Using the Conference Module in Drupal 6

The Details of installing a Drupal 6 Module will not be covered here. We will begin our guide after the Conference Module has been enabled in the given drupal website.

File Upload should be enabled.

This guide is divided into 3 parts

Conference Module Setup (Prerequisites)

We need to make 2 content types The details are shown below, the details are present in the Conference Administration Page

  1. Conference Contribution

    This will be the Type to accept Conference Papers so that authors can submit abstract and papers

    This can be created using the create button in Create Content Types

    After you click on "Create Conference contribution type" you should get the below mentioned content in your
    content types page.


  2. Conference Review

    This will be the Type to create reviews once the conference Managers have assigned reviews

    This can be created using the create button in Create Content Types


    After you click on "Create Conference review type" you should get the below mentioned content in your
    content types page.



Next we need to create user roles for doing Review, Author and Manage the Conference

  1. We need to create 3 Roles the details are given below (admin/user/roles)
    After which we need to assign proper permissions for each of the roles

  2. Permission settings (admin/user/permissions)
   Additionally give following permissions to immm2010 admin
  1. create conference_paper content
  2. create conference_review content
  3. delete any conference_paper content
  4. delete any conference_review content
  5. edit any conference_paper content
  6. edit any conference_review content
  7. edit field_keywords
  8. edit field_submission_type
  9. view field_keywords
  10. view field_paper_id
  11. view field_submission_type
  12. access content
  13. administer nodes
  14. delete revisions
  15. edit any conference_paper content
  16. edit any conference_review content
  17. revert revisions
  18. view revisions
  19. view uploaded files
  20. upload files

   Additionally give following permissions to immm2010 author   
  1. create conference_paper content
  2. delete own conference_paper content
  3. create revisions
  4. edit field_keywords
  5. edit field_submission_type
  6. view field_keywords
  7. view field_paper_id
  8. view field_submission_type
  9. revert revisions
  10. view revisions
  11. upload files
  12. view uploaded files

   Additionally give following permissions to immm2010 reviewer
    1. create conference_review content
    2. delete own conference_review content
    3. view field_keywords
    4. view field_paper_id
    5. upload files
    6. view uploaded files
TODO: Need to update latest permission list
Once done we need to set up the Conference settings from the administration page.

  1. Goto admin/settings/conference and set up the Conference Page

  2. After this set up the content types information as shown below
  3. Next We need assign proper roles for the Conference Settings

    (NOTE: As of now we do not have a mechanism to create roles automatically they have to be created manually)

    We use the roles that were created during the initial setup

  4. Now we need to enable node permissions for Conference Module, Click on enable node permissions and you should have a setting like below



  5. Once that is done set up the mail information, the body, subject and other information as per requirements

    Then Click on Save Configuration and save the changes, once done go again to the configuration page and confirm the changes done were correct.

Conducting A Conference

The conference is divided into 3 perspectives

  1. Mange the Conference
  2. Review Papers / Contributions
  3. Create Papers / Contributions

  1. Mange the Conference

    These settings decide how the conference has to be conducted, assigning reviewers to papers, accepting, rejecting or requesting modifications to papers. Typically we can just have one user dedicated as a conference manager.

    Mail notifications can be send out by the manager for various actions, the manager also can send out mail as reminders etc as well as put the conference to a close.

    It is the conference manager who takes the final decision on the paper based on the review done by the reviewer.

    1. Manage Conference Menu

      Once an user is created and assigned proper roles using, the manager will have the Manage Conference Menu

      Clicking on it will bring up the conference Management system on the right

    2. Manage Conference Home Page


      This page shows all the papers submitted, the name of the user, date of submission, the current reviewer, status and Assignment action.
      The manager can always read all reviews and papers. Hence has unrestricted access over the system.

    3. Create Assignment

      Click on create assignment and in the below screen you can assign a paper to a reviewer to a paper here

      Once you click you can assign the reviewer to the paper and along with this a mail will also be send to that reviewer about the assignment

      The default review status will be No.

    4. Edit Assignment

      On editing the assignment we have 3 options

      • Reassign to another reviewer keeping the old review
      • Reassign to another reviewer discarding the old review
      • Delete the current assignment

    5. Status Home

      We can view the status of the Conference as well as we can set various things like time limits or send reminder mails.

      1. Sending Reminder

        You can select the reviewers to which the mail has to be send to and clicking the send buttons sends the mail.

      2. Setting Time Limit

        We can set the time limit after which the authors will not be able to post anymore papers.

      3. Miscellaneous Settings

        It is advisable to check both options

    6. Decision Making for Conference

      Here the conference manager can take decision on the paper that have / have not been reviewed.

      1. Make Decision

        In the top part we can see the Paper and Abstract, the manager can write the feedback on the paper and make the appropriate decision, make sure that the Inform author my email to ensure that a mail is send to the author.

        Here all the reviews made for all the revisions of the paper is shown to the manager.

        This section defines the mail body and the message that needs to be send to the author when the decision information is to be send.

      2. Decision Status

        Once a decision is made the mail is send the decision state is shown in the Decision Home Page

        At any point in time the Manager has the right to change the decision taken on a paper.

    7. Managing revisions of a paper.

      A new feature added to the current version of conference module is the ability to view and manage revisions for a given paper. This functionality does not change the previous mentioned features in the current system.

      The manage conference has a new Revisions Tab and an new column that shows whether a new revision has been created for the current paper.

      On clicking the Revisions we get to see all the revisions of papers and the persons who reviewed them as well as the log of why the revision was created.


      In this example we see all the revisions created for "Sample Abstract 1", the reviewer who did the review for that particular revision and the Reason for that revision.

  2. Review Papers / Contributions

    This is usually done by a reviewer role in our case this will be "immm2010 reviewer", the reviewer can see the paper assigned to him / her and write a review on that.

    Here we can see 2 papers were assigned to the reviewer and the status of review is shown.

    The reviewer is able to do 2 things on a given paper, create a new review and / or view or edit review

    1. Create Review

      Here the reviewer can write a review on the given paper

      The reviewer can set comments of the author and the manager of the paper, and can optionally send mail to the Manager about creation / modification of review.

      Once The second part is the body of the detailed review.

      After this is filled in the reviewer can save the review.

    2. View / Edit Review

      The view / edit view is shown both to the manger and the reviewer. On clicking the edit menu one can go into the edit mode and the comments etc can be updated.

  3. Author Papers / Contribution

    This is the method of creating conference contribution, this is available to the author roles "immm2010 author" in this case.

    The user can type in the body and title in this area.


    After this the user has the upload the Abstract as a PDF or doc file and then save the paper.

    A notification will be send to the manager regarding the submission of the paper.

    Once done the paper is shown to the user.



    Viewing the Contribution

    On clicking "My Papers" link in the navigation menu, the author should be able to see all the papers submitted and their status

    The status and comments etc is shown for each of the submitted paper

    For authors if a paper modification is requested by the Admin, the author needs to create a revision of the existing paper. This revision feature will be enabled for the author only if the admin has requested modification. Once a revision has been made to the paper the feature will be disabled until a modification is requested by the admin again. Of course this is under the assumption that the paper is reviewed before the admin makes the decision.


    For a revision the Create Revision is checked and the log message is filled up. Once done the user can view his / revisions by clicking the revisions tab.

User Management and User Profiles

The user registration form has been updated with, more detailed information collection options, here is a sample screenshot of the registration form
(NOTE: This feature is not available in the current dev, but we will be releasing it soon)

All the * Fields are required fields.

A sample screenshot of a user profile is given below.



Another feature is to manage user and permissions by the Conference Administrator. This is provided by a new user management system, accessible through the following link through the left side.

Here is the user management interface avaialable to the conference administrator

The conference manager is able to filter out the users as per requirement and edit roles accordingly, whenever the user requests a change in role a mail will be send to the conference administrator regarding the request and the admin will have to take care of granting the roles.