Quick reference guide: How to use COMS for managing your conference

1. Introduction

The Conference Management System (COMS) provides administrative support to conference administrators by structuring and partially automating many of the workflows and management tasks that arise during the preparation of a conference. Furthermore, functions to export statistics and details about delegates and their presentations support the creation of derived documents such as conference proceedings.

Delegates are offered a powerful, yet easy to use platform for registering for the event, maintaining their personal data, submitting abstracts and full papers, performing online payments and obtaining current information.

Event organizers are provided with comprehensive tools for information acquisition, including freely configurable registration and abstract submission forms, auxiliary questionnaires and document upload functions. There is also functionality to send email messages to individuals, such as event triggered confirmation emails, as well as to groups of delegates (personalized bulk email).

COMS runs on the computers of IT Services Mandl. It does therefore not need any IT infrastructure or IT support at the site of the conference organiser, other than the availability of an Internet connection and a current web browser.

All users of COMS will assume one or several of the following roles:

1. System Administrator – This role is usually reserved for staff at IT Services Mandl.
2. Chair – The Conference Chair configures the system, assigns roles to users, assigns tasks to reviewers and editors, accepts/rejects papers, exports data, etc. There can be several Chairs or Session Chairs for one conference and Chairs can delegate tasks to Conference Administrators.
3. Conference Administrator – The task of Conference Administrators is to support the Chair. They share almost all the privileges of the Chair, except that they cannot assign the roles of ‘Chair’ or ‘Conference Administrator’ to other users.
4. Referee – Referees can indicate the papers they would like to work on (if the bidding feature is activated). Once the Chair or a Conference Administrator has assigned papers to a Referee, he or she will work online on the assignments and provide assessments. A blind review process is also supported.
5. Editor – The Editor role will not be needed for all conferences. If Editors are used, they are each assigned a number of conference submissions. They will inspect and – where needed – modify the texts of submissions, in order to ensure a consistent style or formatting and to correct linguistic errors.
6. Accountant – If the payments module is used, then accountants will have access to the invoicing and payment tracking functions of the event,but not to the review process and the participant selection.
7. Author – Any registered COMS user who has submitted a conference paper is automatically assigned the role of ‘Author’. Authors can submit, edit and withdraw their papers within the conditions set by the Chair.
8. Unprivileged User – Any registered COMS user who has not been assigned any particular role can still edit and maintain his personal profile. As far as the features are activated, any Unprivileged User, can submit conference papers from within COMS (and thereby become an Author) or they can register for participating in the conference. Unprivileged Users can also be reached by bulk email and they might be assigned roles such as Conference Administrator, Referee or Editor by the Chair.

The general workflow of a COMS assisted conference administration with paper submission and review process is as follows:

1. The Chair configures COMS and assigns roles to the members of the Program Committee and to other assistants.
2. Delegates register and submit papers.
3. Optionally, Reviewers bid for papers.
4. The Chair and Conference Administrators assign papers to Reviewers. (COMS can do that automatically, based on Reviewers’ bids or if bidding is not used, COMS can distribute review tasks statistically.)
5. Reviewers give their assessment.
6. The Chair and Conference Administrators accept or reject submissions and notify Authors by bulk email.
7. Optionally, Editors ensure a common style of all accepted submissions.
8. Optionally, Authors of accepted papers upload camera-ready papers.

Throughout the process, Conference Administrators can monitor the progress of tasks and registrations. Data that are ascertained by COMS can be exported in a number of formats.

Conference Administrators can store notes to themselves with each of the registered COMS users that are not disclosed to delegates.

2. Billing, payments and book keeping

COMS can be used to handle invoicing and to keep track of payments. Payments that are received in cash, by bank transfer or by any other means that is not directly interfaced with your COMS installation, must be entered manually in order to take advantage of the payment tracking functions. In addition, COMS can also be used to interface directly with payment gateways like PayPal, Mercanet, PayBox, Paygate, Monetico (CM-CIC) and others, using the gateway to provide participants with online payment options (credit card payment). In these cases, the payment status of participants will be updated automatically, based on server to server communications between COMS and the payment gateway.

If the payment module is to be used, the following steps are added to the workflow:

1. Define specific items that can be booked (event participation, workshops, excursions, conference dinner, etc.) including pricing and special conditions such as early bird discounts or reduced tariffs for students or other participants groups.
2. Configure one or several payment forms and decide at which condition payments will be due (e.g. at a particular date, after participants have been accepted to the event, etc.). If different items have different payment due dates, several payment forms can be deployed.
3. Configure the invoice template.
4. Optionally, assign the accountant role to the appropriate user accounts.

If a payment gateway is to be integrated with COMS, then additional setup and configuration steps need to be taken that are specific to the chosen gateway.

3. Tasks of any COMS user

3.1 Registering with COMS

With the exception of users who have been registered by the Chair or by a Conference Administrator, users have to create a user account before they can first use the system.

Depending on the features that have been activated by the Chair, prospective users can:

• Register with the system without any other action.
• Register with the system and simultaneously submit a paper.

Once users are registered, they are assigned a user-id and password that allows them to access COMS.

If the automatic mail feature is activated, an acknowledging email with the access details is sent automatically upon registration.

Please note that COMS also provides a bulk upload function, which enables event organizers to register many users (e.g. invited speakers, referees, etc.) efficiently by uploading the required data using a spread sheet.

3.2 Editing the personal profile

After logging on to the system, users can update and maintain their personal profile. The Chair may assign specific roles to the members of the Program Committee and to other assistants.

4. Tasks of the Chair or Conference Administrator

4.1 Getting started

The user account of the Chair is normally created by the System Administrator. When logging in for the first time, the Chair should update his/her personal details.

The welcome screen will initially contain some default message. By going to

• Configuration → Texts → Welcome Page

it can be fully configured. If you are not comfortable with coding HTML directly, you can use a comfortable graphical editor via the button "Switch to HTML editor" (requires a JavaScript enabled web browser).

4.2 Configuring COMS – feature activation

Before starting to use COMS, the Chair should go through all items in the Configuration tab. All items can be changed as needed in the course of the approaching conference, however, some items that define choices that users can make should only be changed as long as they are not already in use.

The system contains additional forms that can be deployed as needed. These forms can be freely named and configured to collect additional data or documents (like a CV or the copy of a student card) from participants.

Please note: It is important to set the dates for the various tasks correctly, since the corresponding functions will be disabled outside the given date ranges.

4.3 Configuring the automatic email system

Before conducting tasks (like registering new users) which could trigger the sending of automatic emails, the Chair should visit the Emails tab.

The option:

• Automatic mail → activate/deactivate

governs which events will trigger the sending of an email.

Next, the email templates under:

• Automatic mail → edit templates

should be inspected and customized for the needs of the current conference project. By using the function ‘Test this template’ that can be found underneath each mail template, the current user can trigger the sending of an email to his/her own email address.

The templates for bulk emails can be configured at the time when they are to be used. Bulk emails are not triggered automatically.

4.4 Registering users

Once COMS is configured, other users can be permitted into the system. This can be achieved by either allowing people to register themselves – see above – or by using the link:

• Participants → Add a Participant

(the button is just above the list of participants)

• Individual user accounts can be created by entering the relevant details
• Bulk account creation is facilitated by uploading a spread sheet

4.5 Assigning functions to registered users

Once users have registered or have been registered with COMS, they can be listed by going to the Participants tab.

In the menu "List of participants", the Edit function permits to edit user profiles.

In the menu "Functions at the conference" one or several functions (Editor, Referee, Conference Administrator, etc.) can be assigned to any registered user.

Tip: It is instructive for the Chair to register a ‘dummy’ user and to assign different functions to the dummy in order to see how COMS looks for different actors. (Be aware that some functions, like for example the assignment of papers to reviewers, are only available if both papers and reviewers already exist in COMS.)

4.6 Assigning tasks to referees and editors

After the paper submission for the event is closed, the chair can assign the received papers to referees for reviewing. Every paper can be assigned to several referees. During an optional bidding period, referees can state which papers they would like to work on. Tasks can be assigned automatically (based on the bids or statistically if bidding was not used) or manually. Manual and automatic assignment of tasks can also be combined.

If editors are used in order to ensure a consistent style throughout all submissions, a similar task assignment process can be used. There is no bidding process for editors, but tasks can also be assigned automatically or manually.

In order to assign tasks go to:

• Review process → Reviews

and use the respective functions.

4.7 Accepting or rejecting papers, assigning presentation type and session to accepted papers

After the reviewing process is completed, it is the task of the Chair or the Conference Administrator to decide which papers to accept or to reject. The process can be automated, based on the numerical evaluations by the referees; automatic and manual paper acceptance/rejection can be combined.

Please see:

• Review process → Paper selection → Automatic selection
• Review process → Paper selection → Manual selection

The menu item Manual selection permits also the assignment of a particular presentation type (oral, poster, etc.) to each accepted paper. Furthermore, accepted papers can be distributed over the sessions of the conference.

The paper selection and distribution process is supported by graphic displays of statistical data and summaries, giving a quick and precise overview over paper submissions, sessions, presentation types and how many papers are accepted:

• Review process → Progress tracking

5. Tasks of the Referee

If bidding is to be used for the conference, the referee has the possibility to state preferences concerning which paper submission he/she does or does not want to comment on. If it is activated by the Chair, this functionality is available under:

• Review process → Reviews → Bidding for reviews

Once the Chair has assigned papers to a Referee, the assigned papers will be listed under the My reviews tab.

Reviewers use the link Edit review to view the details of a given conference paper and to give and save their evaluation. If an evaluation is completed, the field This review is complete on the review form should be ticked.

6. Tasks of the Editor

There is no bidding process for editing since editing concerns only style and language, rather than contents. Once the Chair has assigned papers to an Editor, the assigned papers will be listed under the Editing tasks tab. The function Edit displays the details of a submission and permits modifications.

The system records automatically if an entry has been modified. Optionally, an Editor can mark a given entry as completed without actually modifying it, by opening the edit form and saving it without making modifications.

7. Tasks of the accountant

The accountant function is only useful in conjunction with the payments and invoicing module.

7.1 Updating order details and payment status

Accountants use the menu item "Payments/Conference Registrationon" the page "Participants" in order to obtain an overview of booked items and to view a summary of payment details. They can edit the order details of each participant in order to correct mistakes or in order to record orders that have arrived offline (e.g. order by FAX or letter). In particular, accountants can register offline payments (cash, bank transfer), cancellations and refunds.

Once a booking is flagged as completed (i.e. paid), participants can no longer edit theirbooking, but accountants can still introduce changes.

7.2 Communication with delegates

Accountants can use the bulk-email function of COMS in order to send messages to groups of delegates, depending on certain selection criteria (invitation to pay, reminder, payment acknowledgement, etc.)

8. Tasks of the Conference Delegate

8.1 Event registration, bookings and payments.

If the payments and invoicing module is to be used, then delegates will have to log into their COMS user account in order to register for the event and perform specific bookings; otherwise the information items relevant for the conference participation can optionally be collected by either of the above mentioned account creation forms. Alternatively, the event organizer can configure one or several dedicated forms for collecting booking information. Copies of documents such as student cards, a CV or proof of payment by bank transfer can be uploaded as required by the event organization.

The payments and invoicing module permits delegates to book items, view and print invoices and optionally pay online. They can also monitor their payment status (amounts due, paid or refunded) and print receipts once the payment process is completed.

8.2 Submitting abstracts and camera ready papers

Delegates can submit an abstract during registration, or later under the My submissions tab. The My submissions tab also lists all submitted papers together with their acceptance status. Within the time interval that is given by the Chair, submitted papers can be edited online or withdrawn.

If the current conference uses a two stage submission procedure, camera ready versions of accepted papers can be uploaded at the time given by the Chair.

8.3 Giving feedback

COMS can be used to collect feedback, including anonymised feedback, via freely configurable questionnaire forms, during the event or after its completion.