You can create as many voting periods as you require with each period commencing on a start date/time and ending on a date/time. Note that voting period dates cannot overlap.

To create a voting period select "Add Period" and then select "Voting Period".

To configure the rules for your voting period you need to select the "Manage" button. To review or assign entries within a voting period you select the "Entries" button.

The voting rules area includes items such as the start and end date/time, how you want to identify voters, how often voters can vote for the same entry and also how many entries per period, category or voting group a participant can vote for.

Voting Period Name: This is used to identify the voting period and will be displayed in the voting results against each vote.

Voting starts
This specifies the date and time that the contest will start allowing entries to be voted upon (assuming voting is enabled). This date and time is based on the timezone selected in the site settings area. Note that the voting button for entries in the contest micro-site will not be visible until this date and time is reached.

Voting ends
This specifies the date and time that the contest will finish allowing entries to be voted upon (assuming voting is enabled). This date and time is based on the timezone selected in the site settings area. Note that the voting button for entries in the contest micro-site will disappear once this date and time is reached.

This section sets how are you going to identify voters when they vote.

Strict : This setting restricts the number of votes (based on vote timer rule) coming from each workstation IP address. Note that if the contest is being run for participants that reside on an intranet (e.g. corporate contest) then this option should not be selected as all entrants will have the same IP address (being the corporate firewall). In these cases use the Moderate voting restriction.

Moderate : This setting restricts the number of votes recieved from each participant by placing a cookie on the workstation and detecting the cookie and associated timer rule when a second vote is attempted.

Email Verification : Using this setting requires the voter to provide their email address when they submit a vote. The system will send a special URL link to the voters email for them to validate the vote. Once the link is selected the vote is validated and counted towards the entry.

Social Verification : This allows voters to vote using their social login. In order to use this option you must setup the social platform api keys in the general settings area. Any social networks that have been setup with API's will be provided as an option for social voting.

Registered User Voting : Using this setting the voter will be required to register in the contest to be able to vote. Using social registration you can also enable registration and hence voting using social networks.

Voting Form
This setting specifies the voting form to be used when a user votes. This allows for additional voting details to be captured and exported from the voting table.

Vote timer
This specifies how many times a participant can vote. The options include:

Number of entries they can vote on
This setting specifies the number of different entries that voters can vote for. Note that a value of 0 will enable unlimited entries to be voted for.

Vote Limit

The "Vote Limit per" sets how many entries a participant can vote for per period, per category or per voting group. Note that if per voting group is selected then this changes the options in the following section.

Eligible or Ineligible by default

If you have defined how many entries a participant can vote for as per Period or per Category you then need to specify which entries can be voted on.

Essentially this is broken into two types of assignment. Either all entries are automatically eligible to be voted for or no entries are eligible to be voted for and it is up to the administrator to assign the entries that are eligible for voting manually.

This is typically used when you need to narrow down the entries that can be voted on based on specific criteria e.g. the number of votes received in a previous round.

To assign all entries automatically as eligible the Entry eligibility in the Manage area is set to "All entries eligible by default". This means all entries and any new entries received will be automatically eligible to receive votes. You can view this by selecting the Entries button from the Schedule table.

You can manually un-assign entries from the eligible list which will mean these entries will no longer be eligible to receive votes. This can be done from the Entries area for the round.

If Entry eligibility is set to "All entries ineligible by default" then all existing and any new entries will not be eligible for voting. In this case you can select ineligible entries and manually assign them to be eligible for voting for this round. This is typically used where you want to only select the highest vote getters from a previous round or select entries based on some other specific criteria for voting in this round.

Voting Groups

If you have selected to limit the number of entries that can be voted on to be per group, then additional options will be displayed.

Groups effectively allow you to break up your entries into different groups and then participants can vote for their favourite entry in each group. If this option is selected then you need to specify the number of groups you want to create and the prefix for each group. The platform will then automatically create these groups with the prefix you have set.

If you have selected voting groups then all the voting groups will be displayed and you can then manually assign entries into each group for participants to vote on. This is done in the Entries area for the Voting Period.

When groups are configured the gallery page will contain group filter tabs which allows participants to select the group of entries they would like to view and vote on.

The last checkbox in the settings area determines whether entries that are displayed during this period only include entries that are eligible to be voted on or whether all entries are displayed.

If all entries are displayed then only entries that are eligible to be voted on will have the vote button displayed.