Speaker preferences

It is possible for speakers of an event to indicate their preference for the participants who can participate in their activity. To do this, speakers need access to the speaker dashboard. How speakers gain access to the speaker dashboard is explained in Speaker dashboard and communication.

Before speakers can indicate their preference, the following conditions must be met:

The activity has been created and configured
The activity is scheduled
The registration period is closed

1. The activy has been created and configured

Speakers can only indicate their preference for activities of which they are speakers themselves. Take the following steps:

First, the activity must be created. Go to ‘Activities’ in the Events tree, click on ‘Add’ and enter the information into the fields. Make sure that the correct speakers are added to the activity and that the activity is published.

After creating the activity, the speaker preference must be configured correctly. Go to the activity in the overview of activities and click on – on the right side. Click on the element ‘Speaker participant choice’. In the field ‘Speaker participant choice’, select one of the following options:

The speaker indicates his or her own preference from a list of people who included this activity in their preferences – For this option, participants themselves must have indicated some preference for this activity. Here, the level of preference is not important.
The speaker indicates his or her own preference from a list of people who included this activity in their preferences and gave it a priority as well – For this option, the participant has to have given this activity the highest priority (number 1).
The speaker indicates his or her own preference from a list of people who are participating in a program that has this activity scheduled – For this option, participants don’t need to be registered for the activity in any way, but only have to participate in the parent program of the activity. This option is useful if you don’t want participants to indicate their own preference.

Then indicate the assessment level. Choose from the following options:

For the activity – Preference for the participants of an activity can only be indicated once, independent of the number of speakers that were added to the activity.
Per speaker – Each speaker that was added to the activity can indicate his/her own preference.
Per user – Sometimes, one speaker can have multiple user accounts. For example, a company with multiple contact persons. If you choose this option, all persons underlying the speaker can indicate preference.

Save the changes.

2. The activity is scheduled

An activity must be scheduled in a program of the event. When you schedule the activity, make sure that you place it in one of the following timeslots:

Participant indicates preference before start of event
Participant cannot choose or indicate preference

The first timeslot enables participants to indicate their own preference. In the second timeslot, only speakers can indicate their preference.

3. The registration period is closed

Each program has a registration period. In the overview of programs (in the element ‘Program’) you can see when the registration period closes (under ‘Registration closes on’). Speakers can only indicate their preference once participants can no longer register for the program or its activities in the program.

You can edit the end date of the registration period by clicking on on the right side of the program. Change the date in the field ‘Registration closes on’ and save this.

How can I give speakers access to particiants information?

In most cases, speakers will need some more information than only the names of participants to be able to indicate their preference. Here we take the example of a resume. Follow the steps below to give speakers access to the resume of the participants. Speakers can never see information of participants that they cannot choose from.

There has to be a field in the Organization in which the resume is kept. If this field does not exist yet, you can create it in ‘Fields & Properties’ in the settings of the Organization. The field must be a file field.
Allow participants to upload their resume. You can add the Organization field you just created in the form (in ‘Forms’ under ‘Configuration’). When a participant uploads his/her resume, it will be saved in their profile in the Organization directly.
Create an export set with the field of the resume. Make this export set available for the Website Application.
Go to the Website Application and navigate to the page where speakers can indicate their preference. On this page, you will find the field ‘Export set’. In this field, select the export set you just created. Click on ‘save’. Speakers can now see the resume of the participants for whom they can indicate preference.

You add as many fields as you like to the export set. The speaker will be able to download a zip-file which contains the files from the participants and an excel file with all information from the other organization fields you added to the export set.

Allocation

After the speakers and/or participants have indicated their preferences, you can allocate participants to activities. The automatic allocation tool calculates which participant should be placed in which activity based on the given preferences. Read more about automatic allocation in the article Assign participants.