How to ask authors for presentation confirmation

We would like to ask our authors to confirm if they will be attending the conference to present their paper or if they don’t have time or resources to attend.

How can we add a mandatory request for authors to confirm their conference participation?

There is no special function for this purpose in ConfTool, but there are alternative solutions.

If you only use the “submission & reviewing module” for your installation

If you only use the submission & reviewing module for your installation (without the participant registration module) we recommend enabling the "Presentation Mode" feature of the submission form to ask your authors to confirm their participation in your event. You just need to rename the texts a little to make it work for you.

You can edit all default wording and labels in ConfTool on the page "Wording and Phrases" (see image 1):
Overview => Settings => Wording and Phrases
In the search field "Enter Part of Phrase" enter the phrase you want to change and click on "Submit Search".
In the list of results, click on "Edit Phrase" to carry out the changes.

Please update the wording of the “Presentation Mode” feature according to your requirements (see image 2 for an example):
•   S_PAPER_FORM_PRESENTATIONMODE
•   S_PAPER_FORM_PRESENTATIONMODES
•   S_PAPER_FORM_PRESENTATIONMODES_HINT
•   S_PAPER_FORM_PRESENTATIONMODES_MAX
•   S_PAPER_PRESENTATIONMODE
•   S_PAPER_PRESENTATIONMODE_TITLE
•   S_PAPER_PRESENTATIONMODE_INTRO
•   S_PAPER_PRESENTATIONMODE_DEADLINE
•   S_INDEX_PAPER_EDIT_PRESENTATION

You can also contact us and we will replace these texts with alternative wording that will probably also work for your event.

To enable the "Presentation Mode" feature, please first go to:
Overview => Settings => Main Settings for Paper and Abstract Submission
... and enable the expert settings on the bottom of the page by clicking on "Expert Settings Disabled".
Continue to select an appropriate setting for the option 'Enable Selection of the "Presentation Mode"' (see image 3):

• No ⇒ The presentation confirmation will not be enabled. This is the default setting.
• Yes ⇒ The presentation confirmation will be enabled and an additional section asking for the presentation confirmation will appear on the submission form (see image 4).
• Yes, and enable an extra page and phase to allow authors to select their presentation mode separately.
  ⇒ The presentation confirmation will be enabled and appear on a separate page for each submission. This can be helpful if you want to have a separate phase during which you want to ask for the presentation confirmation or if you decide to ask for the presentation confirmation after the initial submission is already over (see image 5).

You will probably need the last option.
Once you have enabled the selection of the presentation confirmation, continue to create and configure the different options.

A new page for managing your presentation confirmation will appear here:
Overview => Settings => Manage Presentation Modes
Click on “Create Presentation Mode” to generate two options for the presentation confirmation and the refusal (see image 6).

After that, please adjust the settings for each submission type / conference track separately:
Overview => Settings => Manage Submission Types / Conference Tracks
Scroll to the option “Presentation Confirmation” and select the maximum number of presentation confirmations to select.
You can also define the location of the input field on the submission form (see image 7).

Finally, if you have chosen “Yes, and enable an extra page and phase to allow authors to select their presentation mode separately”, please enable the corresponding phase here:
Overview => Settings => Conference Phases and Deadlines
Please go to the section “Presentation Mode Update”, enable the module via the toggle switch and set a start date and an end date for the presentation confirmation (see image 8).

If you have chosen an extra page for the presentation confirmation and defined a general phase for that function, you can also set an alternative deadline for each submission type / conference track:
Overview => Settings => Manage Submission Types / Conference Tracks
Please go to the section “Deadline for Presentation Mode Updates” and via the option “Alternative Deadline for Presentation Mode Updates” enable and define an alternative earlier deadline for this track (see image 9).

Please test your new settings by submitting a test submission or logging in as an author who has already submitted a contribution and now is supposed to enter the presentation confirmation.


If you use the “submission & reviewing module” and the “participant registration module” for your installation

If you use the submission & reviewing module as well as the participant registration module for your installation, we recommend asking your authors to register by a certain deadline and pay the registration fee, otherwise their paper will be rejected. This would be the simplest solution.

Of course, you can also follow the steps described above and edit the "Presentation Mode" feature of the submission form to ask your authors to confirm their participation in your event.