When a member opens Rhythm's Online Forms area, they see only the forms Rhythm offers to them. Two colleagues on the same page can see different lists, and someone who could submit last month might see nothing today. This article explains the checks Rhythm runs, in the order that matters, so you can predict what a member will see and troubleshoot when the list looks wrong.
Rhythm runs the same checks for each submission process in a space before offering it to a person or organization. When one check fails, Rhythm leaves that process off the list and does not show the member an explanation.
The Owner Type Has to Match
Every space collects submissions from either individuals or organizations. When a space has Portal-form options configured, Rhythm offers its forms only to the owner type the space expects. If the space has no Portal-form options, Rhythm skips this check and offers the forms to everyone. You manage this setup where you configure submission processes: Spaces › (space) › Setup › Submissions › Processes.
The Submission Window Has to Be Open
Rhythm offers a space’s forms only during that space’s submission window. Before the start date, or after the end date, Rhythm offers nothing for that space. This rule applies to staff and members.
Warning
Set the end date to the day after the last day you want members to submit. Rhythm treats the end date itself as already outside the window, so a form can stop being offered a full day earlier than you expect. If members should be able to submit through the end of a specific day, set the end date to the following day.
Eligibility Has to Pass, When It Is Turned On
If a space has its eligibility switch turned on, Rhythm checks the owner against the space’s eligibility criteria before offering any forms from that space. If the switch is off, Rhythm does not use any eligibility criteria.
For an organization-owned space, Rhythm checks the organization. For a contact-owned space, Rhythm checks the contact. The Online Forms listing page runs a separate eligibility check that always checks the contact, even for an organization-owned space. Because those checks look at different records, they can disagree about whether an organization’s form should appear, depending on which page the member is viewing.
A lapsed or otherwise limited-benefit member is still treated as a member for this check, not as a non-member. Rhythm does not treat a lapsed status the same as never having been a member. If you need a process open to true non-members as well as members, and you do not want a lapsed member to trigger the member path by mistake, set up a separate process for the non-member audience instead of relying on membership-status changes alone.
A Role Restriction Can Narrow It Further
An organization-owned space can require the member to hold one of a specific set of roles in the organization before Rhythm offers its forms. This rule applies only to organization-owned spaces with the role restriction turned on, and only when Rhythm can identify which contact is acting for the organization. A contact-owned space never uses a role restriction, no matter how its settings are configured.
The Submission Limit Has to Be Unreached
A space can limit how many times a person or organization may submit. Once that owner reaches the limit, Rhythm stops offering any of the space’s forms to them.
- Withdrawn submissions never count toward the limit. If a member withdrew a submission, it does not use up their allowance.
- A lifetime limit counts every submission ever made, unless the space’s limit is configured with a rolling period. When a period is set, only submissions made within that period count. Anything older has aged out and no longer counts against the limit.
For example, a space can allow one submission per organization within a rolling 365-day period. After an organization submits, Rhythm stops offering that space’s forms to the organization until the earliest counted submission passes the 365-day mark. At that point, the organization can submit again. If someone still reaches the submit step before the form disappears from the list, such as from a saved link, the final check at submit time tells them they have already applied instead of accepting a second submission.
For an abstract submission process specifically, the maximum can also be set per main author instead of only per contact or organization. This lets you cap how many abstracts one main presenter submits, even when co-authors are also involved.
Tip
The limit check Rhythm runs when it offers the form is advisory. The count that actually refuses an over-limit submission runs again when someone tries to submit. If your limit and window settings are not preventing extra submissions the way you expect, review the limit’s period setting and the submission window together. Either one working differently than intended can let another submission through.
What You Cannot Do Today
A single submission process can offer more than one submission type. Today, you cannot hide specific submission types from just one process. If several submission types are available through a process, a member using that process sees all of them as options, and you cannot narrow the list to a subset for that process.
Rhythm’s data model also has a place for eligibility criteria on an individual submission process, separate from the space’s own eligibility criteria. The Console does not currently offer a way to set these process-level criteria, so you cannot narrow a single process’s availability beyond the space-level rules described above.
If you want to discourage new submissions while keeping the space available for people who already have access to what they submitted, you do not have to close the whole space. Update the attached submission form's own text to tell people the space is closed, or swap in a simple replacement form that tells visitors to exit without submitting. Updating the space's description can reinforce the same message.
Putting It Together
For a given member and process, Rhythm checks whether the owner type matches, whether today is inside the submission window, whether the owner passes eligibility when eligibility is turned on, whether the member holds an allowed role for a role-restricted organization space, and whether the owner has already reached the submission limit. Rhythm offers the process only when every applicable check passes. There is no partial offer and no message explaining why a process did not appear.
Related
Anything shared with the rest of Rhythm, such as how a space’s custom fields are built, is documented once under Platform. See Custom Fields Explained for the shared mechanics a space’s own criteria can use.