Today I released my first CodePlex project: the 0.1 version of my poll Web Part. I decided to develop this Web Part to improve my SharePoint skills and to learn more about SharePoint deployment.

SPUserPoll Screenshot

The Web Part is called SPUserPoll and it allows site users to quickly create polls anywhere in the Site Collection. The poll Web Part is designed to provide a user friendly interface: Important settings and actions are available from within the Web Part. There is no direct need to work with the SharePoint Web Part setting menu and poll data is managed from normal SharePoint lists. Administrators can manage and keep track of all created polls from a centralized list.

I know that a standard SharePoint installation also comes with a polling mechanism as part of the Survey Lists, but these surveys are complicated and require quite some time to configure. The SPUserPoll Web Part allows users to setup a single topic poll within a few minutes.

This first release provides the basic functionality with text-based results. In later releases more functionality and bar & pie charts will be provided. I hope to receive feedback from you on my project: wishes, ideas and tips for the project are welcome. My initial roadmap for the project is provided below. You can download the first release at the CodePlex site.

Project roadmap:

Version 0.1

Initial version

Version 0.2

Deployment of poll images
Bar results
Poll Closingdate
Caching

Version 0.3

Multiple answers
Input validation
Anonymous voting
Css file

Version 0.4

User customizable graph colors
Multilanguage
Remove attachments option from created poll lists

Version 0.5

Support for Internet sites
Delete poll and the poll’s lists from the Admin list
Print results
Poll preview (before publishing)

Version 0.6

Pie results
Option to hide the “show results” link before a user has voted

Version 0.7

Export poll data to csv/excel

Version 1.0

Documentation