Submitting a nomination does more than record who nominated whom. Rhythm also finds or creates the candidate’s contact or organization in your Rhythm account, then finds or creates one shared nominee record for that candidate’s participation in the award. This article explains how those records work together, so you can see why the same candidate and award share one nominee record when Rhythm recognizes the candidate as the same person or organization.
Nominations and Nominees Are Different Records
A nomination is one nominator naming a candidate. A nominee is the candidate’s record for the award, where categories, notes, and custom field answers about that candidate build over time. Each nomination points to exactly one nominee, and multiple nominations can point to the same nominee when the same candidate is nominated more than once.
Rhythm keeps one nominee per candidate per award by building the nominee’s identifier from the award and the candidate. If someone types the same organization name twice instead of choosing an existing organization, Rhythm creates two separate organization records and two separate nominee records. A nomination shares an existing nominee record only when the nominator chooses the nominee from the existing list, or when Rhythm matches a person by email address.
What Happens When a Nomination Is Submitted
Whether the nomination comes from the Portal or staff enters it for a member in the Console, Rhythm follows the same steps:
- The nominator's details are copied onto the nomination. Staff can search and list nominations by submitter without opening each nominator’s record.
- The candidate (nominee) is resolved. If the nominator picked an existing nominee from the award’s list, Rhythm uses that nominee. If they typed in a new person, Rhythm looks for an existing contact with the same email address and uses that contact when it finds one; otherwise, it creates a new contact. If they typed in a new organization, Rhythm always creates a new organization. It does not match organizations by name, even when the organization already exists under another nomination.
- The nominee record is found or created. If this is the first nomination for this candidate and award, Rhythm creates the nominee record. If a nominee record already exists for this candidate and award, Rhythm reuses it and adds any categories from the new nomination that the nominee did not already have.
- An application may be created automatically. If the nomination process is set up to create applications, and this is the candidate’s first nomination for the award, Rhythm also creates an application for the new nominee.
- The nomination is saved, with an identifier that ties it to the award. If you record a nomination by hand and leave out the award details or today’s date, Rhythm fills them in for you.
- Emails go out, based on the nomination process’s settings. See How Referee Invitations Are Sent for the related process that follows once an application exists.
Tip
Nominators can manually create a nominee instead of, or before, submitting a nomination. If you type in a nominee’s email address and it matches an existing contact, the nomination links to that person’s existing profile automatically instead of creating a duplicate.
Why the Same Person Only Gets One Nominee Record
Rhythm builds a nominee’s identifier from the award and the candidate, so its record rules prevent two nominee records for the same candidate and award. When someone is already a nominee for an award, a second nomination adds to the existing nominee record instead of creating another one.
This rule applies to the candidate’s identity, not to the nomination itself. If someone submits the exact same nomination twice on purpose, such as by pressing submit twice, Rhythm records two separate nominations. Both nominations still update the same nominee instead of creating a duplicate nominee.
What Happens If a Submission Fails Partway Through
Submitting a nomination includes several separate steps: copying details, resolving the candidate, creating or updating the nominee, possibly creating an application, saving the nomination, and sending emails. If one of the later steps fails, Rhythm does not undo the earlier steps. For example, if Rhythm creates a brand-new contact for the nominee and a later step fails, that contact record still exists even though the nomination was not saved. A failed submission does not always leave your account exactly as it was before the attempt, so the nominator or staff member may need to try again. You may also find a contact or nominee record that does not have a completed nomination yet.
A submission that fails with a server-side (500-style) error after the form was fully completed points to a system-side problem rather than something the person filling out the form did wrong, even when it does not happen every time. In that case, the record of the attempt itself may show little or no visible detail about what went wrong.
If the failure seems tied to a file upload, help narrow down the cause by retrying with the same document the person was using, then with a different one. An error that only happens with the original file points to something about that specific file. An error that happens with other files too points to a broader problem with the upload step itself. When you report this kind of issue, include the file name or a link to it, roughly when the upload was attempted, and the steps taken right before the error appeared.
Related Reading
Whether someone can submit a nomination for a given award and process depends on the rules in Which Nomination Processes You Can Use. Once an application exists for a nominee, Rhythm uses the same kind of find-or-create logic for referees; see How Referee Invitations Are Sent. The contact and organization records that nominees and nominators connect to are CRM records; see Create or Edit a Contact and Change a Contact's Status or Delete a Contact for how those records work after they exist.