Voting rounds: A voting round is a list of responses (generally 2-4) that you curate and put up for a vote so that audience members can choose which question you’ll investigate. You can create and schedule your voting rounds on the voting round page of your Hearken Engagement Management System (EMS).

Poll embed: The poll embed is the container that displays your voting round. Like the form embed, you can embed the poll embed on your website.

If you haven’t yet created and scheduled a voting round, read our articles on creating a voting round first, before you proceed configuring your poll embed.

Your organization can embed the poll embed on its website to encourage audience members to pick their favorite responses. The objective of the poll embed is to display the voting rounds that you arrange and schedule on the separate voting rounds page.

Important: The poll embed will not display responses for your audience to vote on unless you have scheduled a voting round to be currently running. Voting rounds are scheduled on a calendar with start and end dates. No votes can be cast in a round that has not begun or has already ended. The period when a round is active is when it is considered “now running.” If you have scheduled two voting rounds to overlap, the one with the earlier start date will be displayed in your poll embed.

If no voting round is marked “now running” your poll embed will show a “no current voting rounds” message, or you can configure the embed to show a form embed in its place.

To get started, log into your Hearken EMS and navigate to the poll embed page (the bar graph icon near the bottom of the left-hand navigation). Select "+ Poll" and give the embed a name.

The preview section is on the left side of the page. It allows you to see what the poll embed will look like to your audience. (However, because the embeds are responsively designed, remember that it may look different when it's viewed in its final embedded location or viewed on mobile.) 

It will display the responses from a live voting round (meaning that the voting round is scheduled to today's date). 

If you do not have a voting round currently running you will see this message:

“No voting rounds are scheduled. You're seeing example responses and results instead.”

The preview will update as you make changes to the settings. 

These settings allow you to customize the look and feel of your poll embed. They also allow you to determine how your embed will function once an audience member has voted.

This is where you can add text or an image to the header bar on the top of the embed. Headers are a great place to add more information, branding and pizazz. You may also choose "No header." 

As you're setting up your header and footer, you'll be able to see a live preview to the left. However, because the embeds are responsively designed, remember that it may look different when it's viewed in its final embedded location or viewed on mobile.

Text-only headers: If you want a text-only header, simply check the box next to text in the Header / footer section. After typing in the text you'd like for your header, you can adjust the size of your header by dragging the Font size slider to the left (smaller) or to the right (larger).

Image headers: Check the box next to image for an image header. An upload button will appear which will allow you to upload an image from your computer to use as a header. If the image has a transparent background, the Header Background color will show through. 

Footer: Many partners use the footer to either spotlight a sponsor/advertiser/underwriter, or to link to terms of service/privacy policy for your company. The footer field accepts Markdown. 

You can customize the color of the following elements: Embed background, header background, header text, primary text, secondary text, link text, email submission text, highlight color, and the submit button. 

You can choose a color either by typing in a hex code or by adjusting the sliders. R-G-B stands for Red, Green and Blue. 

Tip: To find exact hex codes, you can download the Eye Dropper hex code finder extension for Google Chrome, or use this website to find hex codes from an image.

You can choose what style of font you would like for your embed. There are five options:

You can also adjust the general size of the text in your embed by sliding the slider. 

You can add a custom font using the EMS's custom font settings.

Voting prompt: You can use this to direct your audience to participate. If you choose to use this option, we recommend keeping it short and clear. For example: “Which question should we investigate?” or "Help us decide what to answer next!" 

Attribution: You can choose to show the names of who asked each question in your voting round. However, if all your question-askers are anonymous, you do have the option to not show attribution. You can also choose to change the wording of the attribution. The default is "submitted by" but you could change it to something like "asked by" or "suggested by."

Display after voting: Immediately after someone votes, you can choose what to show them. Most organizations choose to show results. However, you can instead choose to show a form embed, giving the person who voted the opportunity to send in their own response. 

After voting message: If you are showing results, you can also include a note thanking the person for voting, and letting them know what happens next (like when you'll announce the winner). You can use Markdown to add messages or buttons to your after voting message that encourage people to financially support your work. 

Collect email: Check this box if you would like to use the poll embed to collect audience emails. After they vote, your audience members will see a prompt from you (the default is “Would you like to be alerted if this question gets answered?”) and they will have the option to enter in their email. Voter emails will be stored in the Hearken EMS with the response they voted for. When a response wins, you can export all of that response's associated emails and send them a link to the finished story. After a voting round is completed, you can export emails associated with the responses and use them to get in touch with voters. (More on exporting voter emails.)

Enable opt-in checkbox: You can also give voters the opportunity to get closer to your organization by opting into newsletters and other communications. To do this, check the box that says show opt-in checkbox. When you click that box, the option to edit the opt-in text will pop up. The default language will read "Sign me up for your newsletter!" Then, you can choose if you want to have that box checked by default or not for voters.

Decide what your audience member will see when they return to the page after voting, whether it's later that day, the next day, next week, etc. You can continue to show them the results of the round they've voted in, you can show them the form embed, show them a message (like "You have already voted in this round. Check back soon to read the winning story!"). You also have the option to let the embed allow more votes. This is an option for a situation like a live event where you want to allow multiple people to vote on the same browser without cookies preventing it. This is not recommended as a default setting.  

When the voting round ends (based on the end date you schedule), you can choose what will appear in the spot where you've embedded the poll embed. You can choose to show a form embed or a simple message.

After someone votes, on the results page you can choose to include buttons they can click to share to Facebook or Twitter. We recommend you leave this feature turned on, so that your audience can encourage their friends to also vote. You will supply a link (usually to the landing page of your project, or another place that includes the poll embed) and some sample text that will populate for the audience member (which they can choose to use, edit, or delete before posting to their social account). 

If you share the direct link to your embed on social media, this information will appear in social posts. (For example, if you use the direct link to your embed on Facebook, Facebook will pull this text and image as a preview.) If you plan on using the direct link, fill these two fields in: A social title (like a headline), and the social description (usually one or two short sentences). 

If you’re all set with the look and feel and settings for your poll embed, hit Save and click on the show embed code button in the bottom left corner. If you are using NPR's Grove or Core Publisher CMS, use the Core Publisher / Grove embed code to ensure the embed displays properly.