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!

New Feature: Late Submissions

Good news, call administrators: You no longer have to re-open a call just to create a late submission. Now, even if your call's submission deadline has passed, you will continue to see it on the Start a Proposal page.

A few important notes:

1. Only you and your fellow administrators can see the call on the Start a Proposal page. If you want to allow a non-administrator to start a proposal, you will need to re-open the call.
2. The call will remain listed on the Start a Proposal page until it is archived.
3. Proposals you create are attached to your account. If you want to create a proposal on behalf of someone else, you will need to add that person to the proposal so that he/she can have access to it.
4. Proposals you create after the submission deadline has passed will still need to be approved for review.

New Feature: Customizable Submission Labels

If you are one of the growing number of organizations using ProposalSpace for managing award nominations, you might not have cared for the term "proposal" we use throughout the site (for example, "Start a Proposal" or "Edit Proposal").

Well, good news. Now you can customize the term. The default is still "proposal", but you can change it to "nomination", "abstract", "idea", or anything else that fits your needs. Just pull up the call and look in the General Settings page for a field called Submission Type.

New Feature: Breadcrumbs

We've made it easier than ever to find your way around ProposalSpace with breadcrumbs. Just check the top of any page to see where you are in relation to your Account Home page.

New Feature: Email Receipts

Call administrators can now track the status of every email sent through ProposalSpace! Just pull up any message sent via the Messaging Module and click the new Delivery Receipts tab. There you can see if the message was:

• Queued for delivery
• Not delivered (because the recipient requested not to receive messages)
• Rejected by the recipient's email server
• Reported as undeliverable
• Flagged as spam
• Opened by the recipient

If you included links in your message, you can also see if the recipient clicked on any of them.

We're really excited about this new feature. We hope you are, too. As always, if you have any questions or suggestions for improvement, just let us know!

New Feature: Scheduling Module

One of the most critical tasks for any conference organizer is building the session schedule. Not only do you have to figure out how to arrange the sessions so they tell a story, you also have to make sure you don't put someone in two places at the same time.

Unfortunately, we can't help you with the story-telling part (at least not yet). We can, however, help you easily check for scheduling conflicts with our new drag-and-drop Scheduling Module.

All you have to do is create a scheduling "grid" with your available dates/times and locations. Once the grid is built, you just drag and drop sessions onto it. If the system detects a conflict, it gives you the option to schedule the session anyway (ignoring the conflict) or to cancel the assignment. You can even move sessions around on the grid and the module will continue to warn you of any conflicts.

Review Groups Are Here!

A lot of conferences—especially larger ones—need to split up their review tasks among different groups of reviewers. Up to now, the only way to do that in ProposalSpace was to set up multiple calls, each with its own set of reviewers. Now, call administrators can manage multiple sets of reviewers in a single call!

Our new Review Groups feature lets call administrators set up an unlimited number of groups and assign an unlimited number of submissions, review chairs, and reviewers to each one.

Say, for instance, that your call asks each author to select one of five topic areas. Previously, if you wanted to assign a different set of reviewers to each topic area that meant you had to set up five calls. Now, you can just create five review groups within a single call (one for each topic area), then assign submissions, review chairs and reviewers to one or more of the groups. Permissions are based on the review group, so a review chair may only work within his/her assigned group. Call administrators, of course, can work within any group.

New Feature: Session Publishing

Our new Publish Module lets you publish your conference's session information—including supporting materials—on any website.

Conference organizers can:

• Assign dates, times and locations to sessions.
• Select which information gets displayed for each session and for each person in the session.
• Embed the session information in any website with a single line of code.

Authors can:

• Attach documents to their sessions for attendees to download.

Attendees can:

• Search for sessions by keyword.
• Sort sessions by title, date/time, and location.

The best part? Any change you make in ProposalSpace shows up immediately on your website.

New Feature: Profile Photo

User profiles can now include photos!

To add a photo to your profile, just log in to the site, click the "My Account" tab, then click the "Change My Photo" link. You can upload any standard image file (JPEG, GIF, PNG or TIFF) and even scale and crop your photo without the need for photo-editing software.

New Feature: Text Limits

We're really excited to announce a new feature in ProposalSpace: text limits.

Call admins can now assign a word or character limit to any text field in a proposal submission form or role form. Just select "Word Limit" or "Character Limit" from the pull-down menu in the question settings, then enter the number of words or characters you want for the limit.

We designed the feature to follow Twitter-like rules, so responses are allowed to exceed the limit.

Extra text is displayed with ellipses, which can be clicked on to reveal the full response.

Check it out and let us know what you think!

Ignorance is Bliss

Call administrators: Have you ever come across a proposal that, for whatever reason, you just want to ignore? Now you can!

Simply select "Ignore" (from the Options menu) for any draft proposal or unapproved submission and ProposalSpace will treat it as if it never existed. To see the proposals you've chosen to ignore, just click the "Show Ignored" link. And to start tracking an ignored proposal again, just select "Don't ignore".

Updated Data Exporting

Just a quick note to let everyone know that we've updated the data export feature to accommodate the newly expanded, customizable role forms and to include review data.

Custom Role Forms

ProposalSpace has always allowed call admins to customize the terminology used for roles people play in a proposal. You can configure your call to use whatever terms you want... "speakers", "presenters", "authors", "collaborators", etc.

Now, you can also configure what information you collect about each of those people. Using our drag-and-drop form builder, you can create a custom form to collect information like qualifications, disclosure statements, membership status, favorite football team... whatever you want! Questions can be optional or required and are unique to each role you've established.

To access the feature, just go to your call's configuration page and click on "Roles". You'll see a link there (under each role you've created) to "Customize Form". If you have an active call in place, don't worry. We've carefully moved the previous questions—name, organization and disclosure—over to the new feature.

Oh, and we've included this new feature in our core modules, so there's no need to ask for an upgrade or to pay extra to use it. It's available to everyone right away.

New Reviewer Assignment Feature

We've just introduced a new feature in ProposalSpace that allows call administrators to assign submissions to individual reviewers.

Before now, every reviewer had access to every submission. If a call admin wanted to spread out the workload, the admin would have to contact reviewers outside of the system to let them know which submissions to review and which to ignore.

Now, admins can make individual assignments, either from the Submissions page (where reviewers can be assigned to a submission) or from the Reviewers page (where submissions can be assigned to a reviewer).

We designed the feature with a lot of valuable input from our users, but we never stop wanting feedback. So check it out and let us know what you think!

Submission & Withdrawal Notices

We've just added a couple of features to the site that should make managing submissions a little easier for call admins:

• The site now automatically notifies call admins by email whenever a proposal is submitted. Before, call admins had to log in to check on any activity. Now, that information is delivered right to their inboxes.
• The site now automatically notifies proposal managers by email whenever a proposal is withdrawn. (A copy of the withdrawal notice is also placed in the manager's Message Center in case the email has problems making it through.) Plus, call admins have the option of including a message with the withdrawal notice.

New Feature: Test Mode

Call administrators now have the option of testing a call in ProposalSpace before making it live.

Here's how it works:

1. Once your call is complete (has all the information required for activation), you simply click a button to place it in "test mode".
2. The system automatically generates a special URL, which you and your testers use to create and submit test proposals.
3. Administrators, review chairs and reviewers have full access to the call—as if it were active—for three days.
4. After three days, the call is automatically taken out of test mode. If you need more time, just let us know. We'll be glad to extend the test period.
5. Any data entered during the testing period is automatically deleted when you activate the call.

New Feature: Grouped Checkboxes

Our drag-and-drop form builder now allows multiple checkbox items in a single form element.

Why is this important? Let's say you want to collect A/V requirements from your speakers. Before, you had to create a separate question on the form for each requirement:

Now, you can include all of those checkboxes in one element:

We've also added new requirement options for grouped checkboxes: You can make the checkboxes optional, you can require that at least one box be checked, or you can require all the boxes to be checked.

New Software Release

We've reorganized the My Calls, My Proposals and Call Settings pages to remove some of the clutter and to make things easier to find. All of the functions that were on the My Calls and My Proposals pages are still available, we just moved them to the Call Settings and Proposal Details pages. Call administrators will also notice a big change in the navigation for the Call Settings page, which now has the basic settings, tools and settings for all the major functions (submission, review, selection, notification) accessible via tabs across the top of the page. We also created a way for call administrators to archive completed calls so that they're not in the way but can still be accessed if need be.

New Feature: Public Calls

At ProposalSpace, we don't just want to be the one place conference organizers can rely on to find great presenters, we also want to be the one place presenters can rely on to find great calls. So we've added a new feature on the public side of the site that lists every call for papers we can find for just about every type of academic conference—regardless of whether the organizers use us to manage their abstracts or not.