Author: mlbwdev

Simply Voting is committed to provide an easy and flexible election manager to allow all election organisers to set up smooth stress free elections. With the objective of always improving our services/offer, we are happy to announce the launch of a new functionality: Un-finalization.

We understand that finalizing your election can be stressful as last-minute changes might come up. Whether it is to accommodate a last-minute candidate, to fix a typo on your ballot or to modify your electors list. Flexibility is the key to ensuring the integrity and efficiency of the voting process.

That is why we are introducing the “un-finalize” functionality, which allows you to call-off your finalization in order to make the necessary changes to your election. Once the changes are made, you will be able to re-finalize the election at no additional cost if you still have the same number of electors. If you added electors, you will be offered to pay for an upgrade.

To learn more about this new functionality and how to use it, please visit our help guide.

With this new functionality, managing your elections becomes easier, more efficient and more stress free than ever.

Finding ways to enhance customer experience is always a driving force at Simply Voting, and because of this we are pleased to announce our new Roles feature for streamlining user permissions.

Accounts on Simply Voting often have multiple organizational users, since managing elections sometimes isn’t just a one person job, or other stakeholders might be involved in helping keep elections transparent and auditable. If you are still sharing a single user login among organizational staff – we would encourage you to review best practices and create individual users (click here to learn more)!

To facilitate managing multiple users, we’ve launched roles. Roles provide a set of permissions which can be applied to multiple users, and to get you started you will find several default roles reflecting popular groups of user permissions.

Customers also have the option to create their own more nuanced roles (click here to learn more). For instance, a “scrutineer” role might have permissions related to read-only access to the Electors, Results, and Reports sections, but no access to any other sections within an election. Any edits to the defined permissions for custom roles like this, such as say updating the scrutineer role to also include full access to the Account Log section, would then update the permissions of all users assigned to this role – saving you the headache of updating each user one by one and ensuring everything is the same across the board for the group of users.

We hope this feature enhancement helps keep your user management simple! Don’t hesitate to contact Support if you have any issues, questions, or concerns.

In today’s world, data security is paramount. Protecting your organization’s data wherever it may be is a critical element of any organization’s security practices and policies. And when it comes to voting events and elections run on Simply Voting, security goes hand-in-hand with election integrity.

What is Two-Factor Authentication?

Two-factor authentication (2FA), put simply, is an added layer of security that can be enabled by users on your organization’s account. Two-factor is shown to significantly decrease the risk of an account breach by combining two forms of protection — something ideally only you should know (e.g. your username and password) with something only you have available (e.g. your mobile device). Simply Voting supports two-factor authentication through any number of reliable authenticator applications.

Enabling Two-Factor Authentication on your User Account

The handy Election Manager Guide’s Account Management section covers how to enable and disable two-factor authentication. To enable it, you’ll need your mobile device. Then Simply log into your account as you normally would, and proceed to the Security section of your account. Locate the Two-Factor Authentication section and follow the instructions provided. Once completed, you will see a notice that your account is protected.

Logging into the Election Manager with Two-Factor Authentication

When you attempt to log into the Election Manager tool, you’ll use your username and password just like before. After that step, you’ll also be prompted to complete a secondary login element related to two-factor authentication, as shown in the screenshot below and in this FAQ item in our Help section.

Security Check-up

Finally, while in the Security section, take a moment do a security check-up on your password as well. Are you using it with any other website? Is it sufficiently secure? Are your security questions up-to-date? When in doubt, take those extra steps to help protect both your account and the integrity of your voting events and elections on Simply Voting.

 

Simply Voting has launched a redesigned Election Manager for the Voting System. From the start, we set out to craft a modern and intuitive customer experience, without sacrificing the core principle that drives us as a company — simplicity. It was clear our Voting System’s design, while lovingly crafted many years ago, needed an overhaul to match the diverse needs of our customers and to bring it up-to-date with a contemporary approach to end user experience.

With the redesign, users will find the Election Manager more visually informing, as well as more responsive on mobile devices so they can manage their election on the go. While the redesign’s refined aesthetic enhancements are important, the functionality of the user interface remains unchanged – there is no feature loss.

So what does the Election Manager look like now? Lets take a brief tour!

Account Navigation and Settings

Upon logging in, as before you begin on the Elections page, with a listing of all your elections. In the screenshot below, highlighted in yellow, is your main navigation menu within your account — analogous to the same navigation menu that was previously across the top of the Elections page. From this menu, you will find additional pages for managing account Users, account Settings, as well as your own User Profile and Security, and a way to return to the main Elections page.

With a deeper look into the Settings page, again highlighted in yellow, you’ll find familiar pages that cover your Organizational Details, Billing history, Voting Website design, and the overall Account Log. Other sections from the “old” Settings page exist here too.

Election Management

While managing your elections might look a bit different, again the underlying structure and wording remains unchanged to help ensure users won’t find themselves lost. Throughout the Election Manager, now users will find tool-tipped buttons to help guide them along the way in various Action columns, mimicking the “old” action links. In the screenshot below, we’re heading into an election to further manage it.

Once inside an election users will find a navigation menu, as shown in the screenshot below and highlighted in yellow, that mimics the “old” dropdown navigation menu. Again the order and wording remains unchanged to help ensure users can navigate with ease. Plus, within any draft election you’ll find the handy Election Checklist to help keep you on task.

Help!

If you are feeling a little overwhelmed, don’t worry! As you may have noticed, in the right corner of screen you’ll always find a little Help button following you around, on any page within the Election Manager. Clicking Help will bring you to our expansive suite of Guides that can walk you through anything step-by-step. Our Help documentation has been updated to match the user interface experience, so keep it handy as a resource.

And if you need more support or have additional questions, our Support Team is always standing by!

Final Thoughts

We hope our redesign meets your expectations and approval. We’ve listened to our customers and outside experts to deliver a more intuitive experience. However at Simply Voting, development never stops — and we can look forward to continued improvements to the new interface over time.