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This article is for event organizers. If you are an event participant, please see our Resources for Participants section.

Presentations can be submitted via the presentation submission form link at any point before or after the event has launched, up until the event expires (per the uptime associated with your package). If you choose to not use the Abstract Management workflow, these submissions will automatically appear under the Presentations page immediately, where they will be searchable and filterable.


Please note that if you intend on making a multi-stage Presentation Submission Form, you will need to first make all of your stages within the Abstract Management workflow and then customize your Presentation Submission Form. If you edit your Presentation Submission Form prior to turning on Abstract Management or creating any additional stages, you will not be able to properly set up what stage each question will appear in. You do not have to set up all of the steps of each stage prior to customizing your Presentation Submission Form, but both workflows are interconnected in that you must create multiple stages first before editing your form to open different questions during different stages.


You can customize your presentation submission form by clicking the pencil icon to the left underneath the page header (see further down for guidance on submission form customization). Once you have customized your form, you may copy the submission form link and paste it into your browser to view your live submission form. We recommend submitting several test presentation submissions to see how the form works, and how the information will display under your event Presentations page. 


Once your form has been tailored to your liking, you may distribute this presentation submission form link to your presenters. As mentioned in Presentations Overview, with the release of our new Abstract Management workflow, all presenters are now required to sign up for a free Symposium account (or log in if they already have an account) in order to submit the Presentation Submission Form. This allows us to link the presentation to the user's account so that, if permitted by your chosen settings, they can make modifications and/or provide additional information (in the case where there is a multi-step abstract submission process) as part of their submission. Presenters who are not logged into their Symposium accounts will see the following message when they open the Presentation Submission Form. 

Additionally, with the new Abstract Management workflow, if you associate certain questions with specific stages, your presenters will fill out the Presentation Submission Form in parts, with more questions appearing as they progress to each subsequent stage. If you allow for it within the Abstract Management setup, your presenters will also be able to edit their submissions in response any feedback received from reviewers in the previous stage(s).

NOTE: The submission form editor will lock once the first submission has been received in order to avoid data corruption of existing submissions through retroactive submission form changes. For this reason, we strongly recommend submitting several test presentations to see how content is formatted and displayed and the search filters that will be automatically created, before distribution of the submission form link to presenters.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Presentation Submission Form Overview

When you go to customize your presentation submission form, you will see four sections: General Form Section, Presenter Form Section, Presentation Form Section, and Media Form Section.

General Form Section

General Form Section, you can provide brief instructions to presenters on how to complete and submit the form. The default message states: Please fill out the following form with your poster or presentation information. Please only submit one form per presentation, and please note that this submission is final. You may edit or alter this to your liking. 


These instructions will appear at the top of the Presentation Submission Form, as seen below: 



Presenter Form Section

Under the Presenter Form Section, you may alter some of the existing questions, customize the wording, and add additional questions that you would like to ask each presenter (both the primary presenter and each co-presenter). If you choose to utilize the Abstract Management workflow, all questions in this section, besides the three fields mentioned later, can be customized to appear on your Presentation Submission Form during different stages.

Feel free to take a look at what our default presentation submission form looks like to a presenter here: symposium.foragerone.com/blank-demo/submission

There are seven defaults fields under the Presenter Form Section. First, you can change what the Presenter is called and select the maximum number of co-presenters that can be added by the primary presenter (up to 7 additional presenters allowed, 8 total).


The next three fields - First Name, Last Name, and Email - may not be altered or removed from the form, although you may add your own description if desired. These three fields are also required to appear on your event's Presentation Submission Form during Stage 1 of your Abstract Management workflow and cannot be asked in further stages.

The sixth default field, Level/Classification, appears as a standard Multi-Select Form Field. You may choose to remove this field from the form altogether by deselecting "Include this field on the form," so that the question will not appear on the form when you pass it on to presenters. You can also choose to make this field optional or required for presenters to fill out before submitting via the “Require this field” checkbox.

NOTE: If you choose to omit this field from the form, this information will not automatically populate the "Presenters by level/classification" pie chart under Analytics > Presenter & Presentations. If no responses are collected under this field in the presentation submission form, this metric will be left empty.

You can also select to “Create search filters using Field Options provided below.” This option is available with any Multi-Select Form Fields, and will create search filters in the filters pane on the left hand side of the Presentations browsing page of your event. The “Field Display Name” will become the title of the search filter, and the multi-select options will become the checkbox categories. Find out more about creating filters in our Creating Filters article.

As usual, you may customize the name and description of the field so that your presenters know what's expected or what the purpose of the field is. Lastly, you can change the field options by removing certain options and adding other, and you can rearrange the ordering of the options via theicon to the left of each option.

The last default form field under the Presenter Form Section is the Major/Department short answer form field. Again, you can choose to include or omit this field from the form, as well as set it as optional/mandatory for all presenters to complete. 


NOTE: If you choose to omit the Major/Department default field from the submission form, this information will not automatically populate the "Presenters by major/department" bar graph under Analytics > Presenter & Presentations. If no responses are collected under this field in the presentation submission form, this metric will be left empty.


While the name and field type on this field cannot be edited, a description may be added with specific instructions.


Given the current default settings, the last two fields will appear on the Presentation Submission Form as is shown in the image below. If you deselect "Require this field" for either of the fields, the red asterisk will disappear. 



Presentation Form Section

The Presentation Form Section has four default forms fields: Title, Abstract Or Description, Mentor, and Subject. All form fields within this section can be customized to appear in different stages of your Abstract Management workflow. 

The first two default form fields, Title and Abstract Or Description, are mandatory and cannot be altered, although a description may be added/edit. The information input to these fields will display directly in the presentation previews and presentation summaries. 

While the default Mentor and Subject fields are optional, they play an important role in the Judging workflow (in case you are using our Judging feature). 

The response for this field will populate into the Presentation cards on the Judges' pages (as shown in the next image) so that you may easily screen for conflicts of interest when assigning judges to presentations.


NOTE: If you choose to omit the default "Mentor" and "Subject" fields from your Presentation Submission Form, this information will not populate into the judging presentation cards. As a result, you won’t be able to filter the presentation cards by Subject Area, or view the mentor associated with a presentation (which serves to help avoid conflicts of interest as you assign judges to presentations). Please see our Judging Guide for more information on this.

Additionally, if you choose to omit the Subject field from your form, the linked Analytics metric will appear blank under your event Analytics tab.


Media Form Section

Presenters are by default given three media upload options: 

  • Poster / Slides (PDF + Video)
  • Pre-Recorded Oral Presentation (Video) 
  • Exhibit, Performance, or Demonstration (Video + Video)


When a presenter selects a Media Type, they are provided with instructions and support materials in order to successfully submit their content.

For the PDF + Video and Video + Video options, only the first primary presentation medium is required for submission. The companion video is always optional to the presenter, and as the organizer, you may choose to omit this option by unchecking Display "Voiceover Video Link Field" option in your editor. 

You may also change the titles and/or descriptions of the media upload options, or remove media upload options so that all presenters are going through one specific media upload option (all PDF presentations, for example). To omit one of the three media upload options, you can simply deselect the "Include this field on the form" checkbox under the option in your editor.

Only one video type, a native video or a Youtube link, can be selected for video uploads. A Symposium upload entails the presenter submitting a .mp4 file from their computer, while a Youtube link would involve the presenter uploading their video file to Youtube. Instructions are given to the presenter within the presentation submission form on how to upload their video file and mark their video as unlisted (recommended). 

Adding New Fields

Both the Presenter Form Section and the Presentation Form Section allow you to add new fields, either a new short answer field, or a new multi select field. 

As usual, for each of these new fields. you may specify a Field Display Name, and optionally, a Field Description. If you choose to use the Abstract Management workflow, each new field can also be customized to appear at different stages. You may also delete or change the position of the field in your form via the controls highlighted in the screen capture below. 

When you add either field, you will see three checkbox configuration options:

  • Include this field on the form - deselecting this box will remove the field from your submission form, but will not delete it entirely. This means it will not display on the front facing form, but if you decide you would prefer to include it after all during the trial submission and editing process, you may always re-instate the field by selecting the checkbox again.
  • Require this field - checking this box will require that the presenter complete the question in order to successfully submit the form. 
  • Show this field's value(s) in Presentation summary - checking this box allows for any data collected in the question to show on the left side of the submitted Presentation's main view. Thus, when attendees are viewing specific presentations, the information inputted will appear under "Presenter(s)," "Abstract," and any other information. 


Adding a new Short Answer Field will create a question that will be answered through the presenter's own words. This field allows you to choose between 3 Field Types:

  • Text Editor - enables a text box in which entered text to be formatted (bolded, italicized, underlined, bullet-pointed, etc) and hyperlinked
  • Number - restricts responses to a numerical value (does not restrict magnitude)
  • Plain Text - enables a single line for plain formatted text entry

When you add a new Multi-Select Field, you will be asked to create Field Options, which you may delete and rearrange to your liking via the controls highlighted below. You will also be asked to choose between 2 different Field Types: 

  • Radio Buttons - allows for only one field option to be selected among those provided
  • Checkboxes - allows for multiple field options to be selected among those provided

Unlike the Short Answer Field, you will see an additional option in the Multi-Select Field to select, "Create search filters using Field Options provided below." Enabling this option makes any values inputted by the presenter available as a search filter in the event's main Presentations page. When this option is checked, the submitted presentations can be then organized by the values from the attendee viewpoint as well as when you as an organizer assign presentations to judges, if judging is occurring within your event.

If you find that the field or question is not in the right place, you can move the question by placing your cursor on the icon on the left side of the field and dragging the question to its correct place. If you find that the field or question is no longer necessary in your Presentation Submission Form, you can delete it by selecting "Remove this field." Please note that this action cannot be reversed, but a pop-up screen will appear, asking for confirmation that you desire to delete the question.


Testing Your Submission Form

Prior to distributing the presentation submission form link to your presenters, we recommend testing your submission form by submitting test responses. The tests allow you to see how the form works, how the information will display under your event, and if the necessary search filters have been added. 

NOTE: If you choose to utilize the Abstract Management workflow and create multiple stages, when testing your Presentation Submission Form, you will only be able to see the questions you have chosen to appear in Stage 1. Additionally, you will not be able to see how the presentations appear in the Presentations main page as well as any search filters. 

Please do not activate the next stage when testing your Presentation Submission Form as this will lock your form from any future submissions and your presenters will see the following message. Activating the next stage within the Abstract Management workflow is irreversible and a one-time action. Given this restriction, we strongly recommend you to review all portions of your Presentation Submission Form from the edit view to check if all the desired questions been marked to appear as search filters, under the Presentation Summary, and so on.


Once a test or a few test responses have been submitted, you can view the responses through Presentations > Submissions. You can also preview the test presentations through the viewpoint of an attendee, presenter, or judge by clicking "Presentations" on the top navigation bar. Previewing the test presentations allows for you to test the search filters as well as any other features created through the presentation submission form. Please note that if you have set up your Abstract Management workflow, you will only see accepted presentations in the Presentations page. 

Once a response has been submitted, the submission form will lock. To edit the form after submitting test response(s), the test response(s) must first be deleted, which you can do by navigating to Manage Event > Presentations and selecting the trash can icon next to the test submission. Please make sure that the submission form has been completely modified and is to your liking before distributing it to your presenters as the form cannot be edited once a form has been submitted.

After presentations have been submitted, you can edit the presentations as well as create an abstract booklet.