Settings

Purpose

The Settings tab is the single place where you edit your conference's core configuration. From here you control the basic facts (name, dates, venue, subject areas), how attendees experience the event, how proceedings are published, when authors may withdraw papers, whether the conference is publicly visible, its public web address, its branding, and high-level actions like cloning or deleting the conference.

Each section has its own sub-tab. Save Changes sits under the sections it writes (Basic Information, Submission Settings' required number of authors, Proceedings & Publishing, Review Settings, Withdrawal Policy, Website, and Logo & Brand Color) and saves all of them at once, so edits made on one sub-tab are kept while you visit another. The predefined categories in Submission Settings and People Directory save as you go, and Author Declarations and Quick CFP have their own Save button; Conference Actions holds no fields to save. The Conference status buttons save on their own, after you confirm.

When you use it

• Right after creating a conference, to fill in details and pick a public URL slug.
• Whenever the dates, venue, description, or subject areas change.
• When the conference's person of contact changes, or their phone or address.
• When you're ready to make the conference public, by asking to switch its Status from Draft to Open. The first time, a super admin approves it.
• To set the proceedings publisher (e.g. IEEE) and volume front-matter.
• To set the maximum submissions per author in the whole conference.
• To define your paper withdrawal policy (Full-tier conferences).
• To set brand colors, banner, and logo.
• To clone the conference for a new edition, or to delete it.

Walkthrough

1. 1

   Open the Conference Leadership Console, pick your conference, and select the Settings tab. A row of sub-tabs runs across the top, one per section, and Basic Information opens first. Click a sub-tab to show that section. A long section scrolls inside the page, so the sub-tabs and Save Changes stay in view.

2. 2

   At the top of Basic Information, the Conference status row has four buttons: Draft (hidden from the public), Open (public and accepting submissions), Closed (public, submissions closed) and Archived (a past event). The current status is filled in color. Click another button, read what it does, and confirm with Change to …. The change is saved right away, so Save Changes is not needed for it. A Draft conference is not listed under All Conferences.

   The first time you choose Open, the dialog offers Send request instead. The conference stays in Draft and the super admins get an email and a notification. A note under the buttons shows the request while it waits, with Withdraw request to take it back. When a super admin approves, the conference becomes Open and you get an email and a notification. If they decline, it stays in Draft, their note appears under the buttons, and you can ask again. After that first approval you can move between the four statuses without asking again. Then fill in the details: conference name, acronym, year, city, country, start and end dates, timezone, and a short description. Name, acronym, and both dates are required, and the acronym must be unique for the chosen year (the field checks this for you).

   City suggests real cities as you type, the same way as when you created the conference. Picking a suggestion also fills in the Country; you can still type a city that is not listed.

   When you set the Start Date and the end date is empty or falls before it, the End Date is filled in with the day after the start. An end date that is already on or after the start is left alone.

   A virtual conference has no city or country. Set the Conference Mode below to Virtual only and those fields disappear. Anything that would show a place (conference cards, console headers, your public pages and the submission portal) then reads Virtual Conference instead.

3. 3

   Pick one or more Subject / Research Areas from the checklist, or type a custom area in the box; custom areas are merged into the list when you save. These drive cross-conference filtering on the public CFP directory, so adding at least one is recommended.

4. 4

   Below the subject areas, Person of Contact shows the contact you entered when you created the conference: full name, email, phone and address. This is the conference's legal and payment contact, used for refund disputes, payment issues and the Platform Services Agreement. Edit any of these fields and click Save Changes. Address line 1 suggests addresses as you type, and picking one fills in the city, state, postal code and country.

   The Institutional email is shown with its status, Verified with the date or Not verified. It confirms the conference's affiliation, so it can't be edited here; contact AirBalloon support to change it.

5. 5

   Set the Proceedings Publisher if you publish proceedings. Choosing a publisher reveals its specific fields. IEEE asks for the PDF eXpress ID, eCF Conference ID, and exact publication title; other publishers ask for series, volume number/title, copyright form URL, and author instructions. This setting is conference-wide and replaces the per-program publisher. The default is AirBalloon Publish Service (pick None / self-published if you don't publish proceedings): AirBalloon publishes the proceedings, and authors sign its copyright transfer and publication agreement electronically at camera-ready. With AirBalloon there is no copyright form URL, volume number, ISBN or ISSN to enter; AirBalloon assigns them when it publishes the volume; you only set the volume title and editors.

6. 6

   Choose the Conference Mode: In-person only, Virtual only, or Hybrid. This is the single source of truth read by registration, the presentation system, the schedule, and other modules.

   Virtual only also removes the venue: no city or country is asked for, and every card and header shows Virtual Conference. Hybrid keeps its venue, because a hybrid event has one; attendees pick in-person or virtual when they register. You can switch modes at any time; a city and country you already entered are kept, just not shown while the conference is virtual.

7. 7

   On Review Settings, set Maximum submissions per author in this conference (co-authors included): how many submissions one person may appear on across every program, as submitter or co-author. The default is 10, and 0 means no limit. Every submission counts except drafts and those that were withdrawn or deleted, so rejected and accepted ones still take a slot. A co-author over the limit stops the submit. This is the only conference level limit: the limits per type (Paper, Abstract, Proposal) and per category are set in each program's Submission Config. Limits are not retroactive: submissions already made stay.

8. 8

   (Full tier) Set Max papers per reviewer: the most papers one committee member reviews in a program, counting every submission type (default 8, from 1 to 50). Every program uses it unless it sets its own in Settings, Review Config, and sub-programs follow their Multi-Program; the programs that set their own are listed under the field, since a change here does not reach them. A member's own Max Papers in a program's Committee comes first.

9. 9

   (Full tier) Review the Review Settings note. Review mode is configured per program in the PC Chair Console, not here. Then set the Paper Withdrawal Policy: choose a policy type (Permissive, Deadline-Based, Strict, or Public Record), an optional deadline and consequences, tracking/limits, whether PC Chairs may override per program, and an optional message shown to authors before they confirm a withdrawal.

10. 10

    Set your Conference Website URL. Use Option A to point at your own custom domain, or Option B (recommended) to claim a hosted URL slug. The slug must be unique and use only lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens; the field validates and confirms availability as you type.

    Option A wins when it is filled in. If you enter an external website URL, that is where Visit website links send people, ahead of a site you uploaded and ahead of the website builder. Clear the field to fall back to whichever of those you are using. The URL must start with http:// or https:// and name a full domain; an incomplete one is rejected when you save rather than quietly sending visitors nowhere.

    Your conference's own pages (submission, schedule, announcements) always stay on the hosted address (/c/your-slug/…), whichever option you pick, so links you have already shared keep working.

11. 11

    On the Logo & Brand Color sub-tab, set brand colors, banner image, and logo. These are saved together with the rest of the form.

12. 12

    Click Save Changes. A confirmation appears on success, and the updated details propagate to the console header and conference card. If a field needs fixing, the tab jumps to the sub-tab that holds it.

    If you changed the start or end date, the calculated Important Dates (registration, submission and presentation materials) move with them. A note under the date fields lists the dates that were Recalculated and those Kept because they were set by hand. Click Recalculate the kept dates too to move those as well, or review them later in the Important Dates tab.

13. 13

    Use Conference Actions when needed: Clone Conference copies all settings, programs, and committee structure into a new conference; Delete Conference permanently removes the conference and its data.

14. 14

    Quick CFP: pick the conference card, or any program's card, to check and edit the short call listed in public CFPs and on the AirBalloon homepage. The conference card uses the conference's basic information and the point of contact email. See Quick CFP.

Tips