Assign participants based on preference

If a schedule contains timeslots of the type ‘Participant indicates preference before start of event’, participants have to be assigned to activities after indicating their preference. After they have been definitively allocated, their assigned activities will also appear on their personal programs. You can learn how to make these settings in the article Automatic allocation. This article explains how allocation mechanism works.

Scoring mechanism

For timeslots of the type ‘Participant indicates preference before start of event’, participants and speakers can indicate their preferences. Participants indicate preference for activity that they want to take part in, and speakers indicate preference for participants that they want to take part in their activity. Subsequently, preferences of participants and speakers will be matched. Based on the matched preferences, the participants will be assigned.

Allocation score

Participants enter ‘1’ for their highest preference, ‘2’ for their second choice, etc. Speakers use the same points system to indicate preference for participants. They enter ‘1’ for the participant they most prefer, ‘2’ for their second choice, etc. The points that were entered by speakers and participants are then added up. If the participant entered ‘2’ and the speaker ‘3’, the participant has 5 points for this particular activity. The participant with the lowest score will be assigned to the activity first, then the participant with the second lowest score, etc.

Example

Suppose the following scenario: there are three activities for which preferences have to be indicated. Speakers of these activities are speaker A, speaker B and speaker C. Participant X indicates the following preference:

Speaker A: 1
Speaker B: 2
Speaker C: 3

All three speakers give Participant X 1 point. The matched score then is as follows:

Speaker A: 1+1 =2
Speaker B: 2+1 =3
Speaker C: 3+1 =4

The low scores of 2, 3 and 4 give Participant X a maximum chance to be assigned to all three workshops. This means that other participants whom speakers prefer less (and thus have higher scores) have less chance to be assigned to the activities.

Additional parameters

Depending on the type of event you are organizing, you might want to influence adjust the scoring mechanism. With the procedure described above certain participants might miss out on all activities because their scores are too high, and certain participants might always be assigned to their preferred activities because speakers always prefer them. Also, you might want to honor speaker preferences more than participant preferences.

Adjusting the allocation score

There are three parameters that can adjust the allocation score

1. Speaker preference priority. It may be desirable that preferences of speakers are to be honored as much as possible. Per activity type you can specify how many speaker preferences need to be prioritized. Prioritized means that participant preferences are not included in calculating the allocation score. For example when you enter 5, then the first 5 preferences of speakers have a higher chance to be allocated in the schedule.
2. Activity priority. Activities of a specific type might be more important than others. The priority of allocating these preferences can be increased by using activity priority.
3. Penalties. You can give penalty points to participants who have already been assigned to one of their preferences. Hereby other preferences of this participant are less likely to be allocated which increase the chances of other participants.

The allocation score can be defined in a formula

Allocation score = ((speaker preference + (if speaker preference < speaker preference priority; then 0; otherwise participant preference)) * activity priority) + penalties

Example

With a speaker preference priority of 3 and speaker A has scored Participant X, Y and Z as preferred participants for an activity, then the participant preference is 0 no matter what the participant has specified. When the weight of this activity type is 2, then the allocation score is calculated as follows.

Participant X:  (1+0)*2=2
Participant Y:  (2+0)*2=4
Participant Z:  (3+0)*2=6

If participant X is assigned to the activity with speaker A, he will cat penalty points that are added up to the score or the other activities. For example, if you choose to assign 4 penalty points, the matched scores are then as follows:

If participant X is allocated to speaker A other activities of participant X will receive penalties. When the weight of activity type of speaker B and C is different than that of speaker A, namely 1. And nor speaker B or C rated participant A within their first three preferences, then the participant weight is included in the allocation score. Suppose you decided to specify a penalty of 4, then the allocation score is as follows.

Speaker A:   (1+0)*2=2       → Allocated
Speaker B:   (2+2)*1+4=8
Speaker C:   (3+3)*1+4=10

Limits

Next to adjusting the allocation score you can specify limits. You can decide to allocate a maximum number of participants, allocate a maximum number of activities per participant and for events with multiple programs you can specify a maximum number of activities per program. Finally, you can enter a minimum or maximum per activity type.