When a program includes a review process, workspace administrators can use the Program Manager & Assignments tool to assign reviewers to submissions (or vice versa) for reviewers to submit feedback via a Review Portal. The process of determining who the reviewers are and assigning them submissions to review is not related to granting workspace access: external reviewers do not need access to your workspace to complete their feedback.
There are three methods of assigning submissions to reviewers:
-
Manual Assignment
- Manually assign by submission
- Manually assign by member
-
Batch Assignment
- Batch assign by submission
- Batch assign by member
- Automatic Assignments by Submission Group
This article covers the Manual Assignment method.
Overview
Program Manager & Assignments allows administrators to limit Review Portal users' access to specific submissions, so as to avoid conflicts of interest, divide up many submissions equitably amongst several reviewers, and assign specialist reviewers to certain types of submissions. Further, they can assign responsibility to each person involved in the process to review, provide feedback, and track the status of that feedback.
One way to tailor these assignments is to do so manually, based on a submission or based on a member. In other words, an administrator can go submission-by-submission and assign a member or group of members to those submissions, or inversely, go member-by-member and assign them to a submission or group of submissions. This process is known as manual assignment and would work best with a small group of submissions, or if the administrator has a very specific means of assigning that isn't necessarily based on criteria in the submission.
Setup Process
Setup a Review feedback process, then turn on the permission assignments feature by modifying the Permissions so that Members can only view submissions that are individually assigned to them.
Select the Feedback form. It is important that this form includes the following:
- A Linked Form field to the main submissions form. In many programs, for example, this is an application form.
- A Linked Form field that links to the Portal users form. For example, a review form must include a link to a Reviewers form, which contains the email address and other information of the reviewers who will can be assigned submissions to review.
- Text field for storing assignment tags.
- Date field for collecting the review completion date.
- Three folders: Not Begun, In Progress, and Completed.
Save the Review Process.
Assignments
Making the review assignments occurs in the Program Manager tool, which you can access by selecting the Program Mgr & Assignments icon in blue Navigation toolbar (located in the upper-left of your Zengine workspace screen). (Note that this is not the same place where the Review Process and submission groups were set up, which is the Program Manager & Assignments Settings page.)
Doing so will bring you to the Program Manager Assignments page.
Select the Edit Assignments button for the Review Process for which you are setting up Assignments. (If you have not yet created any assignments, this button will display Create Assignments instead.)
You can then choose the Assignments method that you want to use. In this article, we will focus on Assign by Submission and Assign by Member. (Learn more about Batch Assignment and Automatic Assignment by Submission Group.)
Assign by Submission
Once Assign by Submission is selected, you will see the following screen:
The submissions list on the left will list the submissions that meet any filters that have already been created. You can also search for a particular submission by name, or use the filter tool to narrow down the displayed submissions based on specific criteria.
Once you have selected a submission, the pane on the right side of the screen will display which portal members (reviewers) the submission has been assigned to. These are the users that have permission to view the submission in a Review Portal. You can assign additional members via the green Assign button.
You can also remove an assignment for reviews that have not been started by selecting the gray X icon next to the assignment in the right-hand pane. In Progress and Submitted assignments cannot be removed using Program Manager & Assignments, although those records can be deleted manually from the form selected as the review feedback form (see Setup Process above).
Throughout the process, you can return to this tab to review the progress of assigned reviews. This is important for ensuring that each submission is being fairly reviewed by the appropriate number of people and that no reviewers are falling behind.
Assign by Member
Selecting Assign by Member from the assignment method tab will display the following screen:
The Assign by Member option is similar to the Assign by Submission option, but you will see that the portal members are listed on the left, while the possible assigned entries will appear on the right. All portal members are listed, but you can optionally filter the list. This is useful if additional information about the reviewers, such as availability or committee name, is stored on the Reviewers form.
Once you have selected a portal member, on the right hand you can see which submissions that person has been assigned to. You can assign additional submissions via the green Assign button.
You can also remove an assignment for reviews that have not been started by selecting the gray X icon next to the assignment in the right-hand pane. In Progress and Submitted assignments cannot be removed using Program Manager & Assignments, although those records can be deleted manually from the form selected as the review feedback form (see Setup Process above).
Throughout the process, you can return to this tab to review the progress. This is important for ensuring no reviewers are falling behind with their assignments.
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