Not every member who opens an award’s page sees an option to nominate someone. Rhythm checks a short set of rules each time it decides whether to offer that option. This article explains those rules, so you can understand why a nomination process does not appear for a member when you expected it to.
What Decides Whether a Process Is Offered
When Rhythm checks which nomination processes a person can use for an award right now, it reviews each process and leaves out any process that fails one of these checks:
- The process must be active. Rhythm never offers an inactive process, regardless of its dates or criteria.
- Today must fall inside the process's opening and closing dates. If a process has no opening date, Rhythm treats it as already open.
- The person must meet the process's eligibility criteria, if any are switched on. This check looks only at the person doing the nominating, not at the person they plan to nominate. If a process has no eligibility criteria turned on, it passes this check.
Rhythm offers a process only when it passes all three checks. If a process fails any check, Rhythm leaves it out without showing the member an explanation.
Where This Shows Up
You see this most often on an award’s Portal page, where the Submit Nomination option appears only when the award has nominations turned on and at least one nomination process is currently available to the signed-in member. If nominations are switched off for the award, the option and the related “My Nominations” section do not appear at all, regardless of the process settings.
Tip
If a member cannot find a way to nominate someone for an award, first check that nominations are turned on for the award. Then check whether any process is active and within its open dates, and finally check whether the member meets that process’s eligibility criteria.
This Check Only Decides What Is Offered
These rules decide what a nominator sees when they visit the award’s page. Rhythm does not run the same checks again when a nomination is submitted. That means Rhythm still accepts a nomination if it reaches Rhythm directly through a process that is inactive, outside its open dates, or unavailable to the nominator because of eligibility criteria.
In practice, this matters most when staff use imports, integrations, or another route that submits nominations without using the award’s page. Those routes are not limited by a process’s activity status, dates, or eligibility criteria in the same way as the option a member sees on the award’s page.
Related Reading
After Rhythm accepts a nomination, see How a Nomination Becomes a Nominee Record to learn what happens next, including how Rhythm finds or creates the nominee. Application processes use a very similar eligibility check; see How Application Eligibility Is Decided. Rhythm copies the nominator’s contact details onto every nomination they submit, and you manage those details as a standard CRM contact; see Create or Edit a Contact.