Most memberships in Rhythm start as applications. Use this article to start an application for a member in the Console, find and review an existing application, activate an approved membership, or correct or delete an application.
When to Use This
Use this when a member calls for help joining or renewing, or when you need to review, correct, or activate an application. If you need to set up application processes and forms instead of handling individual applications, use your Rhythm account’s application process configuration. If you manage several related applications under one group order, see Search, Start, and Manage Application Groups.
Prerequisites
- Permission to process applications, so you can start or complete one for a member.
- Permission to edit applications, so you can change an existing application.
- Permission to delete applications, so you can remove an application. Without this permission, the delete controls still appear, but Rhythm will refuse the deletion.
- The contact or organization the application is for, if you already know who it belongs to.
Start an Application on Someone's Behalf
- Go to Membership & Committees › Applications.
- Select Create New Application.
- Choose the contact or organization the application is for. If the record does not exist yet, you can add it now.
- Rhythm shows the application paths this record is eligible for right now, such as join, renew, reinstate, or change affiliation, based on their current membership. Choose the path, then complete the process form. For an organization, Rhythm checks whether the organization already exists: a brand-new organization is offered the new-application path, while an existing organization is offered the renewal path instead.
- Complete checkout for the resulting order.
Result
Rhythm creates the application and its order under the path you chose, using the forms and pricing defined by your Rhythm account’s process.
Tip
You can also start an eligible application from the contact’s or organization’s own page. Open their record, then choose one of the eligible paths there. Rhythm offers the same paths described in How Rhythm Decides Which Application Paths You Can Start.
Warning
When staff check out for a member this way, they cannot enter coupon codes during checkout.
Warning
If the record already has a membership application and order under review, Rhythm may not offer other application processes. You may also see "There are no application processes available to you at this time," with renewal unavailable the same way. Cancel the existing application's order from the application page to make the eligible processes appear again.
Tip
Starting the application here on a member's behalf is also the right interim step when a legitimate user's own self-service join is blocked by a security control and you do not want to relax that control more broadly.
Tip
If uploading a document during the application stalls or fails, save it in a different file format, such as converting a PDF to a PNG. You can also store the file externally and paste in a link instead of uploading it directly.
Find and Review an Application
- Go to Membership & Committees › Applications.
- Use the search fields to narrow the list by owner type, name, membership type, package, status, status reason, date, or identifier. To see everything, search with every field blank.
- Select an application’s name in the results to open it.
Result
The application page shows the owner, order, balance due, process, chapters, sections, and add-ons. For an organization-owned application, it also shows the contacts assigned to the application.
Tip
You can also review application history from the contact’s or organization’s own record. Open the record to see every application it owns, with the most recent first. If a renewal or expiration looks wrong, compare the application dates and their linked orders there. An application generated by autorenewal appears alongside the one you expect, and the dates and orders tell you which is which.
Warning
Two search filters have important limits. Choosing Organizations under Owner Type can return no results even when organization-owned applications exist, so leave Owner Type blank when you want to include them. The status list here also does not include every status an application can have, so an application with a status not shown in the list may not appear when you filter by status. If a status filter comes up empty, search by name or date instead.
Warning
A membership application a member saves as a draft in the Portal does not create a Console application record. It will not appear in your search results or as a "Not Yet Submitted" application until the member submits it.
Activate a Membership from an Application Under Review
An application with the under review status needs a deliberate action before it becomes an active membership.
- Open the application from the search results.
- Select Activate Membership.
- Confirm the warning that this will update membership dates and close out the application, since it cannot be undone.
Result
Rhythm updates the membership dates from the application and closes out the application.
Tip
If an application still shows Under Review after you activate its membership, open it, add a short note, and save it again. Resaving the record this way can clear a stale display.
Warning
Changing an application’s Status: field to Approved on the edit form does not activate the membership. It only changes the application record, so the membership itself is not created or updated. To update the membership, use Activate Membership on the application page instead of changing the status on the edit form. The edit form warns you about this when you choose Approved there. To find applicants who are approved but not yet eligible for activation, look for approved applications that still have an open membership invoice; they are waiting on payment.
Warning
If no emails appear to have been sent for an application, check whether email sending was deselected when the application was completed. That is one reason an expected activation email never goes out.
Correct an Application
- Open the application, then select Edit Application. You can also open the options menu and select Edit this Application.
- Update the fields that need correction, such as the applicant, date, membership type and package, status and status reason, chapters, sections, add-ons, process, referrer, or notes. If a required renewal question is blocking the member from finishing on their own, staff with edit access can update that answer here on the member's behalf once the blocking condition is resolved.
- Select Save Changes.
Result
Rhythm saves your changes and returns you to the application page, or to the application group page if the application belongs to a group.
Tip
Changing the applicant here updates who the application belongs to, but it does not change the order behind it.
Tip
To correct many application names at once — for example, ones that show a placeholder value instead of the applicant's name — query the affected applications, export only the Application ID and the correct name, and upload that through Mass Updates for Membership applications. Match rows on Application ID and map the uploaded value to the Name field. The uploaded replacement name has to contain a value; Rhythm will not apply a blank one.
A small number of older applications can still display "TBD" in place of the applicant's name after that display issue was fixed going forward. Refreshing the page does not correct an existing record; open the affected application, edit it, and enter the applicant's name by hand.
Delete an Application
- Open the application.
- Select Delete Application. You can also open the options menu and select Delete this Application.
- Confirm the warning that this cannot be undone.
Result
Rhythm deletes the application. This does not change the application’s order, so deleting an application does not undo an order payment or an activated membership.
Warning
Rhythm refuses to delete a contact, organization, process, order, package, type, chapter, section, status reason, or application group that an application still points to. If you need to remove one of those records, remove or reassign the applications that name it first.
Duplicate Applications
Processing an order should create one application. If you see more than one application tied to the same order, clean it up rather than treating it as expected behavior. Duplicate renewal applications can occasionally be created for the same order.
To clean up a duplicate application tied to an order you want to keep on a different application, decide which application to keep. Then edit the duplicate to clear its Order ID, or clear it in bulk with a mass update for a larger cleanup. Once the application is no longer linked to that order, you can delete it as described above.
Warning
A delete can also fail because of dependent records or record locks unrelated to those relationships, such as a lock service entry or a linked membership record. For a canceled group application, a membership record still linked to it is a common cause; delete the linked membership first, then delete the application.
What Can Stop a Save
An application’s Name:, Type:, applicant, Date:, Status:, and Process: are required, even when the edit form does not mark them as required. If Rhythm refuses the save, it shows a generic error. Before saving again, make sure each of those fields has a value and every add-on row has a quantity.
Related Reading
To understand why a particular application path was or was not offered, see How Rhythm Decides Which Application Paths You Can Start. To search for or add the contact an application is for, see Search for and Pick a Contact.