Conferences

CORE allows makes it possible to host multiple conferences at the same time. You can manage them in simultaneously. These can be managed under the 'conferences' tab. Every Each conference has its own specific settings and layout. CORE uses the hostname host name to differentiate between conferences.

• General settings
  All the required fields will be , apart from email address, are populated by the installer. All notifications and error reports are sent to the conference admin email.

• Google Calendar settings
  If you want to synchronize synchronise the CORE schedule with your google calendarGoogle Calendar, you have to set the fields: Google calendar event feed url, Google calendar username and Google calendar password. Make sure the google calendar Google Calendar is publicly available. Any changes made to the CORE schedule will also update the google calendarGoogle Calendar.

• Submit/review/feedback dates for papers.
  Only This specific option will be available only within the specified date range will the specific option be available. The feedback option does not have a manual start date , since this is based on the date the feedback codes are send sent out.

• Layout settings
  If you want to change the layout of the current conference, set the custom layout option , (see Theming).

• Time slotsTimeslots
  A timeslot consist time slot consists of a start/end date, a number and a type. Type can be 'presentation', 'lunch' or 'break'. Only presentation slots are shown in the schedule. When you make setting up a new conference, you can let CORE create an initial set of slots . This way you don't so that you do not have to go through the manual process of adding slots. Enter the number of days and the start date, click 'create Create smart defaults' and CORE will create the slots for you.

• Locations
  You define a location by providing at least a name, abbreviation and type. The type can be 'room' or 'external'. The room option assumes that you hots your conference is hosted in one venue. Only rooms will be displayed in the schedule. External locations are mainly used for side events. The abbreviation, together with the timeslot time slot number is used to represent a session in the schedule as follows: <room abbreviation><timeslot abbreviation><time slot number> - <name of session>. If you provide a picture it will be automatically resized to 90px width/68px height. To change these values, edit application/modules/core/forms/Location.php - line 85.

Submit

If submit is open (see above) users who are logged in can submit their papers. Anonymous users cannot submit papers! For normal users, the 'submission' tab links to the 'new paper' page. For an admin or reviewer, the 'submission' tab links to the submit overview page.

Submit overview from reviewer perspective

When a reviewer logs in and visits the 'submission' page they have the option to 'review' a paper. Under the default setting the page only displays the papers that the reviewer should review. Papers that have been assigned to the reviewer show the 'review' link in red. A reviewer can review any paper, also the ones he was not assigned to review.

In case a particular paper needs a tiebreak review it will only show to a reviewer if:

• he is responsible for this tiebreak;
• an extra review for that paper is required.

Filters

A reviewer can filter the submission list by using the filter bar at the top of the page. This also allows him to download papers assigned to him for review.

Review tab

For a reviewer the review tab will display the papers he should review and the ones he already has reviewed. If you are not a reviewer nor an admin, this tab will not be displayed.

When a reviewer is nominated to act as a 'tiebreaker' for a paper and this paper ultimately does not require a tiebreak, the paper is greyed out in the review tab. If a tiebreak is required, the link will become active and the text 'new' will be appended to the paper.

Submit overview from admin perspective

Upon successful paper submission, the conference admin gets is notified by email. You can disable this notification by changing the value of application.ini/core.observer.submit to 0.

Submit overview from reviewer perspective

Send file over HTTP

See tracker

Sessions

During the Programme Committee meeting these 'preliminary' sessions are decided. They used to be called 'Topics' but that does not make any sense.

• Manage sessions
• Session chairs should be able to manage their own sessions

Login

• Upon successful login, reviewers should see the submissions they should review. Same as I did for TACAR. They can be directed to 'http://omega.terena.org/core/submit/list' and filtered by submission_id.

Submit

Anonymous users (not logged in) can enter their details and upload their papers. During this stage the personal details are saved to be used as speaker details in the future.

• submit paper (new)
• delete submission (admin)
• edit submission to give them status and attach a proposed session (http://omega.terena.org/core/review/list/24)
• list overview of submissions with submission stats + review stats
• filter submissions based on status
• filter submissions based on submission_id's - when a reviewer logs in they get directed to the submission grid which shows only the submissions they should review.
• order list
• Assign submissions to reviewers (many to many) - this should use autocomplete for the users since this will be query a big table

If you submit a paper it looks at the dynamic vhost part and uses that as the conference abbreviation. The abbreviation needs to be checked with existing abbreviations to prevent db weirdness. This should probably be done in the bootstrap process or in a dispatch plugin.
Another solution would be to use static vhosts, the upside of this is that I don't need an extra DB query, the downside is that if you add a abbreviation to CORE you also need to create the vhost.

Review

• List reviewers
• manage reviewers
• Email 'reminders' to reviewers; add a link to the submission grid to email all reviewers with the submissions they should review.
• Set reminder dates
• Generate proposed status of paper based on review scores
• Filtering of List based on status
• Sorting of columns, especially 'proposed session'
• Mass email all rejected paper submitters

Schedule

• List papers with filter for status set to 'yes'
• Manage days/timeslots/locations of event
• Assign papers to sessions
• Assign sessions to chairs
• Assign sessions to timeslots
• Order presentations
• Mass email accepted papers. Email template pulls data from timeslots/locations/papers and session data.

Speaker (so also Session chairs)

• Go to our login
• Edit personal details (photo as well)
• Upload presentation
• Chairs can edit their own session
  • Name
  • Abstract
  • Evaluation

Live

• Streams
• Feedback

After

...

Reviewers

Assign reviewers to papers by clicking on 'reviewers' next to the respective paper. Select a user from the select box to link them to the paper or remove a linked user by clicking the 'x' next to their name. To toggle tiebreaker status, use the 'tiebreaker' button next to the 'x'.

Tiebreakers

This process is to streamline the review process and to prevent overloading reviewers since 0.9.2 the tiebreaker concept was added. When a user is a tiebreaker for a paper he will only be asked to review this when overall reviews are conflicting. This means that initially the list of papers a reviewer should review is short but may become longer over time in case more tiebreaks required.

If a tiebreak is required the tiebreaker automatically receives an email requesting he reviews the particular paper. You can configure this behaviour by changing the value of application.ini/core.observer.tiebreaker.notify to 0.

Whether or not a tiebreak is required is decided with the following algorithm.

LOD = Level Of Difference. This is calculated using the formula below and has a value between zero and one. LOD is higher if two people of equal experience disagree than if two people of disparate experience disagree. For fixed values of experience, LOD increases as the disagreement in ratings increases.

Image Added

The threshold can be configured in application.ini/core.review.tiebreaker.

If a tiebreaker is required, the respective paper will have a yellow box around the Reviews table cell, with either 'WR' (Wrong Reviewer) or 'LOD: <value>' (Level Of Difference).

Email reviewers

Send an email to all people assigned to review a paper. The email includes links to all the papers that they need to review plus a link to download their assigned papers as a zip archive. If a user is a tiebreaker for a paper, this is excluded from the list.

One the email is successfully sent out the link will change in sending a reminder (what link will change?). This sends out a similar message as before, however:

• the reminder is not sent to the reviewers who completed their tasks
• only the papers that still need to be reviewed are listed. This includes papers that require a tiebreak if user is a tiebreaker for that paper.

Set status/proposed session

Click on the number/percentage to get a parallel overview of all the reviews for a particular paper. You can assign the status/proposed session here as well.

Email accepted/rejected

All papers with a status set to 'yes' are papers that have been accepted and can be imported into CORE as presentations. Use the 'email accepted' link to notify the users whose papers have been accepted. Use the 'email rejected' to notify the users whose papers have been rejected.

Sessions

Sessions are basically presentation containers defined by a place and time. They require a title, a location and a time slot. Once you created a session it will appear in the schedule.

Session chairs

The drop-down list only shows users with a 'chair' role. Select a user from the drop-down list to add them as a session chair. Click the 'x' next to their name to remove them. You can add multiple chairs to one session.

Files

Use this if you want to upload a session slide.

Google Calendar (conference)

If you set all of the Google Calendar fields in the Conference form, your sessions are automatically saved and synchronised with Google Calendar. If you added the Google Calendar details after you already populated the system with sessions, you can always use the 'sessions/synchronise' option to synchronise all your existing sessions with your Google Calendar. If you do this, you might want to purge your calendar beforehand. This can only be done from the Google Calendar interface.

Google Calendar (personal)

Users also have the option to save a specific session to their own personal calendar. This is no way related to the feature described above.

Link presentations

Click on a session to view session details. To link a presentation to the session, select a presentation from the drop down list. To remove the presentation, click 'delete' next to the presentation name. The order of the presentations can be changed by drag and drop.

Evaluate session

Session chairs can evaluate a session by using the form fields at the bottom of a session overview page. Chairs can only evaluate sessions they are assigned to.

Presentations

A presentation requires a title and an abstract.

Speakers

The drop-down list only shows users with a 'presenter' role. Select a user from the drop-down list to add them as a speaker. Click the 'x' next to their name to remove them. You can add multiple speakers to one presentation.

Files

Allows the user to add a paper, slides or an extra file.

Import submissions

All accepted submissions within a certain date range will be imported as presentations. You can fine-tune the import with several options.

Schedule

The schedule builds a table based on defined time slots and locations. The columns contain the time and the rows contain the rooms. During the conference, CORE automatically shows the current day. You can view a fullscreen version of the schedule by appending /size/1 to the url.

Swap sessions

An admin can move and swap sessions by clicking the respective checkbox in front of a session name.

Events and Posters

Besides the CORE sessions you can also add extra events (meetings/workshops etc.) to CORE. These events will also show up in the schedule. Posters only show in the poster overview.