Sessions and Call for Abstracts

Sessions and the Conference Schedule

CompleteEvent includes a full session scheduling system for conferences and multi-track events. You can build a structured agenda with named sessions, speaker assignments, room designations, and time slots. Attendees can view the schedule on the mobile event guide and build their own personal schedule.

Creating Sessions Manually

1. Open your event and click the Sessions tab.
2. Click Add session.
3. Fill in:
   • Title — the session title as it will appear in the agenda.
   • Speaker(s) — name and optional bio and photo for each speaker. You can add multiple speakers per session.
   • Track / room — the room or track name (e.g., “Main Stage”, “Workshop Room A”).
   • Start and end time — times within your event's date range.
   • Description — session abstract or description shown in the agenda and mobile guide.
   • Session type — Keynote, Workshop, Panel, Lightning Talk, Break, or custom.
4. Click Save session.

Sessions appear in the public agenda sorted by start time. If you have multiple tracks, sessions in the same time slot are displayed side by side on the agenda page.

Call for Abstracts

The Call for Abstracts (CFA) feature lets community members submit session proposals. You review submissions and accept or reject them. Accepted submissions can be converted directly into schedule sessions.

Opening a Call for Abstracts

1. Go to the Abstracts tab and click CFA Settings.
2. Enable submissions and configure:
   • Submission deadline — the date and time when submissions close automatically.
   • Guidelines — instructions for submitters. Displayed on the submission form. Include your topics of interest, format expectations, and speaker benefits.
   • Custom fields — additional questions for submitters beyond the default title, abstract, and speaker bio (e.g., “What will attendees take away from this session?”). Custom fields can be plain text, long text, or URL. You can mark fields as required.
   • Track descriptions — if your event has tracks, add a description to each track under the Tracks tab. The description is shown to submitters when they select a track on the submission form.
3. Save the settings. The public submission form is live at /{orgSlug}/{eventSlug}/cfp — share this link with potential speakers via email, social media, or your event page. The form shows your guidelines, deadline (with a live countdown), and all the submission fields. Submitters can also attach a PDF, DOCX, or PPTX file (up to 20 MB) or paste a link, and optionally upload a headshot photo.

Reviewing Submissions

When submissions come in, they appear in the Abstracts list with status badges. Each submission shows the title, submitter, track, and average reviewer score (if any). Click any submission to open the full detail view.

Workflow states

Submissions move through the following stages:

• Submitted — just received; use Mark Ready for Review to queue it for reviewers.
• Ready for Review — reviewers can see and score the abstract; useMark In Review when a reviewer has started.
• In Review — actively being evaluated; use Approve when consensus is reached, or Request Revision / Reject if needed.
• Approved — accepted; use Promote to Session to create a scheduled session automatically.
• Revision Requested — submitter is notified by email and can update and resubmit through the submission form.
• Rejected — submitter is notified by email.

Rubric scoring

Go to CFA Settings → Reviewer Rubric to define scoring criteria (e.g., Relevance, Clarity, Speaker Experience). Each criterion has a configurable maximum score. If you add no criteria, reviewers submit a single overall score (0–10).

On the submission detail page, each reviewer sees a score panel per criterion and can save a score and notes. A summary table shows all reviewer scores and the average for each criterion.

Tip: Use the Program Builder (accessible from the Abstracts list header) to see all scored abstracts in a single sortable table. Filter by track or status, sort by average score, and promote abstracts to sessions with one click.

Building the Schedule

Once you have created or imported sessions, use the schedule builder to assign each session to a room and time slot:

1. Click Schedule view in the Sessions tab.
2. The schedule is displayed as a grid with time slots on the vertical axis and rooms/tracks on the horizontal axis.
3. Drag unscheduled sessions from the sidebar into time slots on the grid. You can also click a session to edit its time and room directly.
4. Conflicts (two sessions in the same room at the same time) are highlighted in red.

Publishing the Schedule

The session schedule is visible to attendees as soon as sessions are added and the event is published. There is no separate “publish schedule” step. If you are still building the schedule and do not want it visible yet, add sessions but do not publish the event until the schedule is ready.

For events where you want to reveal the schedule incrementally, you can leave some sessions without a time slot — unscheduled sessions do not appear in the public agenda.

Personal Schedule Builder

Attendees can build their personal schedule by favoriting sessions on the agenda page or through the mobile event guide. Their personal schedule is saved and accessible at completeevent.app/my-schedule?code=XXXX, where XXXX is their unique registration code (included in their confirmation email).

The personal schedule shows their selected sessions in chronological order, with room names and times. It is optimized for mobile viewing and does not require the attendee to log in.

Session Ratings and Feedback

CompleteEvent has two ways to collect session-level feedback:

• Post-event survey — after the event ends, attendees rate each session they attended as part of the standard post-event survey.
• Live session feedback — a feedback button appears on each session card at the halfway point of the session, while the event is still running. Attendees can submit a rating and comment without waiting for the post-event survey. If an attendee uses live feedback for a session, that session is skipped in the post-event survey so they're not asked twice.

Live session feedback is off by default. Enable it in Event Settings → Attendee Feedback. See Live Session Feedback for full setup details.

Both sources of session ratings are aggregated in the Analytics tab. See Analytics and Reporting for details on how ratings are displayed and exported.