Collect materials from presenters

Speaker Readiness replaces the tracker spreadsheet and the mail merge. You define what every presenter owes you once, assign it, and the reminders go out on a cadence without you doing anything. Your job shrinks to approving what lands.

Readiness is included in every plan, Free included. Turn it on yourself: open your event, go to the Features tab, and enable Speaker & Session Readiness. The event then grows a Readiness tab.

On the Free plan you can track up to 10 presenters in one event; every paid plan tracks as many as your program has. Assigning a template to more presenters than your plan covers is refused with an upgrade prompt rather than half-applied.

If you'd rather not run it yourself, there's a concierge service — we map your data, build the templates, send the invites, and stay hands-on through your event. Rates by scale are on the Speaker Readiness page; the software is in your plan either way.

1. Build a template of requirements

1. Choose New template and give it a name — "Workshop presenters", say.
2. Choose Add requirement for each thing you need.
3. For each one, set a Label (the presenter reads this), a Kind, optional Help text, whether it's Required, and an optional Due date.

Kinds cover the shapes an ask can take: Short text, Long text, Yes/no confirmation, Single select, Multiple select, Date, URL, File upload, and Agreement. Label them however your event talks — a File upload labeled "Slides", a Short text labeled "Short bio".

One kind behaves differently. Internal task (organizer-only) is tracked by you and never shown to the presenter or included in their reminders — use it for "AV booked" or "contract signed", the items that belong on your list rather than theirs.

2. Assign it

Choose Assign… on the template, then pick who it applies to. Both Speakers and Sessions have a Select all speakers (N) control, so a template can land on your whole roster in one action.

Assigning creates one tracked item per requirement per person. Re-assigning later is safe — anything already assigned is skipped, so you can add a requirement to the template and push it out to everyone who already has it.

3. Set the deadlines you actually want

The due date on the template is the default. Open Details on any person to set a Due date override for them alone, then Apply due date — useful for the keynote you asked early, or the presenter you added late.

When someone genuinely doesn't owe you an item, Waive it. A waived item stops counting as outstanding, drops out of the reminder cadence, and is recorded in the activity log with who waived it. Un-waive puts it back.

4. Invite the presenters

Open Details on a speaker, enter their Presenter email under Presenter portal, and choose Send portal invite.

They get a personal link that works for 30 days, or until a week after the event ends, whichever is later. No account, no password, no app — see Submit your materials as a presenter for what they see, which you're welcome to forward.

Presenters can upload PDF, PowerPoint, Word, or images up to 250 MB, or paste a link (Google Slides, Canva, etc.).

That email address lives on the portal invite, not on the speaker's public record, so adding a presenter to your program and collecting from them are separate decisions.

Resend portal invite issues a fresh link and the link in their last email keeps working until its own expiry, so a resend never breaks a link someone already clicked. Revoke kills every link for that presenter at once.

5. Review what arrives

Open Details and you'll see each submission with Preview or a download link.

• Approve marks the item ready and locks it on the presenter's side.
• Reject… asks for a reason, which is required. The presenter sees that reason on their portal and can resubmit.

Rejecting doesn't send an email. If the deadline is close, tell them directly — the reminder cadence may already be spent.

Sharing approved materials with attendees

An approved submission can go on the agenda, where attendees see it on the session. Open Details, and any approved File upload or URL item carries a Share with attendees checkbox beside it. Tick it and the deck or link appears on that session — a quiet Slides hint on the agenda card, and a chip attendees can open in the session popover. Untick it and it leaves the agenda again.

It's off by default, and nothing is shared until you tick it. An event that shares nothing looks exactly as it did before.

A requirement can also share itself. Edit a File upload or URL requirement in a template and tick Share approved files with attendees automatically: every submission you approve for it then appears on the agenda in the same step, so approving and sharing aren't two chores. You can still untick Share with attendees on any single submission afterwards. A requirement set that way carries an Auto-shares badge in the template's requirement list.

The checkbox starts off on every requirement you build, and it isn't offered on the kinds that could never reach the agenda. The one requirement that arrives with it already on is Slides 16:9 in the Speaker pack template.

Only File upload and URL items can be shared at all. An Agreement, a Yes/no confirmation, and every text answer never can: the checkbox doesn't appear on them, so a signed release or a dietary note can't reach the agenda by accident.

Where a shared item lands depends on who it was assigned to. An item on a session shows on that session; an item on a speaker shows on every session that speaker is presenting.

Reject… on something you'd already approved un-approves it and un-shares it in the same step, so a deck you pull back leaves the agenda immediately.

Who can open them

Event settings → More options → Who can open shared materials is one event-wide choice, and it only matters once a submission is both approved and shared:

• People who joined this event — the default. The reader has to be signed in and on your attendee list. Someone browsing your public event page is told the slides exist and pointed at sign-in, rather than handed a link that fails.
• Anyone who can see the public event page — no account and no sign-in. Choose this only if your presenters expect their slides to be on the open web.

Turning Speaker & Session Readiness off on the Features tab withdraws all of it. Shared materials disappear from the agenda and their links stop working, including a link someone already has. Nothing is deleted — turn the feature back on and the same materials return.

What presenters can see about their sessions

Event settings → More options → What presenters can see about their sessions is one event-wide choice. Presenters open it from their personal link (and, when they have an account, from the session page). The default is How many people joined:

• Nothing — hide the list — presenters do not see who added their sessions, or how many people did.
• How many people joined — the default. Joined count, capacity if you set one, and waitlist count. No names.
• Names of people who joined — the counts, plus names of attendees who are visible in the attendee directory. Everyone else is counted but not named.

Presenters open this from their personal link. Names come only from attendees who are visible in the attendee directory; everyone else is counted but not named.

Notes presenters can send

Event settings → More options → Presenters can send notes to attendees who joined their session is on unless you turn it off. A presenter writes from their personal link. Everyone who joined that session gets an in-app notification, and the note stays on the session page under From the presenter. Turning it off hides the form. It does not send email.

The reminders, and what they cost you

Nothing. Each dated item is chased automatically:

1. Seven days before it's due.
2. Two days before it's due.
3. Once after the due date has passed.

Three moments per item, then it stops — nobody gets nagged forever, and nobody is locked out for being late. Presenters get one email per round listing everything outstanding, not one per item.

Reminders need a due date and a live portal invite, and they stop as soon as you approve or waive the item. An item with no due date is never chased, which is the usual reason a presenter hears nothing.

Finding the problems

The overview leads with Needs attention rather than a wall of green: items that are late, or that you've flagged as needing review, sorted by deadline. Chips above it count subjects, complete, open, and late. When there's nothing wrong it says so — "All caught up — nothing needs your attention."

One caveat: a submission sitting in Submitted, waiting on your approval, isn't in Needs attention unless it's also late. Filter the table to Open to find what's waiting on you.

Activity at the foot of the tab is the audit trail — invites, reissued and revoked links, approvals, rejections, waivers, and every automatic reminder, attributed to whoever did it (or to "Automatic").