A long form, like a membership application or award nomination, can take more than one sitting. If the form shows Save & Return Later, you can save your answers as a draft and return without retyping them. This page explains how to save a draft, reopen it, and know which draft you will return to.
When You Can Save a Draft
You can save a draft only on a page that shows Save & Return Later. Your organization chooses which pages allow drafts, so some forms do not offer this option. If you do not see the button, complete the form in one sitting; see Fill In a Portal Form.
Prerequisites
- You are signed in to your organization's portal. The draft is saved for the person the form is about, which is usually you.
- Your answers do not need to be complete or valid. You can save a draft even when required questions are blank.
Save a Draft
- On any page that shows the option, choose Save & Return Later.
- Wait while the form shows Saving draft... just a moment....
- When the Draft Saved Successfully card appears with the message Your draft has been saved successfully. You may come back and continue where you left off at any time. (or your organization's own wording), choose Continue to return to the portal.
Result
Your answers are saved as a draft, so you can close the browser. If you save again while working from an earlier draft, the new save replaces the earlier one, so the draft always contains your latest saved answers.
If Unable to save draft appears, the form stays exactly as it was, and nothing on the screen is lost. Try saving again. If it keeps failing, you may have saved the draft from another tab, or someone acting for you may have saved it after you opened the form. Reload the page, choose Continue Working on Draft, and save again. If it still fails and you contact Support, open your browser's developer tools to the console tab, try the save again, and share what appears there; this helps Support diagnose an intermittent failure.
Continue a Draft
- Open the same form from your portal again.
- Before the form appears, the A Draft of this Form Has Been Found card tells you when you saved it, for example We found a previous draft of this form that you saved 3 days ago. If your organization wrote its own message, that message appears here instead.
- Choose one of the options:
- Continue Working on Draft puts your saved answers back into the form.
- Start Over, but Keep Draft, shown on some forms only, opens a blank form and keeps the draft saved.
- Delete Draft & Start Over asks Are you sure you want to delete your draft? Confirm to delete the draft and open a blank form.
Result
When you choose Continue Working on Draft, the form opens on its first page with your answers filled in, no matter which page you were on when you saved. Choose Next to move through the pages until you reach where you stopped. If your organization changed the form after you saved, the form still restores the answers in your draft and starts on the first page.
If Unable to build form or Unable to delete draft appears, reload the page and try again.
flowchart TD
A[You open the form] --> B{A draft exists?}
B -->|No| C[The form opens empty]
B -->|Yes| D["A Draft of this Form Has Been Found"]
D --> E["Continue Working on Draft: your answers, first page"]
D --> F["Start Over, but Keep Draft: empty form, draft kept"]
D --> G["Delete Draft and Start Over: draft deleted, empty form"]
E --> H["Submit: the draft is deleted"]
Why You Get One Draft at a Time
A draft is not tied to one visit. It belongs to these three things together:
- the person the form is about, normally you;
- the kind of record the form creates, such as a membership application;
- and, when the form is about something specific, that thing, such as one conference.
Rhythm keeps one draft for each combination. Saving again replaces the existing draft instead of creating another copy. You can have one draft registration for one event and another draft registration for a different event, but you cannot have two drafts for the same event. Because the draft belongs to the kind of record instead of one specific form, another form that creates the same kind of record for the same person and event finds the same draft.
This also explains a possible surprise. If you choose Start Over, but Keep Draft and then try Save & Return Later, the save can fail with Unable to save draft because the kept draft still uses that one draft spot. Reload the form, then either continue the old draft or delete it and start over.
How Long a Draft Lasts
- A draft does not expire. Rhythm keeps it until you submit or delete it.
- Submitting deletes it. When you submit the form, Rhythm deletes the draft at the same moment. If the portal then refuses your submission, your answers stay on screen, but the draft is gone; choose Save & Return Later again if you need to stop.
- Cancel keeps it. The Cancel confirmation says drafts will be erased, but Rhythm keeps a saved draft and offers it again next time.
- Leaving without saving keeps the old draft. Nothing warns you when you leave. Answers you typed since your last save can be lost; the draft still holds what you saved before.
Who Else Can Continue Your Draft
Someone you named as your delegate in the portal can act for you while the delegation is current. They can open your draft, continue it, save it, and delete it. When the delegation expires, they can no longer reach the draft.
Because you and a delegate can both save the same draft, the second save can be refused with Unable to save draft if the other person saved in between. Reload, continue the draft, and save again.
A Draft Is Not a Submission
Your organization receives your application, registration, or nomination only when you submit the form. Until then, no application, registration, or nomination record exists, so it does not appear with your other records or on the pages your organization's staff use to review them. This includes the Applications tab on your contact record: a draft does not appear there either. Staff also cannot look up your draft in a query; querying for draft applications is not currently possible, even though your organization can ask Rhythm to consider adding it. If you want your organization to see the form, submit it.
Deleting a draft removes it from the form. Your organization's audit history keeps a record of the draft's contents; see Audit History: What Is Recorded and How to View It.