Add a Windows Azure CloudPoll to Your Facebook Page
The CloudPoll Facebook application has launched and is hosted on Windows Azure. CloudPoll is available for free to all Facebook users to create, manage, and evaluate polls for their pages, all using blob storage, SQL Azure, and compute hosted in Windows Azure.
What is CloudPoll?
CloudPoll is Live, hosted on Windows Azure, and ready for the everyone on Facebook to create funny, serious, strange, informative, silly, and cool polls.
Just follow these three simple steps:
1. When signed into Facebook go to https://apps.facebook.com/cloudpoll/Home/Public
2. Click on Create Poll in the right hand top corner
3. All left to do is to create your Pool:
a. Type the question
b. Enter answers to your poll
c. Upload a picture
d. Decide if you want to post to your wall or another page (if it is another page, such as a fan page, then you have to first add the page via the “Add Pages” link in order to be able to select it).
e. Make the poll public, or only visible to your friends
f. Click Create Poll, you are all done
Source Code Included in Windows Azure Toolkit for Facebook
You won’t need source code to use CloudPoll, but if you want to customize the application, the source is available on Codeplex in the Windows Azure Toolkit for Facebook. It is built by Thuzi in collaboration with Microsoft to incorporate best practices, enabling the rapid development of flexible, scalable, and architecturally sound Facebook applications. In addition to the framework you can download the Simple-Poll sample application that show how to connect you Facebook Application to Windows Azure, blob storage, and SQL Azure.
Check out Thuzi.com CTO Jim Zimmerman’s session, Facebook Apps in Azure, at Mix10 last week where he showcased live Facebook applications for Outback Steakhouse and CloudPoll that were both built using the Windows Azure Toolkit for Facebook.
Download Windows Azure Toolkit for Facebook from Codeplex.
For more information, see Gunther Lenz’s posting Windows Azure Toolkit for Facebook.
Bruce D. KyleISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation