Ta da, well I've finally finished Version 1.0 of my SMS Voting solution, the system supports up to 10 Polls each with their own validated scored criteria. 

The idea is that people can send a simple SMS/Text with their vote for a Poll from any phone that supports SMS.  It's a pretty complete vote system and it works!! 

If you were at the TechEd Oz "What's New in Framework V2" Hour of power then this was the app I was running to record your votes.  It takes around 5 minutes to receive around 200 votes via SMS, the gating factor is the network providers ability to forward the SMS Messages to the phone.  At it's peak the phone happily deals with a couple of messages per second.

It uses the following Technologies:-

You can download the documentation, Cabs, and Source files from Darren's most excellent Project Distributor site. 

Download it, give it a whirl, use it and provide me any feedback and I'll try and incorporate it.

I'm planning the these follow on blogs over the next few days

The Solution is split in to two parts:-

  1. The SMS Vote Monitor - It shows the current list of polls defines and their status and number of votes received since started
  2. The SMS Vote Manager - It allows you to define the polls and allows simple on device reporting and exporting of data.

The SMS Vote Monitor

The SMS Vote Manager provides the following functions:-

  • Validates an SMS Vote
    • Checks that a vote is for a valid poll, that the poll is open.
    • Checks that a vote has a valid score – defined in the vote manager
  • Implements
    • First Vote Wins: If a voter votes multiple times for a poll only the FIRST vote sent by a voter is recorded, all other votes from the same voter (mobile number) are ignored. This is good for competitions
    • Last Vote Wins: If a voter votes multiple times for a poll only the LAST vote sent by a voter is recorded. This is good for an evaluation vote where someone may have changed their mind.
    • Multiple Votes Allowed: All votes are recorded. Good when may want to allow voters to vote for multiple criteria on a Poll.
  • Writes the Vote to SQL Mobile 2005
  • If logging is enabled then it will log any invalid votes
  • Displays a tally of the votes received since the app was started
  • Shows the Poll Status – if Open then you will see the score validator eg [YN], [1-5] etc. If the poll is closed it says closed. If the poll is closed after receiving a number of votes then the vote count is followed by the letter ‘C’.
  • Toggle the Polls Open/Closed status – by double tapping the corresponding key on the numeric key pad of the poll in question.
  • Send test vote messages to test polls
    • If Test Buttons are enabled – see SMSVoter Config in the SMS Vote Manager app then.
    • Up/Down buttons selects one of the pre configured test phone numbers
    • Left/Right Buttons select the Poll and the test set of scores for the poll that you want to send
    • Double pressing the Enter button starts the sending of test SMS Messages
  • General status info – eg the number of invalid votes received etc.
  • If the SMS Monitor is running while you are configuring your Polls then from the SMS Vote Monitor select Options then “Reload Poll Data”.
  • A bit of help

 

The SMS Vote Manager

Provides options to manage Polls, view results and Configure the SMS Voter System

Poll Manager - Lets you view the current defined polls and their status plus

  

The Data Manager - Lets you view the count of votes, the vote detail and exporting of data

 

SMS Vote Configurator