User guide

Support for Atlassian Server Products is ending in February 2024. Consider migrating to Polls for Confluence’s Data Center version.

Or, are you planning to migrate to Cloud? Make sure you do not lose your data/configurations in the process. Check out the Migration guide for information on how to migrate the app’s data to Cloud. Contact our support team if you have any questions.

This article contains information about the Polls macro and other details about polls.

Poll types

The following poll types are available:

  • Choice Poll:
    Use choice polls to make choices such as where to go for lunch or how your newest product should be called. Specify as many options as you want, but provide at least two options. Users can then vote for one or multiple options (single choice by default). The results are being displayed as a simple bar chart.

  • Date Poll:
    Date polls help you to schedule events for the next team meeting or the next Atlassian User Group. Specify as many dates as you want, but provide at least one date. Users select the dates when they are available (multiple choice by default). The results are being displayed in a table with the most voted dates highlighted at the bottom of the table.

  • Survey poll (only for customers who migrated from Survey and Vote Macros server to Polls for Confluence cloud):
    Use survey polls to know the pulse of your team and/or customers. Ask questions and specify options for users to vote. The results are displayed at the top as a chart and table rage score per option, number of voters, pending voters, if any, and more.
    Note that after migration, Survey macros are converted to polls of type “Survey” and Vote macros to polls of type “Regular” which can be Choice or Date polls.

Both administrators and users can create polls, perform actions like edit, copy, delete and so on. Administrators can see all the available polls but users can see only those polls that they created or the polls shared with them. Also, the users can vote for polls only if it is shared with them.

You must first add a Polls macro to your page (server) and share the page link or share the poll link directly from Polls Administration (cloud) to allow others to vote in the poll.

The basic concepts about polls and voting are mentioned in the sections below. Click the required link to know more:

Polls macro

To vote for a poll, users must add a Polls macro to the required page. Specify the poll to be voted, provide a few other settings and publish the page.

The server and cloud versions of the macro are as follows:

Server

Cloud

Server

Cloud

 

 

Macro parameters

The following table describes the parameters available in the macro editor:

Parameter name

Labels

Default value

Description

Parameter name

Labels

Default value

Description

Poll

server cloud

 

Select the poll you want to display from the list of your polls. This parameter is mandatory.

In cloud, you can also use the + button to create a new poll without leaving the macro window.

Display Name

Display Poll Name

server

cloud

On

Enable this option to display the name of the poll.

Display Description

server cloud

On

Enable this option to show the description of the poll, if mentioned.

Display Author and Date Created

cloud

On

Enable this option to display the name of the poll creator and creation date.

Poll sharing and voting

Share your poll with other users to invite them to participate in your poll or embed the poll on wiki pages or blog posts using the Polls macro. This allows the poll to be available for other users. As long as other users do not have the exact link to your poll, this poll is visible only to you.

If, when creating a poll, you specified which users and/or groups can vote (Permitted users and groups to vote - server), only those users and/or groups can participate in the poll.

Users must add the relevant poll(s) using the Polls macro to a Confluence page and then share this page (in server) or directly share the poll link from Polls Administration (in cloud) with other users. You can also share poll links from the poll detail page in server and from the user poll page in cloud.

Once the poll is accessible, users can select the preferred poll option to add their vote to the poll.

  • Every poll has its own unique URL and is only known to users you share the link with. Unless the exact URL is known, others cannot access the poll.

  • A user can see only those polls that they created in the polls list. Other users cannot browse or discover polls unless the poll is shared with them or is embedded in a wiki page with relevant page permissions.

  • You can use page restrictions to limit access to the poll when embedding a poll on a wiki page.

Notifications

When a poll is shared, users will receive an email and a notification with a link to the poll. Note that this works only if the relevant SMTP server information is provided. In return, you, as the author of the poll, will be notified when a user has voted in one of your polls.

Poll status

Polls can either be open for voting or closed. You can close a poll manually or you can set an end date for the poll. When a poll is closed, users are not allowed to vote anymore. It is also possible to reset a poll, remove all existing votes, and start the voting from scratch again.

Users are not allowed to participate in closed polls. If a user does access a closed poll, the results are displayed directly.

It is also not possible to undo choices or add options once the poll is closed.

Unregistered voting (Server only)

Users without a Confluence account can vote only if the Allow unregistered users to vote parameter in poll configuration is enabled. This feature is available only in the server version and for both poll types. Global 'can use' permissions for anonymous users and anonymous access to a particular space if poll is embedded on the page/blog post is also required to allow users to access the poll.

Additional references