Rostrum divides people into those who run the event and those who take part in it. The two groups get entirely different homes in the application, and most people never see the other side.
Staff see the event dashboard
Managers, coordinators and committee staff sign in and land on a list of their events. Opening one gives the event dashboard: a left-hand rail of tabs — Overview, Sessions, Presentations, Speakers, Agenda, Team, Products, and one tab for each product you have switched on.
Which tabs a person sees depends on their permissions and on which products are enabled. A coordinator with no signage permission never sees the Beacon tab even when Beacon is on; nobody sees it when Beacon is off.
Participants see the hub
Submitters, speakers, poster authors and reviewers sign in and land on the participant hub instead. It shows what they personally owe the event: a to-do list with deadlines, a card per event they are involved in, and a record of what has been emailed to them.
The hub is built from ownership, not permission. You appear there because you hold a draft, a presentation, a poster or a review assignment — not because someone granted you access to a screen.
Attendees see the Attendee App
Delegates are a third group again, and they never touch either of the above. They get the mobile web app at the event's own address. See Chapter 19.
The roles you will actually assign
Rostrum ships twelve roles, but only a handful are ever handed out by a person. The rest are granted automatically the moment somebody becomes a speaker, an author or a reviewer.
| Role | Applies to | How it is granted | What it is for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Organization Manager | Whole organization | By an administrator | Runs the society's events, its people, its contact book. Can create events and assign roles. |
| Event Manager | One event | By an org manager or admin | Runs one event end to end: program, products, communications, review, selection. |
| Event View Only | One event | By an org manager or admin | Read-only oversight — a board member or sponsor liaison who should see but not touch. |
| Reviewer | One event | Automatic | Granted the moment a review is assigned; removed when the last assignment goes away. |
| Abstract Submitter | One event | Automatic | Granted when a person creates their first abstract draft for that event. |
| Speaker | One presentation | Automatic | Granted when someone is set as presenter. Carries the right to upload that presentation's files. |
| Co-Presenter | One presentation | Automatic | Granted when added as a co-presenter. File editing is a per-person switch. |
| Poster Presenter | One poster | Automatic | Granted to poster authors; carries poster file upload. |
| Attendee | One event | Automatic | Granted on first sign-in to the Attendee App for that event. |
An event manager can build the team for their own event — adding and removing any of the event-level roles above. Three limits apply, and all three are deliberate:
- System roles are administrator-only. Nobody but an administrator can grant them, whatever other permissions they hold.
- Organization roles require an organization manager. An event manager cannot promote somebody to run the whole society.
- Only on their own event. A manager of one event does not see another event's Team tab at all — it is absent rather than refused.
The role list offered only ever contains event-level roles, so there is no way to grant something out of scope by accident.
Because Speaker, Reviewer and author roles are granted automatically, you rarely maintain a "who is in this event" list by hand. Assign a presenter to a presentation and the access follows. Remove them and it is withdrawn.