The product catalog

The five in the first group form a pipeline: abstracts become program items, program items collect files, files get reviewed, posters and on-demand papers run alongside. The three in the middle publish what the pipeline produced — each a branded, templated gallery with its own viewing window. The four in the last group are ways the finished program reaches people in the room. You can take any slice of any group.

What is not a module

Several of the things Rostrum is most used for are not in the list above, because they are not optional and cannot be switched off. They are the platform itself:

• Building the program — tracks, rooms, sessions, presentations, speakers, the agenda grid, the schedule builder, and the running order. Every event has this.
• Importing a program from a spreadsheet, and the import history and rollback that go with it.
• Communications — the email templates, the automated reminders, magic links and the contact book.
• Sponsors, and the placements that surface them on signage and in the app.
• Questionnaires, shared across three modules — see Appendix A.

• What it is — the capability in plain terms.
• Turn it on when / leave it off when — the decision, stated both ways.
• Use cases — concrete situations it was built for.
• What it changes — the operational benefit, not the feature list.
• What you can do — the capabilities actually available.
• Settings — every option, what it controls, and its default.
• Requires / Limits — what must be true first, and what it deliberately does not do.

What it is

A deadline-enforced collection point for presentation files. Speakers upload against a window you set, with an optional per-talk cut-off expressed in hours before they present. Files are versioned, so a replacement never destroys what came before, and the system chases anyone who has not delivered.

Because it is the base module, every other module in the pipeline assumes it. Review & Approval reviews what arrives here; Posters borrows its file-size limit; the Attendee App can distribute what it holds.

What it changes

The deadline stops being a date in an email and becomes something the software enforces and reminds against. Managers stop maintaining a spreadsheet of who has sent what, because the to-do list and the reminder sweep do that. Speakers stop asking where to send things.

What you can do

• Set an upload window and a per-presentation cut-off, both in venue time.
• Cap file size per event — 1 GB per file unless you set your own limit.
• Version files — every replacement is kept, with history and rollback.
• Preview Office decks as PDF in the browser rather than downloading them.
• Group files by purpose, and nominate a primary file.
• Reuse a speaker's files from a previous event.
• Send file requests by hand from the Send Email wizard, and magic links that skip sign-in entirely.

What it is

One module covering the whole cycle: configure the call, invite people to it or publish a public link, collect submissions against a form you design, distribute them to reviewers for blind scoring, work a selection board, send decisions in batches — accepting, waitlisting, rejecting, or sending an abstract back for one round of revision — and convert the acceptances into presentations, posters and sessions. The full narrative of that path is chapters 6 to 12 of the operations guide; this entry is the configuration reference.

What it changes

The committee stops running the call on a separate vendor and hand-carrying the results into the program. Decisions stay private until you release them, scores from different scoring forms are never falsely compared, and an accepted abstract becomes a scheduled talk with its authors already attached — rather than a row someone retypes.

What you can do

• Design the submission form: named sections with word limits, allowed presentation types, tracks, and an optional questionnaire for the submitter.
• Run the call open to anyone, or restricted to people you have invited.
• Mail invitations from an organization-wide contact book with lists, and track opens and acceptances.
• Collect per-author conflict-of-interest disclosures, and block submission until every author has completed theirs.
• Assign reviewers manually, by track, or automatically to the least-loaded qualified person.
• Run review blind, with permanent conflict-of-interest exclusion.
• Score against a questionnaire, normalized so a ten-point criterion cannot outweigh a five-point one.
• Work a track-grouped selection board with capacity targets, split-vote flags, and bulk accept-top-N.
• Accept session proposals — a chair proposing a whole session of linked talks, each with its own abstract and speakers, reviewed and decided as one unit.
• Allow supporting files on submissions, with control over whether reviewers see them on a blind call.
• Publish a public submission link for an open call — an unguessable address anyone can use without an invitation.
• Send accept, waitlist and reject letters in batches, optionally attaching unattributed reviewer comments.
• Send an abstract back for a revision round, once, with its own deadline and a choice of who re-reviews it.
• Require presenters to confirm by a per-batch deadline, with automatic reminders.
• Lift a single talk out of a rejected proposal into the general pool as a standalone abstract.
• Export an abstract book — typeset PDF proceedings with contents and an author index, or a spreadsheet.
• Convert acceptances into draft presentations, posters and sessions, once, irreversibly except by deletion.

What it is

A configurable approval workflow sitting between a speaker's upload and the room. Reviewers are assigned at whatever level suits — the whole show, a track, a session, or one sensitive presentation — and record an outcome. A revision request emails the speaker, opens a new round, and waits for the replacement.

Where abstract review asks should this be in the program and is answered once, this asks is this content acceptable and can be answered across up to three rounds.

What it changes

Compliance stops being a person opening attachments in an inbox. Every outcome is recorded against a round, revisions are tracked to completion, approved files can be locked against silent replacement, and the committee gets a report instead of a memory.

What you can do

• Assign individuals or review teams at show, track, session or presentation level.
• Run single-reviewer, or multi-reviewer with a majority or unanimous rule and a manager override.
• Score against a questionnaire and leave feedback for the speaker.
• Request revisions and track resubmission across rounds.
• Mark a track, session or presentation exempt.
• Let reviewers decline individual items or the whole event, with a manager able to clear it.
• Reassign automatically when a reviewer misses a deadline.
• Report on progress by track, session and reviewer, and export it.

What it is

Posters are first-class content, not presentations with a flag. They carry their own authors, categories, board numbers and physical locations, and they can be attached to poster sessions so they appear in the program at a time. The designed public gallery is its own module — the Poster Viewer — which this module feeds.

What it changes

The board-number spreadsheet disappears: assign numbers in bulk, in table order, with an optional prefix. Authors upload their own files against a window instead of emailing PDFs. And the poster hall gets a digital twin that outlives the two hours it was physically up.

What you can do

• Create posters by hand, import them from a spreadsheet, or convert them from accepted abstracts.
• Manage authors with one marked primary, plus categories, tracks and free tags.
• Assign board numbers in bulk in table order, with a prefix and a location; clear them again in bulk.
• Link posters to poster-type sessions, in bulk.
• Collect author uploads against their own window, in the formats you allow, with optional supplemental files.
• Run single-reviewer review with approve, request-revision and reject outcomes.
• Let delegates ask authors questions, and let authors answer from the portal or the app.
• Feed the Poster Viewer's branded gallery, and the poster section of the Attendee App.

What it is

An on-demand paper works like a poster whose artifact is a video. It carries its own authors — one marked primary, and every author may upload — a track, free tags, and a lifecycle of draft, published and withdrawn. The primary file is always a video; supplemental files of any type can ride alongside when you allow them.

Papers can also arrive from the Call for Abstracts: accepted — paper on demand is a decision in its own right, and converting a communicated acceptance creates the paper with its authors already attached and its authors' upload access already granted.

What it changes

The overflow problem gets a shape. Work that deserves a place in the program but not a slot in a room becomes a first-class published item rather than a consolation email — and the recording exists before the meeting starts, instead of depending on capture in the room.

What you can do

• Create papers by hand or convert them from accepted abstracts, with the conversion guarded against doubles.
• Manage authors with one marked primary — every author gets upload access, not just the primary.
• Collect video uploads (MP4, MOV or WebM) against the upload window, with automatic versioning.
• Allow supplemental files of any type alongside the video, or keep the collection video-only.
• Publish and withdraw papers; only published papers with a ready video ever reach a viewer.
• Watch inline from the portal, the gallery and the app — streamed, with scrubbing, no download required.
• Feed the Paper Viewer's branded gallery, and the papers section of the Attendee App.

What it is

A designed public page listing exactly the abstracts whose acceptance has been communicated — never a staged decision the submitter has not seen. Each entry carries its authors, its sections, optional keywords and disclosures, and a stable display number. Where an abstract became a scheduled talk, a poster or an on-demand paper, its entry links to that destination, and the destination links back.

Presentation is template-driven: your organization keeps a library of viewer templates, an event publishes one instance from a template with per-event overrides, and templates can also be scoped to a single event. The same template machinery drives all three viewers.

What it changes

The abstract book stops being a frozen PDF. A late withdrawal disappears from the published collection the moment it is withdrawn, and the delegate searching on a phone gets the same answer as the committee's own records.

What you can do

• Build viewer templates in the organization library — branding, layout, header and footer — and publish one per event with overrides.
• Scope a template to one event, and promote it to the organization library when it earns reuse.
• Show or hide keywords, disclosures and individual abstract sections across the whole collection.
• Open and close the collection on its own window, independent of the call and of the event dates.
• Let delegates bookmark abstracts, and follow the entry through to the session, poster or paper it became.
• Switch on ask-the-author Q&A, with answers from the portal or the app and a moderation-by-author model.

What it is

A designed gallery of the published posters: searchable, filterable by track and category, grouped how you choose, with the poster file rendered inline and delegate questions one tap away. Presentation is template-driven — an organization library of gallery templates, one published instance per event with overrides, and event-scoped templates where a design belongs to a single meeting.

What it changes

The poster hall gets a digital twin that outlives the two hours it was physically up, and the gallery's window and audience are decisions you make here — separately from when authors may upload.

What you can do

• Build gallery templates in the organization library, scope one to a single event, and promote it when it earns reuse.
• Publish one live instance per event, from a template plus overrides — branding, layout, featured posters, sponsor banners.
• Open and close the gallery on its own window, and choose public or attendees-only access.
• Show posters inline — PDF, image or slides — with the supplemental files alongside.
• See view counts by day, by track, by category and by poster.

What it is

A designed gallery of the published on-demand papers. Each entry plays its video inline — streamed with scrubbing, on a phone or a desktop, no download — alongside the abstract text, the authors and any supplemental files. Templates live in the organization library or scoped to one event; each event publishes one live instance with overrides.

What it changes

The on-demand program gets a front door of its own instead of a folder of links, and the decision about who can watch, and when, is a setting rather than a distribution problem.

What you can do

• Build gallery templates in the organization library, scope one to a single event, and promote it when it earns reuse.
• Publish one live instance per event, from a template plus overrides.
• Open and close the gallery on its own window, and choose public or attendees-only access.
• Stream the video inline with scrubbing; offer the supplemental files alongside.
• Show only what is ready: published papers with a ready video, nothing else.

What it is

A branded web app served at /e/your-event. Delegates open a link or scan a QR code and are in. They can add it to a home screen, where it behaves like an installed app, and it keeps showing the agenda it has already loaded when the venue wifi gives out.

It is also where speakers and poster authors do self-service on their phones — checking their own presentations, uploading a replacement file, answering questions about their poster.

What it changes

The printed program stops being the source of truth, which means a room change at 9am is not wrong in five hundred people's hands by 9:05. Delegates build a personal schedule and get warned when their choices clash. Speakers stop needing a laptop to fix a file.

What you can do

Delegates get an agenda with a now-and-next strip, day picker and timeline or list view; session detail with speakers, files and sponsors; a faculty directory — everyone contributing content, speakers and abstract, poster and paper authors alike, each profile listing what they are presenting; poster, abstract and on-demand paper sections with Q&A and bookmarks where each applies; a personal schedule that flags overlapping bookmarks; cross-program search spanning sessions, faculty, abstracts and papers; a profile with communication preferences; and a feedback form.

Speakers, poster authors and paper authors additionally get "my presentations", "my posters" and "my papers" — upload or replace a file, read reviewer feedback, answer poster questions — all from the phone.

Staff get an allowlist manager and a QR-and-link panel on the Attendee App tab.

What it is

You write a questionnaire once and decide where it applies — to every session of a type, to a track, or to one specific session. Rostrum then generates a QR code into each affected session automatically, so the operational work is assigning the questionnaire, not producing codes.

What it changes

Evaluation stops being a paper form nobody fills in or a survey emailed a week later to people who have forgotten. The QR is on the room card at the moment the session ends, responses close on a schedule so late trickle does not skew the report, and the results are aggregated per question without anyone transcribing anything.

What you can do

• Build questionnaires from four question types, or start from an organization template.
• Assign a questionnaire to a session type, a track, or a single session — the most specific assignment wins.
• Have QR codes generated automatically into every affected session as you assign, and removed when you unassign.
• Download one session's QR, or every QR at once.
• Let delegates respond from the app or straight from the QR without navigating anywhere.
• Read a dashboard of response counts, per-question averages, answer distributions and free-text responses.
• Export the whole lot to Excel.

Precedence, stated once because it is the thing people get wrong: a session-level assignment beats a track assignment, which beats a session-type assignment. So a broad default plus a narrow override behaves the way you would hope.

What it is

A question channel per room, not per session — the room has a queue that runs all day and whoever is chairing moderates it. Delegates scan a QR code and type; the moderator works the queue on their own screen, and each question is tagged with whichever session was running in that room when it arrived.

What it changes

The roving microphone and the queue of people who wanted to make a statement rather than ask a question both disappear. Quiet delegates ask things. The chair sees everything before it is public and chooses the order.

What you can do

• Give every room its own question channel and printable QR code — one at a time, or all of them as a zip.
• Issue a moderator link per room that works without an account, and revoke or regenerate it.
• Star, mark answered, edit and hide questions. Edits are marked as edited rather than hidden.
• Filter the queue by all, unanswered, answered, starred or hidden, and sort oldest or newest.
• See which session each question arrived during.
• Export the filtered queue to Excel.
• Brand the public asking page with your own colors.

What it is

A managed fleet of screens rather than a slideshow. You design a template, create instances of it for particular rooms, and point any browser-capable screen at each instance's own web address. The screens report in, tell you when one has gone dark, and can be reloaded remotely.

What it changes

Printed room cards stop being wrong the moment anything moves. A session marked as running late shows as running late on the door without anyone editing the program. And when a screen dies at 7am on day two, you find out from an email rather than from a delegate.

Each type ships with a preset — a polished starting point with its own palette that stays fully editable. Beyond the type, a template is a stack of blocks you reorder, hide or remove: a header, the type's own content block, plus any of a sponsor banner, a scrolling ticker, a slideshow, a floating QR code and a live session-status panel. The header and the content block are structural and can be hidden but not deleted.

What you can do

• Design templates at organization level and reuse them across every event, or scope one to a single event and promote it later.
• Reorder blocks, control which session fields appear and where, and style each field individually.
• Brand with logos, background images, Google Fonts and a full color set, with a contrast warning when text would be hard to read.
• Create instances in bulk, up to fifty at a time, with names generated from the rooms.
• Override per screen — different wayfinding directions, a different slideshow, a different background — without touching the template.
• Pair a screen with a six-character code shown on the screen itself, so a technician needs no account.
• Let screens name themselves, and see the whole fleet with last-seen times.
• Reload any screen remotely.
• Push announcements at three severities, targeted by screen, by display type or by schedule.
• Keep a version history of every template, with revert.
• Run dayparting schedules so one screen changes role through the day.

Two session settings that change what screens show

Running late — set a delay in minutes on a session and screens shift every live calculation by it, flagging the session as running late without altering the program. Visible — clear it and the session disappears from signage entirely, including from the kiosk agenda.

Every scored or structured form in Rostrum — abstract scoring, submitter questions, content review, session feedback — comes from the same builder. Each questionnaire is typed by the job it does, and that type is fixed once it is created, because it determines where the questionnaire can be used.

Four question types

• Rating scale — the only type that produces a numeric score. At least two options.
• Multiple choice — reported as counts, never averaged into a score.
• Yes / no — also reported as counts.
• Free text — shown as written. The default for a new question.

Each question carries its text, an optional help line, and a required flag. Questions reorder freely.

Templates

Above the event sits a library of reusable templates belonging to your organization. Build your society's standard scoring form once, save it as a template, and start from it on every event afterwards. Rostrum also ships read-only starter templates for abstract scoring, review and session feedback, which you duplicate and adapt.

Templates are copied, never linked. Starting from one gives the event its own independent questionnaire, so editing it never disturbs the template or any other event that used it — a live event's scoring form should not change because somebody tidied the library.

Six of these are true product dependencies — one module needing another switched on, with the three viewers enforced at the switch itself. The rest are data prerequisites: the module works, it simply has nothing to show until the underlying content exists. The distinction matters when you are troubleshooting, because a missing dependency rarely produces an error message. The feature is just quietly absent.

Why it is not a module

Modules change what an event collects, publishes or runs. AI assistance changes none of that — it accelerates the staff work the platform already does, which is why it has no entry in the dependency matrix and no switch on the Products tab. Your administrator enables it for the organization; every surface below then appears where it is useful and nowhere else. When it is off, nothing is grayed out or advertised — the surfaces are simply absent, and every module in this catalog works exactly as described.

Where it appears

The contract

• Propose, review, apply. Every AI output is shown in full before anything is created; entries that fail validation are dropped and counted visibly.
• Staff permissions apply unchanged. Applying a proposal uses the same permission-checked actions as doing it by hand.
• No delegate-facing AI. Attendees, submitters and reviewers never interact with an AI surface.
• Budgeted. Each organization carries a monthly usage budget; at the cap, AI features rest until the next month and say so.