Priority points measure how much an organization has supported your association over time through membership, sponsorship, or exhibiting at earlier events. Events uses these points to decide which organizations can buy exhibit booths first when a show limits early booth purchases to established supporters.
Priority Point Types
Each kind of point your account tracks is a priority point type. For example, you might have one type for years of membership and another for past sponsorship. Staff set up and manage these types from Priority Point Types under Setup › Exhibitors.
A point type can include a rule that awards points automatically when an organization’s history matches that rule. It can also be a type that staff only assign by hand.
Automatic Points Versus Manual Points
An organization’s points for a type come from one of two places:
- Automatic points, which Rhythm calculates when a point type’s accumulation rule matches the organization’s history.
- Manual points, which staff assign directly with a point type, date, number of points, and reason.
You can edit only manual points directly. When an accumulation rule creates a point, you can delete that point, but you cannot edit its quantity or date. The rule blocks direct edits so the automatic point stays tied to the calculation, but it does not block deletion.
Tip
If you need to change a number that came from an accumulation rule, do not edit the point in place. Either adjust the rule so the next recalculation produces the right number, or delete the automatic point and add a manual point with the number and reason you need.
Keeping Automatic Points Current
When Rhythm recalculates an organization’s automatic points, it deletes the old point and writes a new one. That is why an automatic point’s date can show as today, even when the history behind it is older. If your account has more than one priority point type with its own accumulation rule, a recalculation refreshes every automatic type together, not only the type whose rule changed.
Recalculation usually happens on its own when a point type’s rule changes. If you need every organization’s automatic points to catch up, such as after adjusting how a rule works, an events administrator can start a full recalculation from Maintenance under Setup. Use the Recalculate Now button under Recalculate Priority Point Assignments. This runs in the background and can take up to ten minutes across your whole account, so give it time before you check whether the numbers changed.
Where to See an Organization's Points
Staff can see all of an organization’s priority points, across every type, from the Priority Points tab on that organization’s exhibitor record for the event. Go to Exhibitors › (exhibitor name) › Priority Points. Staff can assign a new manual point from the same tab by using Assign Priority Points, which asks for the point type, date, number of points, and reason. If an organization has a long point history, the list can run to more than one page.
Exhibitors can see their own organization’s summary from the Exhibitor Service Center in the Portal, so they do not need to ask staff to check their standing.
Example
An association awards one priority point type automatically for every consecutive year an organization has exhibited. It also has a second type for named sponsorship contributions that staff assign manually and, in this account, that sponsorship type also has an accumulation element.
After a change to the automatic exhibiting-history rule, an events administrator runs Recalculate Now from Maintenance to bring every organization’s exhibiting-history points in line with the new rule. Because the sponsorship type also has an accumulation element, its automatic points refresh in the same pass. The sponsorship points that staff added by hand are left untouched.
Later, a staff member notices an exhibiting-history point looks wrong for one organization. Instead of trying to edit it, they delete the automatic point and add a manual point with a note explaining the correction.