New Tracker Dashboard

We've just released a new dashboard for the Session Tracker in ProposalSpace. The dashboard contains a couple of charts designed to help call admins track proposal activity over time and to monitor how many draft proposals are incomplete vs. complete. It also contains an Alerts section that displays issues that might require attention, like impending deadlines, submissions that haven't been approved for review, and submissions that need to be assigned to reviewers.

The idea is to make the Tracker Dashboard a place where admins can stay on top of every aspect of a call. We're always looking to make the feature more useful, so if you have any information that you would like to see on the dashboard, please let us know!

New Merge Fields in Messaging Module

Three new merge fields are now available in the Messaging Module:

• proposal.id, which displays the ID for each proposal.
• proposal.datetime, which displays the date/time assigned to each proposal in the Scheduling Module. (If no date/time is assigned for a proposal, the system displays "N/A".)
• proposal.location, which displays the location assigned to each proposal in the Scheduling Module. (If no location is assigned to a proposal, the system displays "N/A".)

If you have any suggestions for other fields you would like to include in your messages, just let us know!

Think Like Your Attendees

Dave Lutz, over at the Midcourse Corrections blog, lays out six really good ways to improve your conference committee. Here at ProposalSpace, we always try to see things through the eyes of our users, so we especially liked his recommendation to "Walk in the attendee's shoes":

Many conference committees evaluate potential sessions and speakers using more information than the attendees will see. Attendees make the decision to attend based on session title, session description, and learning objectives. Embrace a blind review process. It will help eliminate personal agendas and challenge the committee to evaluate the program as a paying attendee would.