Making a submission means you complete and send in a space’s online form, such as a conference abstract, an award application, or a committee nomination. Each submission has a type, and the type determines which process and form you use.
Prerequisites
- You must be signed in to the Portal with a linked contact. If you do not have a linked contact, the page cannot start, and you cannot open a submission process without signing in first.
- The space must offer at least one submission type you are eligible to use. If you are submitting on behalf of your organization in an organization space, your organization must also be eligible for that type’s process.
Start a Submission
- Go to Browse Online Forms under the ONLINE-FORMS menu, then open the card for the space you want.
- Choose Submit followed by the space’s own name for one submission, such as Submit Abstract.
- Under Please select a submission type:, choose the type of submission you are making, then continue.
- If the process asks you to confirm your contact details or your organization’s details, confirm them on the steps that follow.
- Fill in the submission form and submit it.
Result
Rhythm creates the submission and opens it for you. If the type’s process sends confirmation emails, has a confirmation template, and your contact record has an email address, you receive the email. The email goes to you as the submitting contact, even when the submission belongs to your organization.
Rhythm shows a submission type only when both the type and its process are available to you. In an organization space, the process must also be available to your organization. A type with no process is never offered. If you submit in an organization space and the Portal has no organization linked to your account, Rhythm uses your own organization reference to determine eligibility and ownership. Even when your eligibility looks correct, an organization-owned space can still show no available process if the Portal is not linking your account to that organization. If that happens, check the organization link on your account before assuming the process is misconfigured.
Every submission must have a type, no matter which process it uses. Rhythm refuses a submission with no type before anything is saved. The submission always uses the process from the type you chose, not anything else on the request. Unlike some other Rhythm applications, this flow does not have a link that opens a specific process or type directly. You always choose the type from the list after opening the space, and the form you see reflects the form currently assigned to that type’s process.
After you pick a type, the form’s Type field is filled in automatically from that choice, so you should not edit it on the form. The built-in abstract Body field is plain text only, with no option to make it an HTML editor. When you start a new submission, its Name field, which is the submission title, should start blank so you can enter your own. Older versions of some forms filled it in with your contact name instead. A form can also make a field required through a custom rule that the space’s administrator configured, such as an abstract’s session track, even if that field is not required by default elsewhere.
If your submission form includes an agreement, only the person who completes and submits the form sees and accepts it. A co-presenter you add to the submission is not separately asked to review or accept that agreement.
Save a Draft and Come Back Later
While you fill in the form, you can save your answers as a draft and finish later. Rhythm keeps the draft for you as the signed-in contact, tied to the submission type you chose. The next time you open that same type’s form, Rhythm offers the draft back to you.
As you enter your answers, you usually move forward with Next. A Save button on the form’s final review page usually completes and submits your entry instead of saving an in-progress draft, so use the separate save-a-draft option if you want to stop before finishing.
If staff view your draft abstract from the Console, it may look grayed out there. That is expected and does not mean anything is wrong. Resume the draft from the Portal, not from the Console.
Warning
Rhythm deletes your draft as soon as you press submit, before it knows whether the submission was accepted. If Rhythm then refuses the submission, for example because the window has closed or you have reached your limit, your answers stay on the screen for that visit, but the saved draft is already gone. Copy your answers somewhere safe if you are not sure the submission will go through.
Warning
Save Draft and Return Later is not guaranteed to work perfectly for every form. Some forms have not reliably restored in-progress answers when reopened, and the final action button can sometimes read Save Changes instead of Submit. Another problem has caused a resumed draft to lose most of its entered built-in field values, along with any custom field values, while keeping only the name or other system-filled values. In at least one case, resuming a draft also dropped a required picklist value and left a dependent field with no options, even though the parent value had been chosen. Support has addressed cases like these as they are found, but if you are not confident a resumed draft still has everything you entered, check it carefully, or copy your answers back in from scratch, before you submit.
If you believe a draft was deleted outright, consider whether a failed file upload during save, resume, or submit is the real cause. An upload error can look like a missing draft even when nothing was deleted or purged.
If Something Goes Wrong
The submission type list is based on eligibility, but Rhythm does not refuse an ineligible submission until you submit it. That means you might open a form and fill it in for a space or type you are not eligible for, then find out only when you try to send it.
| What you see | What it means and what to do |
|---|---|
| The form shows Unable to process submission | Rhythm refused your submission. Common reasons include reaching your submission limit for this type, submitting outside the space’s open window, or submitting for a type or process you are not eligible for. Nothing was saved. This should happen consistently if you try again, including after a refresh or when someone is helping you through an impersonated session. Check the space’s rules, or contact whoever manages the space. |
| No submission type is offered | You may not be eligible for any type in this space right now, or the space may be outside its window. Rhythm does not explain the reason on this page. |
| No confirmation email arrives | Your contact record may have no email address, or the type’s process may not send confirmation emails. Check your submission from your own submissions list instead. |
| The submission screen is blank right after you sign in for the first time | Your linked contact record may have no email address on file. Add one, or ask whoever manages your account to add one. |
| Selecting the submission button does nothing — no redirect, no error message | This can depend on how you signed in. Users who sign in with a social account such as Google or LinkedIn have run into this more than users who sign in with email and password. Ask whoever manages the space to check this if it happens consistently for you. |
| A built-in Session Track field will not let you select a track | This field can misbehave in the abstract field group. Ask whoever manages the space whether the form uses the separate Abstract Session Track component instead, which works reliably. |
| Selecting Submit Abstract does nothing, or the abstract center stays inaccessible, even though the event appears in the Portal | Setup beyond making the event visible may still be missing. Confirm with whoever manages the space that a submission type and process are fully configured and available to you, not just that the space itself is visible. |
| You can create or process submissions in the Console, but the Portal submission page fails to load | This points to a Portal-specific issue rather than a problem with the submission process itself. Ask whoever manages the space to check the Portal page and its feature installation, since the Console path does not depend on them. |
| After a successful abstract submission, you land on an unrelated page, such as a schedule page, instead of back at the abstract center | The success-page route for the abstract process may have been overridden with an invalid path, so the site’s own fallback page is shown instead. Ask whoever manages the space to check the abstract process element’s success-route setting. |
| Submission fails even though the form looks completely filled in | The submission form itself may be missing the required built-in Name field. Ask whoever manages the space to confirm the form includes it; adding it has restored submission in similar cases. |
If you already accepted an invitation tied to a submission, some accounts now move on automatically at the end instead of waiting for you to select Continue. If Continue does not seem to do anything, you can still navigate away and find your submission again from Abstract Center › My Abstracts.
Related
See "Related" in the sidebar for how to review and correct a submission you already made, and for how the Portal’s saved-form drafts work more generally.