Ballot enables you to filter Ballot files by both items and by criteria. This enables a facilitator to retain a large Ballot file that contains many items and/or criteria, but only show a subset of these in any Ballot session. This is not unlike hiding columns or rows in a spreadsheet. The information is there, but not currently visible.
The advantages of this approach include:
- Ability able to keep one master file, rather than many distinct files for different groups, departments etc.*
- Only showing specific items and criteria on a voting screen, rather than a longer list of items some of which may not be relevant to the participants.
Example:
A facilitator keeps a file containing a list of financial risks, operational risks, and reputational risks. The facilitator is also capturing responses on the inherent risks (i.e. the likelihood and impact of risks before taking controls into account) and residual risks (the same measures after taking controls into account). By using custom views, the facilitator can enable the Accounting Group to see just the financial risks, the Manufacturing group to see the operational risks and the Marketing and PR group to see the reputational risks. In addition, the facilitator can run two sessions with each of these groups, one on inherent risks and one on residual risks.
Note: Different groups still need to vote within different Ballot files, as the process of counting voters, identifying stakeholder groups for multiple groups may distort results if you attempt to combine these. However, one the master file, with custom views has been created, copies of it can be made for each group.