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 programme 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
- Choose New template and give it a name — "Workshop presenters", say.
- Choose Add requirement for each thing you need.
- 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 labelled "Slides", a Short text labelled "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. No account, no password, no app — see Submit your materials as a presenter for what they see, which you're welcome to forward.
That email address lives on the portal invite, not on the speaker's public record, so adding a presenter to your programme 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.
The reminders, and what they cost you
Nothing. Each dated item is chased automatically:
- Seven days before it's due.
- Two days before it's due.
- 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").