Session Plan
Run the automatic planner that proposes a rooms × time-slots grid from your accepted content, review the proposed assignments and any unplaced sessions, then publish the plan onto your sessions. Includes a "before you plan" readiness checklist.
Purpose
The Session Plan sub-tab is the payoff of the planning pipeline. It reads your accepted content counts (live), lets you choose a planning mode and defaults, then runs the planner to propose a grid of sessions across rooms and time slots. You review the proposed grid plus a capacity summary and an unplaced-sessions list, and when you're happy you publish the plan to write the assignments onto your sessions.
When you use it
Use this sub-tab once your venue, rooms, and time slots are in place and acceptances are decided. Run the planner as many times as you like — only publishing commits the result. Re-running after publishing re-proposes only the sessions that aren't already confirmed.
Walkthrough
- 1
Open the Conference Leadership Console, select your conference, open the Presentation System tab, and click the Session Plan sub-tab.
- 2
Check the status banner. If it says no Session Plan exists, create one first (adding a time slot does this), or run the planning backfill.
- 3
Read the Before you plan checklist — it confirms rooms and time slots are defined, shows how much schedulable content exists across all programs, and warns if any accepted papers have no presentation format (those won't be scheduled). It's guidance only; you can still run the planner.
- 4
Review the Accepted content (live) counts, then pick a Mode — Mode A (By dates): you set the number of days and the planner computes the rooms needed; or Mode B (By rooms): you set the room inventory and the planner computes the slots needed.
- 5
Adjust the Defaults (conference days, working minutes per day, slot / paper / keynote minutes), then click Run planner.
- 6
Review the Capacity summary, the Proposed grid (rooms × slots with assigned sessions), and the unplaced list if any sessions couldn't be placed.
- 7
When the grid looks right, click Publish plan and confirm. This writes each session's room, time slot, and date/time, sets it to CONFIRMED, and flips the plan to PUBLISHED.
If sessions appear in the unplaced list, add more compatible rooms or time slots (or pin those sessions) and re-run the planner. Publishing skips any assignment whose time slot is missing.
Tips
- Running the planner is non-destructive — it only stores a proposal. You can run, tweak inputs, and run again freely before publishing.
- After publishing, confirmed sessions stay put on a re-run; the planner only re-proposes the unconfirmed ones, so you can lock in good placements and keep iterating on the rest.
- The accepted counts are derived live from your submissions and invited submissions, so they reflect your latest decisions every time you open the tab.
- If the Before you plan checklist warns that some accepted papers have no presentation format, fix those papers first — otherwise they're silently left out of the grid. The planner includes accepted content from every program (main, workshops, industry, and any custom program), not just one.