Roles are an essential component of ProposalSpace. Not only do they allow for greater flexibility when collecting proposal information, they also make certain functionality possible, like the Advanced Scheduling Module’s conflict checker.
Unfortunately, they’re also one of the most misunderstood and misused features.
So what are roles?
Here’s a quick tip for call admins when adding an admin, review chair, or reviewer:
Use a complete email address (e.g. “harry.potter@hogwarts.edu”) to search for the user’s account. That way, the user will be added immediately and won’t have to confirm the action.
If instead you search using all or part of a user’s name (e.g. “Potter”) or a partial email address (e.g. “harry.potter”), the user will have to confirm the action before actually being added.
In case you’re wondering, we added this step to strengthen privacy on the site. We figure if you don’t know someone’s full email address, we shouldn’t display it to you until they say it’s OK to do so. If, however, you already know someone’s full email address, there’s really no reason to require an additional step. In that case, we just send them an email letting them know they’ve been added.
We’ve just uploaded a new video tutorial that shows how to update the photo associated with your ProposalSpace profile. Check it out.
We’ve just posted a brief tutorial on YouTube that explains how to review submissions in ProposalSpace: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTWIBReUifc. If you manage a call, you might want to have your reviewers view the tutorial before they get started so they know what to expect.
If you have any suggestions for how we can improve the tutorial—or would like to see us create videos for other topics—just let us know!
Sometimes too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. If you’re having a problem with individual users submitting too many proposals (usually so they can have better odds of being selected, but for whatever reason), you might want to try setting a submission limit. That way, users will have to pick their best papers to submit and won’t be able to flood the selection committee with “junk”.
To take advantage of this feature, all you have to do is set the Individual Limit (under “Submission Settings”) to the maximum number of submissions you want to allow from an individual user.
For example, if you want to restrict users to three submissions, enter “3”. (If you do not want to place a limit on the number of proposals a user may submit, enter “0” or leave the setting blank.) Once a user has met the submission limit, he will still be able to create proposals and collaborate with other users, but he won’t be allowed to submit any more proposals for your call.
We designed ProposalSpace so that authors can find calls easily, using our Find a Call feature. Once a user is logged in, he/she just has to click a button to see all the calls in the system that are active and accepting proposals.
There may be times, however, when you want users to be able to bypass this step and go directly to your call. To do this, just use the special link provided on the Call Settings page. Anyone who uses this link will be taken directly to your call’s main page. (If a user isn’t logged in, he/she will be asked to log in first, then be automatically redirected to your call’s main page.)