Neighborhood Crimebusters – Conduct Polls

[This post is part of the article: Neighborhood Crimebusters’ Web Based Community. Previous post: Manage Information.]

In the previous posts, we focused on communication and collaboration tools of your web-group. This post discusses a different kind of feature.

Poll Application
Like all the other tools, the Poll application is also pretty simple to use. Let’s say that you are trying to decide when to hold the summer party. You could send out an email and collect all the responses and tabulate all the choices. But the Poll application makes it very simple. Click on “Polls” in your group home page, then “Create Poll.” Follow the simple instructions and you are done! You can decide if you want to let people choose one or multiple options, and if results should be displayed when the poll is in progress, and when the poll ends. When the poll ends, you can set it up to send an automated email to the group.

Other uses of polls may be to check how many people in your group feel comfortable about installing security cameras, how may would like to install one or, what are good locations for displaying NCW signs, and so on. This simple feature reduces email clutter and lets you focus on the issue.

One thing to remember is that in a Yahoo Group, if you edit the poll question when the poll is in progress, then all the existing results for that poll are lost, and the members would have to make their choices again.

[Next post: Schedule Events.]