already logged in, and you get a clear, attributable tally instead of a handful of scattered replies.

Each poll is fully configurable. Run a multi-option poll where clients upvote and downvote every option independently, or a single-choice poll where each client picks exactly one. Decide whether results are hidden, always visible, or only revealed once a client has voted themselves, restrict a poll to specific client groups, and schedule it to open and close on its own.

Key features

• Two Voting Styles: Run a multi-option poll where clients upvote and downvote every option independently, or a single-choice poll where each client picks exactly one.
• Control When Results Are Visible: Decide per poll whether clients never see the tally, always see it, or only see it once they have voted themselves.
• Live Result Bars and Tallies: Both the client poll page and the staff results screen chart each option as a scaled bar with its exact vote count.
• Scheduled Open and Close: Set an optional start and end time and the poll opens itself to clients and closes itself again on schedule.
• Client Group Targeting: Restrict a poll to any selection of client groups, or leave the selection empty to show it to every client.
• Private Notes to Staff: Let clients attach a private written note to any option so you get the reasoning behind the vote.
• Anonymous Results: Flag a poll as anonymous and the staff results screen and export show only aggregate tallies with no client identities attached.
• CSV Export of Results: Download any poll's full results as a CSV of who voted, which option, which way, and what note they left.
• Granular Staff Permissions: Listing, creating, editing, viewing results, reading client notes, deleting, and exporting are each their own staff permission.

Installing Polls

Before you start

• If you are on the leased (subscription) licence, the Blesta Club Subscription Manager must be installed and your subscription active. The owned and owned-source licences have no such requirement.

1. Upload the files

Upload the extension folder into your Blesta installation so it lands under your Blesta directory at:

plugins/polls/

For example, on a typical install: /var/www/html/blesta/plugins/polls/

2. Install it in Blesta

1. Log in to your Blesta admin area with a staff account that has the Plugins permission, including Install Plugin and Manage Plugin (found under the Settings group in Manage Staff Groups).
2. Go to Settings > Company > Plugins and click the Available tab.
3. Find Polls in the list and click Install.

3. Configure it

There are no API keys and no external accounts to set up, and the plugin registers its own cron task automatically, so nothing needs to be scheduled by hand. One thing is worth doing before your clients see it:

1. Grant the staff permissions. Blesta registers a plugin's permissions switched off, and a plugin is not allowed to grant its own, so at first only you may see it. Go to Settings > System > Staff > Staff Groups, edit each staff group that should have access, tick the Polls permissions (List, Add, Edit, View Results, View Client Notes, Delete, Export), and save. Skip this and staff in those groups will not see the Polls navigation entry at all.

You're ready to go - see the usage guide for a walkthrough of day-to-day use.

Updating Polls

Upgrading works just like installing: upload the new files over the old ones, then run the upgrade from the same page you installed it on.

1. Back up your current extension files first - good practice before any upgrade.
2. Upload the new version over the existing folder, replacing the old files.
3. Log in to your Blesta admin area and go to Settings > Company > Plugins, on the Installed tab.
4. Find Polls and click Upgrade to run the upgrade.

Your existing polls, options, votes and notes all carry over unchanged.

Permissions after upgrading

Blesta registers this plugin's staff permissions unticked - a plugin is not allowed to grant its own. So after an upgrade that adds a permission, every staff group has the new permission present but switched off, and staff in those groups lose access to that action until you grant it.

To fix it, go to Settings > System > Staff > Staff Groups, edit each staff group that should have access, tick the Polls permissions, and save.

Version-specific notes

• 2.0.0: Adds a new Export Poll Results permission - grant it per staff group as described above before anyone tries to download a CSV. Also adds optional scheduled open/close times, client group targeting, anonymous results, and result bars to every poll; existing polls are unaffected until you turn any of these on (no schedule, visible to every client group, not anonymous). If you restrict an existing poll's client groups, remember that leaving the selection empty keeps it visible to everyone.
• 1.1.0: Introduced staff permissions for the first time. Grant them per staff group after upgrading, or staff will not see the Polls navigation entry at all.

Using Polls

For your staff

The polls list

Polls adds a Polls entry to your staff navigation, under Tools. It opens the list of every poll you have created, with a column each for Title, Voting Type, Allow Notes, Results Visible, Display Description, Revote, Enabled and Ended, and Edit, View and Delete links on every row. The Yes/No columns are colour coded so you can read a poll's state at a glance, and every column sorts.

A funnel icon at the top right opens the filters, which narrow the list by Title, Voting Type, Results Visible, Allow Notes, Display Description, Revote, Enabled and Ended (each Any / Yes / No where applicable), and the list updates without reloading the page. The plus icon starts a new poll.

Creating a poll

Click the plus icon to open Create Poll. The form is in five parts:

• Summary holds the Title and Description clients see at the top of the poll.
• Options is a table of the choices clients vote on. Each row has a Title and an optional Description. Typing into the last row's title automatically adds a new blank row below it, and every row can be dragged into a new order or removed. Clearing both the title and description of a row removes it when you save.
• Settings covers how the poll behaves: Voting Type (multi-option upvote/downvote, or single-choice), Results Visible (never, always, or only after the client has voted), whether option descriptions are shown to clients, whether clients may change their vote, whether the poll is enabled and whether it is marked ended, whether results are anonymous, and an optional Starts At / Ends At date and time for each.
• Visibility lets you restrict the poll to one or more client groups. Leave the selection empty to show it to every client.
• Notes turns on the option for clients to leave you a private note when they vote, with your own wording for the note button and its placeholder text.

Click Add to save. You are returned to the list with a success message.

Scheduling a poll

Starts At and Ends At are both optional, and a blank date means no schedule on that side:

• Leave both blank and the poll follows the Enabled checkbox exactly as you set it.
• Set Starts At and the poll switches itself on for clients once that moment passes.
• Set Ends At and the poll switches itself off once that moment passes.

Nothing needs to run on a schedule for this to work - a background task checks every few minutes and flips Enabled or Ended for you.

Restricting who sees a poll

The Visibility section's client group selector decides who can see and vote on a poll. Leaving it empty shows the poll to every client group; selecting one or more groups hides it from everyone else, both from the client's poll list and from the poll page itself.

Viewing results

View on a poll's row opens its results screen. Each option shows its title, description and a progress bar: a green share for approval (or, for a single-choice poll, its share of every vote cast) and, on a multi-option poll, a red share for disapproval alongside it. Below the bars, unless the poll is anonymous, a Details section lists every client who voted, linked to their profile, with which way they voted on which option. A client who left a private note gets a Note link that opens it on its own screen.

Reading a client's note

Clicking Note next to a client's vote opens a page showing that client's name, the option they voted on, and the note text they wrote.

Exporting results

The download button at the top of a poll's results screen streams a CSV of every vote: which client (unless the poll is anonymous), which option, which way they voted, and any note they left. It downloads immediately with no extra confirmation.

Deleting a poll

Delete on the list asks you to confirm, then removes the poll along with all of its options, votes and notes.

Deciding who can access Polls

Polls registers its own staff permissions. Under Settings > System > Staff > Staff Groups, editing a group gives you a Polls section with List Polls, Add Poll, Edit Poll, View Poll Results, View Client Notes, Delete Poll and Export Poll Results. Blesta registers new permissions switched off, so tick the ones each group should have.

For your clients

The polls list

Polls in the client portal navigation opens the list of every poll currently open to that client, each showing its title and description. A poll that has ended still appears here, labelled as ended.

Voting on a poll

Opening a poll shows every option with its title, and its description when the poll owner has chosen to display them. On a multi-option poll, each option has its own Yes and No buttons; on a single-choice poll, each option has a single vote button, and voting on one option clears any vote you had on another. If the poll allows revotes you can change your answer at any time by voting again; otherwise your first vote is final. A poll that has ended shows its buttons disabled.

Seeing results

Whether results appear depends on the poll's Results Visible setting: never, always, or only after you have cast a vote yourself. When visible, each option shows the same progress bar and vote count staff see on their results screen.

Leaving a note

When the poll owner has turned on notes, a note button appears next to each option's voting buttons. Clicking it opens a text box where you can write a note explaining your vote; saving it sends the text to staff, attached to that option and your account. Reopening the same button lets you edit what you wrote.

Good to know

• A vote is tied to your client account, not a cookie or your IP address, so voting from a different device or browser does not let you vote twice.
• Polls are per company. On a multi-company install each company has its own polls.