Use this article when a submission has no review bucket, or when it has a bucket but no reviewers and the reason is not clear. It covers automatic placement and reviewer assignment, which Rhythm runs when a submission is created or when you reprocess a space. It does not cover reviewers you assign by hand. If you are choosing reviewers yourself and something is not working, use a different article.
Automatic assignment does not always show a clear error. When it fails, Rhythm usually retries the same submission a few times, roughly fifteen minutes apart, before it gives up. If you just submitted something, or just fixed a setting that may have caused the issue, wait a little while and check again before you assume the submission is stuck. If you use a separate sync process to bring abstracts in from another application, check that process’s audit log to confirm whether bucket and round assignment already ran for the record. That helps you tell whether the submission is truly unplaced or whether you are seeing a visibility delay.
A placement rule routes a submission only when the submission matches that rule’s criteria. If the submission does not match any rule you defined, Rhythm sends it to the space’s catch-all target. Keep that in mind when you define target rules, because an incomplete set of rules does not leave a submission unplaced; it sends the submission to the catch-all.
1. The Space Has No Review Settings Yet
Why. If a space has no review settings, Rhythm has nothing to use for placement, so it does not put new submissions into a bucket or round or choose reviewers. This is not a failure. It affects every submission made while the space had no review settings, not just one submission.
Check. Confirm whether the space has any review settings configured.
Fix. Set up review settings for the space. Submissions made before you added the settings are not placed automatically just because review settings now exist. Reprocess the space afterward so those submissions are bucketed and, when the round calls for it, assigned reviewers.
Tip
If you are setting up a placement rule and a required selector, such as the bucket the rule should target, shows no dropdown and does not respond when you type, reset your browser zoom to 100%. A high zoom level can make that control look broken, which leaves the rule unsaved and the space without the review settings it needs.
2. No Team Member Was Eligible for Round Robin
Why. A bucket assigned by round robin chooses the least-loaded member of its team for each submission. If no one on that team is eligible, Rhythm has no one to choose, so assignment fails for that submission. This happens when the team has no members, every member has only an administrator role instead of a reviewing role, or the only possible reviewer is the person who submitted the submission. Rhythm retries automatically a few times and then holds the submission, unassigned, for staff to sort out. The Console does not show that this happened; the submission simply has a bucket and an empty Reviews tab.
Check. Open the bucket’s team and confirm it has at least one member who is not the submitter and has a reviewing role, not only an administrator role.
Fix. Add or restore an eligible member to the team. Then reprocess the space, or wait if the automatic retries are still running, so Rhythm can assign the submission.
3. Team Diversity Failed for an Organization or Committee Team
Why. A round’s team-diversity setting helps spread assignments across a team when several members are equally loaded and Rhythm has to break a tie. That tie-breaking step does not work when the team is built automatically from an organization or committee instead of a hand-picked list of people. When that happens, assignment fails, Rhythm retries the submission, and then it holds the submission with no reviewers, as described in cause 2. This only happens when Rhythm reaches the tie-breaking step, so a bucket with this setup can work for a while and then fail after enough members have the same load.
Check. Check whether team diversity is turned on for this bucket, and whether the team is built from an organization or committee instead of a fixed list of people.
Fix. Turn team diversity off for that bucket, or replace the dynamic team with a hand-picked list of reviewers. Then reprocess the space for any submissions that were affected.
4. A Custom Assignment Function Failed
Why. Some accounts have a bucket that chooses reviewers using custom logic built specifically for them, instead of one of Rhythm’s built-in strategies. If that function errors or takes too long, Rhythm records the failure and moves on as though assignment finished, with no retry and no notice to staff. The submission can look fully placed while having no reviewers at all.
Check. Confirm whether the bucket the submission landed in uses a custom-built function instead of round robin or a fixed team.
Fix. Reprocessing the space may not help. You cannot tell from the Console whether Rhythm already treated the submission as having had reviewers chosen for that bucket, even though the attempt failed. Contact Support so they can check what happened inside the function for this submission.
When to Contact Support
Contact Support when a submission still has no bucket after you have confirmed the space has review settings and reprocessed it. You should also contact Support when the submission’s bucket uses a custom-built assignment function, or when you have checked a round-robin or team-diversity bucket’s team and it looks eligible but the submission is still unassigned. Include:
- the space, submission name or number, and the bucket and round it is in, if it has one;
- when it was submitted;
- what you have already checked: the team’s members and roles, the team-diversity setting, and whether the space had review settings at the time;
- whether you have reprocessed the space since making a change, and when.