Introduction

Nominations are often the first step in a variety of award processes, from faculty departmental awards to student employee recognition.


Challenges

  • Nominations often involve one individual submitting materials or a recommendation on behalf of a nominee.
  • Sometimes the nominee needs to be a part of the process, and other times they should not.


Solutions

  • For these processes, we recommend using the General template or Form Designer template (Gold/Platinum feature).
  • This template allows more flexibility on the Requirements page.
  • Integrate the nominee at the point it makes sense for your process (e.g., upon initial submission, during the review process, with an award notification at the end).


Tips

  • First Name and Last Name will be required. Collecting the nominator info here usually makes the most sense because these fields auto-populate with the first and last name of the person submitting the form.
  • If you add the Primary Organization field to the application form, this will also be pre-populated with the organization of the person submitting the form, so you may want to add an additional text field to collect the nominee's organization.
  • Title field - *Very important*: This field will populate in the Application Title field on the back end (Data Grid, reports, etc.). Because of this, re-name this field to collect some other valuable info, like the name(s) of the nominee(s).
  • Notes to Applicant: Use these to give more instructions, which show up as pop-up tooltips when the nominator (applicant) begins to type in the field. If you add them after creating the field, you can add unlimited text there (even though the field looks small).
  • Reference Letters (if applicable): Customize the instructions and emails to letter writers. You can find more information about our tips in this article.
  • Notifications: Because mail merge fields are used in several email template, you should make sure the {applicantName} and {application title} fields make sense in the messages, or remove them from the templates. The most common email templates you may want to edit are:
    • Your Application Received (Applicant)
    • Award Application (Applicant)
    • Reject Application (Applicant)
    • Review Request (Reviewer)
    • Multiple Review Request (Reviewer)
  • Integrating the nominee into the process
    • Upon initial submission - Make sure they're copied in the "Add Other Email Addresses for Notifications" section.
    • During the review process - Have them verify the nomination with Applicant-Driven Steps, or assign them as a "reviewer" to a specific routing step so they can add in more details not provided by the nominator.
    • Award notification - Include them in the email as the final step.

Have more questions about this topic? Go to the Community Forum to pose the question to other users or submit a support ticket to InfoReady.