Once a submission exists, Rhythm decides which bucket it belongs in and who should review it. For a new submission, both decisions happen right after the submission is created. Bucket placement runs only at creation, while reviewer selection runs again if the submission moves to a different bucket. This article explains how each decision works, so you can predict where a submission will land and why someone was, or was not, chosen to review it.
Getting a Bucket
When staff or a member creates a submission, Rhythm places it in a bucket and gives it the space's starting round during creation. Rhythm does this only once, so editing the submission later does not place it again.
If the space uses bucket assignment rules, Rhythm checks those rules in order and places the submission in the bucket named by the first rule that matches. When more than one rule matches, the earlier rule in the space's rule order wins. If Rhythm runs into an error while checking a rule, it logs the error, skips that rule, and tries the next one instead of stopping placement.
When no rule matches, or the space has no rules, Rhythm uses the space's default bucket.
Tip
A choice field that allows more than one selected value can behave differently in a bucket assignment rule than a single-select field. If a rule expects one value, submissions with several selected values on that field may not match the way you expect, even when one selected value matches. If routing looks wrong only for multi-select answers, check the rule's condition against a submission with more than one value selected.
There is no direct action that moves a submission to a round outside bucket assignment rules. To route a submission into a special path, such as a re-audit round, you route it into a bucket tied to that round through a rule. You cannot move a submission into a round by itself the way you can choose a bucket. To route submissions into a re-audit path, you need a team for that path, a bucket for it, and a rule that assigns matching submissions to that bucket.
Warning
Bucket assignment rules and round advancement are separate. A rule that moves a submission into a new bucket does not also advance it to a later review round. The bucket and the round are set independently, and a rule-driven bucket change never implies a round change on its own.
An abstract or submission can be in only one bucket at a time through these rules. A bucket assignment rule cannot place the same submission into two buckets at once. If you need more than one reviewer, or more than one group, to review the same submission, set that up with teams instead of trying to put one submission in multiple buckets.
A mirrored submission follows the same pattern during mirroring. If the mirrored submission does not already have a bucket and round from its source record, and the space has review settings, Rhythm places it in the space's default bucket and starting round. Rhythm only fills in missing placement. If the mirror already has a bucket and round, Rhythm leaves them alone.
Tip
Placement runs only when the submission is created, so changing a submission's answers later does not move it to a different bucket. If you change your bucket rules and want existing submissions sorted under the new rules, reprocess the space instead of waiting for it to happen automatically.
Getting Reviewers
After a submission has a bucket and round, Rhythm chooses reviewers once when that round has an assignment configured for the bucket. If the submission later moves to a different bucket, Rhythm chooses reviewers again for the new bucket. Moving to a different round within the same bucket does not trigger a new reviewer choice.
Rhythm does not move a submission to the next review round by itself when a round closes or when its score crosses a threshold. Staff advance a submission to a later round by moving it by hand or through a bulk update. Rhythm does not do that automatically today.
Each round's bucket assignment uses one of four strategies:
Assign the Whole Team
Every reviewing member of the assigned team is expected to review each submission in the bucket. Rhythm does not create individual assignment records for this strategy, so one team member cannot decline one submission through the usual decline option. There is no individual assignment to change. To excuse a specific person from a specific submission in a team-assigned bucket, you need to change the team itself or add an individual assignment.
Leave It for People to Staff Manually
The bucket's submissions stay unassigned so staff or team administrators can choose reviewers themselves. Rhythm does not remind anyone that a manually staffed bucket has unassigned submissions waiting, so check these buckets yourself instead of expecting a notice.
Assign the Least-Loaded Members by Round Robin
Rhythm assigns each submission a set number of reviewers from the team and tries to spread the work evenly:
- Load is counted only within the current round and bucket — not across the whole space. A reviewer who already has many reviews in one bucket can still be chosen for another.
- Only members with a reviewing role are considered. A team member who only administers is never chosen by round robin.
- The submission's own contact is never picked to review their own submission. This rule excludes only the submission's own contact. It does not exclude colleagues on the same team or other contacts that belong to the same owning organization.
- Reviews already done, and declines, both count toward the number of reviewers a submission needs. A decline does not start a new round of reviewer selection. Rhythm treats it as a plain change to an existing assignment.
- If several submissions arrive at once, up to five are processed together, and they can choose the same least-loaded people because each selection does not yet know about the others still in progress.
- Re-running round robin for a submission replaces its still-pending assignments in the current round and bucket, so you can have Rhythm choose again without removing the old picks by hand first. Assignments recorded under an earlier bucket are not changed.
If the assigned team has no eligible reviewing member, round-robin assignment fails for that submission.
Tip
A round's bucket assignment can also use a setting that spreads reviewers across a team more deliberately. This setting prefers people who have reviewed together the least, instead of choosing only by the lightest load. When load and this preference disagree, load wins. This preference does not apply to every kind of team. For a team built from an organization's or a committee's membership, this step is not available.
Call Your Own Custom Function
A round's bucket assignment can call a function built for your association's own rules instead. What happens next depends entirely on that function. If Rhythm cannot find the function, the call fails and is logged instead of assigning anyone.
Where You See and Adjust This on a Submission
The Reviews tab on a submission's 360 page shows the result of the strategy that ran. You can see who is expected to review the submission, who has reviewed it, each score, and who declined. In the Console, you can also add, change, or remove a submission's reviewers by hand from this tab. You cannot remove every row from here. You can remove a row backed by an actual assignment record, but you cannot remove a whole-team row with no assignment record behind it because there is nothing to remove.
Related
For how expected reviewers and their status are tracked once they are chosen, see How Expected Reviewers and Review Status Work. For how a submission mirrored from another application gets placement carried over from its source, see Mirrored Submissions Explained.