Applications do not always come in through the Portal. In the Console, you can find an existing application, apply for an award on a member’s behalf, enter an application by hand, and review everything connected to one application in one place.
When to Use This
Use this task when you need to search an award’s applications, apply for someone who cannot or will not apply themselves, enter an application by hand, review an application and its related information, or delete an application that should not exist. To record a decision on an application you have already found, see Record a Decision on an Application instead.
Prerequisites
- Permission to view Awards applications for the award, plus permission for the specific action you are taking, such as applying on a member’s behalf, creating an application by hand, editing, or deleting.
- The award you want to work with must have applications turned on. If applications are not turned on, the Applications item does not appear in the award’s menu.
Find an Award's Applications
- Go to Awards ›
<award name>› Applications. - Use the search panel to find applications by the applicant’s name, city, state, country, job title, email address, application date, or application identifier.
- Select Date or Submitter on any result to open that application’s page.
Result
The search results show every matching application for this award. Each result links to the application and, when there is a matching nominee, to that nominee.
Tip
The four figures at the top of the page — Applications, Approved Applications, Declined Applications, and Withdrawn Applications — count only this award’s applications. Select a figure to open the query tool with a ready-made query for those records.
Build a More Specific Query
The applications query shows the application name by default. To search or sort by another value, add a custom field, such as an Author Name field, to the query in the designer.
You cannot query two things directly: applications still saved as drafts, and reviewer assignments as their own condition. Rhythm has no way to query award applications or nominations that are still in draft status, so the save-a-draft feature does not give administrators a list of people who started but did not finish. If you need to find applications that still need a reviewer, build a query that filters to applications with no reviewer.
Warning
Adding the Application Process field as an output field to an Awards application query can cause the query to fail or freeze, even in an otherwise minimal query. If you need to group or filter by process for reporting, try using the application’s review bucket name or ID instead. This works once applications have been sorted into buckets that reflect the process or category grouping you need.
Awards applications do not have a certifications-style indicator for missing requirements. To find applications missing a required upload, build a query or saved query that includes the relevant custom upload fields. A populated field means the attachment is present, and a blank field means it is missing.
Apply for an Award on a Member's Behalf
Use this when a member cannot or will not apply themselves, such as during a phone call, from a paper form, or when you need to record something that went wrong during their own attempt.
- Go to Awards ›
<award name>› Applications and select Process an Application. - Choose the applicant: a contact or an organization, using the same picker you use elsewhere in the Console.
- Select Begin Application.
- Complete the same steps a member would see: choosing a process, confirming contact and organization details, filling in the application form, and paying any fee.
Result
For a free application, Rhythm saves the application immediately and takes you to its page. For a paid application, Rhythm creates the application once the order is fulfilled. If the application is not available when you finish checkout, you see a message that it is still being recorded, and you can try again shortly after.
Tip
If a paid application still does not appear after you try again, check the related order’s audit log entry for its creation, using the log’s JSON view. The applicant’s entered answers are often still stored there even when the application record itself was never created, so you can recover the values and recreate the application by hand. Uploaded files can only be recovered this way if they reached storage. If a file never finished uploading, it cannot be restored. Recreating the application from these values sends the applicant the standard submission confirmation email again, and the recreated application will not keep a link back to the original order. If you need that financial link intact, cancel the original order instead and have the applicant resubmit.
This flow handles the applicant’s referees the same way a Portal submission does. Referees named on the form are invited to submit a reference once the application exists. See How Referee Invitations Are Sent for what happens to them.
Create or Edit an Application by Hand
Use this to record an application directly without running the application flow, or to change details on an existing application. You also use this same form to record a decision; see Record a Decision on an Application.
- Go to Awards ›
<award name>› Applications and select Manually Create an Application, or open an existing application’s page and select Edit. - Choose the applicant, which can be a contact or an organization.
- Set the application’s date, status, and, optionally, a status reason.
- Optionally link the application to a process, a fee, one or more recipient categories, and a nominee.
- Add any internal notes and complete your account’s custom fields for applications, if any.
- Select Save Changes.
Result
The application is created or updated, and you are taken to its page.
Warning
Creating or editing an application by hand does not run the application flow. Rhythm does not invite referees, send a confirmation email, charge a fee, or apply eligibility rules. The record is saved with whatever you enter. If you need referees invited, add them from the application’s page after saving instead.
Warning
The built-in Organization field on an application is tied to the applicant’s organization identifier, not to free text. Changing its displayed value to an organization name instead of leaving it as Rhythm set it can cause the save to fail with a server error. Leave this field as Rhythm populates it, and collect any organization change through your process’s contact or organization form instead.
Awards does not support merging two award records, and you cannot reassign an existing application from one award to another because the award identifier on an application cannot be changed. If applications ended up in the wrong award, such as a duplicate, the practical workaround is to recreate the smaller set of applications by hand in the correct award, using the details from the originals. Then follow up manually with anything the recreated application does not carry over, such as its link to the original payment.
There is no automatic way to move an application from one review round to the next. Administrators move an application to its next review round, and update its status, manually from the application’s page in the Console. Reviewers cannot do this themselves.
Replace a Reviewer on an Application
To change who reviews a specific application, add the new reviewer to the application first, then remove the old one. Add the new reviewer from the application’s Reviews tab, confirm they are assigned, and only then delete the previous reviewer. Removing a reviewer does not automatically transfer their existing assignment to anyone else, so adding the replacement first avoids leaving the application with no reviewer in between.
Open an Application's Page
An application’s page brings together everything connected to it: the applicant’s contact summary, the matching nominee, the application’s date, status, status reason, and the order that paid for it, if any. Rhythm finds the matching nominee from the award and the applicant, so it is not necessarily the nominee named on the application record itself.
- From a search result, select Date or Submitter, or open the application from a recently viewed list.
- Review the tabs: Details, Awards, Nominations, References (only when the process asks for references), Reviews (only once the application has been sent for review), and Custom Fields.
Tip
You can download an application’s uploaded files as PDFs directly from its 360 page. This is a quick alternative to exporting applications when you only need to share or archive one applicant’s attachments.
If a file download from an application’s page opens the wrong document, check the application form before assuming the file itself is damaged. Compare the form’s setup for reused fields, where the same underlying field was added to more than one page or question, and review the field’s audit history for a label or configuration change. A relabeled or reused field is a more common explanation than a corrupted upload. Separately, if a download fails outright instead of opening the wrong file, an inconsistently trimmed file name on the stored attachment has been reported as one cause of a mismatch between the requested file and what is actually stored. This has not been fully confirmed, so treat it as one possibility to investigate rather than the definite cause.
Add or Remove a Referee
- On the application’s page, open the References tab.
- Select Add a Reference, choose a reference type from those the process requires, and fill in the referee’s contact details.
- Select Add Reference.
Result
The referee is added to the application and invited to submit a reference.
Warning
Removing a referee can fail when the application would be left with no referees. When an application has a reference list, Rhythm requires that list to contain at least one entry. If you remove the last referee, expect the removal to fail even though the reference record itself is gone. Add a replacement referee, or use a different application record if you genuinely need zero referees.
Delete an Application
- Open the application’s page.
- Select Delete, then confirm.
Result
The application and its references are permanently removed. There is no way to undo this.
Warning
Rhythm does not stop you from deleting an application that has been paid, decided, or already turned into a recipient. Before deleting, check whether the application has an order, a decision, or a related recipient record you still need.
You cannot delete an application while something else still points to it, such as a review. If Rhythm refuses the delete, check for related records first.
What Stops an Application from Being Deleted
You cannot delete a contact, organization, nominee, recipient category, fee, application process, status reason, or award type while an application still names it. If you need to delete one of those records, find and reassign or remove the applications pointing to it first. Deleting the award itself works differently: it removes its applications along with it.
Related Reading
To decide an application you have already found, see Record a Decision on an Application. To understand what determines whether a member is offered a way to apply, see How Application Eligibility Is Decided. To find the applicant’s contact or organization record when applying on their behalf, see Search for and Pick a Contact.