Every accreditation program has its own pool of team candidates: people your association is willing to send on visiting teams. This article shows you how to add someone to that pool and keep their candidate record up to date. To add a candidate to a specific visit team, see Staff a Visit's Team.
Before You Begin
Prerequisites
- Select the program you want to work in before you start. Everything you do here applies only to your current program.
- You need permission to create team candidates to add someone, permission to edit to update someone, and permission to delete to remove someone from a school's list or delete a candidacy. If you do not have the right permission, the button or link is disabled or does not work.
- The person you want to nominate must already exist as a contact. See Create or Edit a Contact if they do not. This also applies when you add candidates by import: candidate details for someone who is not already a contact do not create the contact for you, so add the people first.
Add a Candidate
You can start a nomination from three places, depending on what you already have open.
From the Candidates Overview
- Go to Accreditations › Candidates.
- Select Add a Candidate.
- Choose the person from the contact picker, or use its quick-add option to create a new contact.
- Set Status:, which starts on Approved, and add any Notes.
- Save.
Result
Rhythm creates the candidacy for the current program. If you chose the person from the picker, Rhythm copies the school from their contact record, so you do not set the school directly. After you save, you go to the person's record page instead of returning to the overview.
Tip
Adding several candidates in a row? Select the down arrow next to Save and choose Save & Add Another. Rhythm creates the candidacy and opens a fresh form for the next person, so you do not have to return to the overview between candidates.
From a School's Own Page
Open the school's record and go to its Candidates tab. Select Add Candidate, choose one of the school's contacts, set the status and notes, and save. Because you started from the school, Rhythm sets the school for you and returns you to its Candidates tab afterward. From the same tab, you can also edit an existing candidate's status and notes, delete a candidate, filter the list by first or last name, and open the candidates shown there in a query for further review.
From a Person's Own Record
Open the person's record and go to their Candidate Info tab. If they are not already a candidate for the current program, select (register as candidate). The person is already selected, so save to finish. If they have a school, you go to the school's page after saving; if they do not, you return to their own record.
Tip
If the person you choose has no organization on file, a note explains that the candidacy will have no school and that you can still save it. You will find and manage this candidate from their own record instead of from a school's Candidates tab.
Add Many Candidates at Once
To create many candidate records at once, use an import instead of adding each candidate individually:
- Build a query of the contacts you want to add as candidates. Include the fields a candidate record needs, and map the query's columns to them: the contact's ID and name become the candidacy's Contact, and the contact's organization becomes its School. Add Status and Notes columns if you want to set those too.
- Remove the ID column from the query results. A new candidate record has no ID of its own for you to supply.
- Go to Custom Data Tasks › Import Records and import the file to create the candidate records.
What Happens with a Duplicate Nomination
A person can be a candidate only once in a program. If you try to add someone who already has an active candidacy with a school in the current program, a message explains that they already have a record for that program, and you cannot save the duplicate.
If the person's only existing candidacy in the program has no school because it lapsed, a new nomination does not create a second record. Rhythm reuses the old candidacy, keeps its earlier notes and any custom field answers, and gives it the school and status you just set.
Change a Candidate's Status, Notes, or Custom Fields
Open the candidate form for an existing candidacy from the Candidates overview's search results, a school's Candidates tab, or the person's own Candidate Info tab. You can change Status:, Notes, or any custom fields your association has defined for candidates. See Custom Fields for how those are set up. You cannot change which contact a candidacy belongs to after you save it; if you chose the wrong person, delete the candidacy and add it again for the right one. Inactive is one of the statuses you can search on, so you can find every inactive candidate from quick search or a query.
Warning
Approving a candidate or changing their status here only updates the candidacy's own status. It does not add or update the school linked to the candidacy. If a candidate has no school, they can still appear in candidate searches and queries, but they will not appear on that school's Candidates list or in Portal views tied to a school.
Updating Many Candidates at Once
To change the status or another field for a batch of existing candidates, build a query of the candidate records and update them from there. Some accounts have found that using Bulk Changes directly from the Candidates search does not complete successfully on team candidate records, so a query-based update is the more reliable option.
Take a Candidate Off a School's List
Two actions on a school's Candidates tab look similar but do different things, so choose the one that matches what you need:
Mark Inactive Keeps the School Link; the Trash Icon Removes It
(mark inactive), next to any candidate who is not already inactive, changes only the candidate's status. The person stays linked to the school and still appears on its Candidates tab and in the school's Portal list, marked Inactive.
The trash icon goes further: it sets the status to inactive and removes the school link. The candidate disappears from that school's list and from its Portal candidate list. The candidacy itself is not deleted; it remains in the program's pool as an inactive candidate with no school, and a later nomination of the same person will reuse it. Removing a candidate this way only removes their record from this school's list. The rest of their accreditation history, including any visits they took part in with other schools, is unaffected and still appears in visit and team-member queries.
Use (mark inactive) when the person is only temporarily unavailable and you want the school to keep seeing them on its list. Use the trash icon when the person has left the school and should no longer appear there.
Both actions ask you to confirm before making the change.
Tip
The list can take a minute or two to catch up. Right after you use the trash icon, the person may still appear briefly in the school's Portal or console candidate list before it updates.
Whether you can nominate the same person again afterward, and where that new nomination lands, depends on which action you used and on your program's team candidate deactivation settings. See Programs. Because the trash icon leaves a schoolless candidacy behind, a later nomination in the same program normally reuses it automatically, as described in What Happens with a Duplicate Nomination. In some cases, you may need to open the existing candidacy directly from the Candidates overview or the person's own record instead of starting a fresh nomination.
Delete a Candidacy for Good
You can delete a candidacy entirely, rather than deactivate it, only from the person's own record, not from a school's page:
- Open the person's record and go to their Candidate Info tab.
- Select Remove Candidacy.
- Confirm when asked.
Result
Rhythm deletes the candidacy for the current program, including its notes and custom field answers. Candidacies the same person holds in other programs are not affected.
Warning
This is different from the trash icon on a school's Candidates tab, which only deactivates and unlinks the candidacy instead of deleting it.