A mirrored submission is a submission that Submissions copies from another Rhythm application, such as a membership application, certification application, or accreditation report. It is not a submission a member completes directly on a Portal form. Because the original record still exists in its own application, Rhythm keeps that record’s review status aligned as reviewers score the mirrored submission, move it between buckets and rounds, and record its outcome.
This matters to staff who work in the source application, not only in Submissions. For example, someone reviewing membership applications can see a record move from pending review to an outcome without opening the Submissions Console.
Why Rhythm Writes Outcomes Back
Submissions is where the review work happens. Criteria, scores, recommendations, buckets, and rounds all live on the submission and its reviews. Staff who act on an application, certification, or accreditation report often work from that record’s own application, so Rhythm writes the outcome back there too.
Only mirrored submissions work this way. When a member creates a submission directly through a Portal form, there is no other application record to update, so nothing else in Rhythm changes.
Because the original record still exists in its own application, you should usually make changes there instead of on the mirrored submission. If you open a mirrored submission expecting to edit or delete it like a standalone Portal-form submission, look for the certification, membership, or accreditation record it came from and make your change there.
What Gets Written Back
Rhythm writes several kinds of information from a mirrored submission back to the record it came from. Each update happens on its own, right after the matching change happens on the submission:
- Status. As soon as Rhythm mirrors a record into a space, the source record shows it as pending review. After that, its review status follows the submission.
- Scores and recommendation. Rhythm writes back only the submission’s overall score, total, and recommendation, which are the summary figures you see on the submission. Scores by round or by individual criterion stay in Submissions and are not copied to the source record.
- Placement. Rhythm writes back the space, bucket, and round where the submission currently sits, along with whether someone manually overrode its placement.
- Clearing on deletion. If someone deletes a mirrored submission outright, Rhythm removes the review status from the record it came from, so the source record no longer shows an outdated review outcome.
You do not need to run a separate sync step to trigger any of these updates.
When a Record Is Reviewed in More Than One Space
A membership application, certification application, or accreditation report can be mirrored into more than one space at the same time. For example, your association might run two separate review cycles that both draw from the same applications. In that case, the source record can hold only one status, one space, one bucket, and one round at a time. It shows the outcome from the space whose submission changed most recently. If you review the same record in two spaces, the source record tells you about the more recently updated review, which may not be the one you expected.
This overwriting rule applies to records mirrored from membership, certification, and accreditation sources. It does not come up for spaces built around abstracts or award applications, because each of those source records only ever mirrors into one space.
Review Status Is Not the Record's Own Status
A record’s own status, such as submitted, withdrawn, or declined, is separate from its review status. Review status reflects where the record stands in the review process. The record’s own status reflects the record itself, independent of review.
If you are building a report or comparing what you see on the Portal with what a query shows, make sure both places use the same field. A query or list based on a record’s own status is not the same as one based on its review status, so you should not expect the two values to move together.
Abstracts are especially easy to mix up. The status column in an abstract search or query result reflects the abstract's own status, such as submitted, withdrawn, or declined. In some places, that column has been labeled "Review Status" even though it behaves as submission status. If a value there does not match what you see on the abstract's Reviews tab, check whether you are looking at submission status instead of review status. Separately, the review-status options offered when updating a review in the Portal and the review-status options offered in an Abstracts query are not always guaranteed to be the same list. If a status you set in one place is not available to select in the other, treat that as a sign the two are out of sync, not as a value you created by doing something wrong.