[Building Sakai] Questions about the public poll option

[Adam Marshall]

That patch was something we got Steve to do. I think the issue description is wrong and am happy to change it if people would like that. Please let me know - I'm not sure of the protocol of editing a description. I will add the text of this email as a comment though.

Am I right in thinking this is part of 2.8, 2.9 and 10?

The patch will add an option to make a specific poll available to the public. It is orthogonal to the site having .anon access. 

If a poll is set as public then non-logged in users can vote in the poll, however, it doesn't mean they can visit the site (unless the site does have .anon access). Clearly, this implies that non-logged in users cannot visit the Polls tool either (again due to lack of permissions).

'So what is the use of the patch?' I hear you ask. 

It is designed for use via Entity Broker: our use-case was to replicate 'clicker' voting functionality. We have hooked the Polls tool up to Mobile Oxford so that we can let a room full of seminar attendees vote on issues during a presentation via their mobile phone.

However, there is more. 

If you grant .anon access to the site then the general public can visit the site and the Polls tool. 

If one then uses the permissions helper to give .anon the "vote" permission then non-logged in users can vote on ALL polls. 

If you don't use the permissions helper but use the 'public' checkbox instead then on-logged in users can just vote on the specified polls (and not on the rest).

I can confirm that the above works perfectly on our copy of 2.8.

adam


-----Original Message-----
From: sakai-dev-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org [mailto:sakai-dev-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org] On Behalf Of Jim Mezzanotte
Sent: 04 November 2013 18:41
To: sakai-dev at collab. org; sakai-user at collab.sakaiproject.org
Subject: [Building Sakai] Questions about the public poll option

Hi all,

I'm trying to get some clarity on the "public" poll option in the Polls tool. Unless I'm missing something (and apologies in advance if I am), it doesn't seem to be working.

I could only find the following description for this feature
(https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/SAK-18855):

"If the Poll tool is on a .anon accessible site then add a checkbox option 'allow public to vote' between the 'Limits' and 'Results are visible' sections. This will be complementary to adding the .anon role with poll.vote permission to a site, but will allow an individual poll to be public, rather than having to have them all public."

I'll confess the language here has me confused--if this option is complementary to adding the ".anon" role, then I would assume a "public" option would limit an individual poll. In other words, with the ".anon" role added, all polls are public. So if you didn't check the "public" box, that pool would not be accessible, even with the .anon role added.

But from my testing, both in our own 2.9 instances and in community nightly, the "public" box seems to have no effect at all. If you don't have the .anon role added, selecting this option doesn't provide public access to a poll; and if you do add the .anon role, not selecting this option won't limit public access.

I also don't see any evidence of public visibility--if you add a public poll to a site and then find that site via search on the gateway, the poll is not displayed.

There's an existing query
(https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/POLL-145) about this option, specifically in regards to it not being documented in Help.

But I'm wondering if this feature works at all--and if not, whether it should be disabled. Even if it does work as designed, my two cents is, it's confusing to end users. They won't know about the ".anon" role and they will reasonably expect that checking the "public" option will be sufficient for making a poll publicly accessible.

Best,
Jim Mezzanotte
Asahi Net International
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