How to Assign Reviews in ConfTool

Please log in as a user with the status Chair, Conference Chair or Administrator and go to 
Overview → Submissions & Reviews.
If you cannot find this option after login, please contact the conference organizers.

Here you can either list all contributions or all reviewers via the corresponding links. This section deals with assigning reviewers to submissions; see Assign Submissions to a Reviewer for the other direction.

Open the List of Submissions at 
Overview → Submissions & Reviews → List of Submissions.
Above the list are several filter options, a search field and a link "Show more filter options". You can use these to narrow the contributions down, e.g. to specific topics or tracks – useful if several chairs share the assignment work.

In the second-to-last column "Reviewers / Reviews", click "Reviewers" to reach the list of already assigned and available reviewers (the number shows how many are already assigned). The link "Reviews" (only available once reviews exist) displays the reviews entered for this submission (see image 1).

For each entry, click "Assign" in the right-hand "Actions" column to open a page where you can assign reviewers to this contribution. All available reviewers are shown, ordered by their preferences (from the "bidding" phase, if used) and by the number of matches between the topics of the submission and the areas of expertise of the reviewer (see image 2).

Select the required number of reviewers by ticking the checkbox "Assign".
Use "Set Conflict" if you want to exclude a reviewer from the online discussion forum about that specific contribution later on. 
When you are done, go to the bottom of the page and click "Save New Assignment" to confirm.

Meta-reviewers see everything.
If you assign a user to a contribution as meta-reviewer, this user will have access to all other reviews of the same submission.

You can now verify and edit your assignments for this submission. Select "Submissions" in the main navigation bar to return to the list and continue with other submissions.

Alternatively, you can work from the list "Program Committee and Reviewers" at
Overview → Submissions & Reviews → Program Committee and Reviewers.
It gives you an overview of all available experts (PC members and reviewers), together with the number of submissions already assigned to each person and the reviews already completed (see image 3).

Select "Assign Reviews" in the right column to assign or cancel ("unassign") contributions or to set a conflict for this person. This works just like "Assign reviewers to a submission" described above. Experts are identified by the conference chairs in the back-end of ConfTool.

ConfTool Pro can also assign submissions to reviewers automatically. Please note that this is usually only available to administrators and conference chairs. It can be enabled for track chairs by the organizers. Please go to (see image 4): 
Overview → Submissions & Reviews → Automatic Assignment of Reviews

This function considers the "bids" of the reviewers, the number of matching topics between submission and reviewer, and the number of reviews already assigned per person. The algorithm is explained in the forum: Automatic review assignments.

In addition, the system tries to identify and consider "conflicts of interest": ConfTool Pro compares e-mail addresses, names and organizations of the reviewers to those of the authors and co-authors. This is one of the many reasons why authors should be asked to list the e-mail addresses of their co-authors.

Please note that the automatic assignment process only ever adds new review assignments; it never unassigns any reviews.

Always double-check the result. 
Although the automatic assignment normally yields good results, we advise you to review it and – where required – to optimize the outcome via manual assignment.

You can manually unassign reviews when the automatic result needs refining, or when reviewers have retracted their willingness to review. This is done on the same pages used to assign papers to reviewers or reviewers to papers (see above).

In both cases, tick "Unassign" to cancel the assignment. If a review has already been handed in, tick "Unassign & Delete Review"; the assignment is then cancelled and the review is deleted (see image 5). More information: How can I delete reviews?

After the assignment, the review phase has to be enabled at
Overview → Settings → Conference Phases and Deadlines
in order to make the submissions accessible to the reviewers.

As already noted, ConfTool never contacts your reviewers on its own – you decide when and how to inform them. 
To announce the start of the review process, the next steps and the review deadlines, please use the bulk-mail function of ConfTool.

You can point your reviewers to the ready-made instructions for reviewers and PC members.

• It is always a good idea to have submitting authors state the e-mail addresses of all co-authors to make it easier to contact the authors.
• Define topics and let authors and reviewers choose the most appropriate ones. This makes the assignment of submissions to reviewers a lot easier.
• Even though the time to prepare a conference is always short, we recommend offering the "Bidding Phase" (ConfTool Pro) for at least a few days. It lets reviewers name submissions of interest and flag conflicts of interest in advance – which ultimately lightens your own workload, too.
• If possible, assign each submission to at least 3 reviewers. It happens regularly that some reviewers do not meet their agreements. With only 2 reviewers per submission, you may end up with contributions that have only one or even no submitted review.