There are essentially 3 phases to running your call for entry with ArtCall.org's professional art call management submission system. We'll briefly discuss the each phase of running your call, and outline a couple of the more common features of our entry management system. See our FAQ page for some commonly asked questions. Remember that inside of the free demo account there are over 15 video tutorials to walk you through each step and feature!
When a user wishes to enter your call, they simply click the 'register' button on your site, and sign up. You can specify any information that is required for user registration, and also optionally charge a registration fee. Upon registering, the user can now log in to your call and submit entries. They can only submit during the timeframe you've specified, and only submit a certain amount of entries that you've allotted each user. You can also specify any required fields to go along with a submission, along with an optional user submission fee as well. Users can submit up to 3 accompanying images with each entry. Images on entries are automatically saved and resized into 3 sizes: 1920px (print resolution), 1080px (screen resolution), 100px (thumbnail resolution).
Once a user has entered a submission into your call, they will be notified as to the status of their entry when you (the admin user) send out the notification emails.
Once your submission period is over, the jury process begins. The admin user can grant any regular user account 'juror' privileges, thus in order to create a 'juror' account, the account must be first created like a regular user account. A juror account has the ability to view all of the submissions from the call. They (according to the settings set by the admin user) use a 5 star rating system to jury each of the submissions. You can have as many jury users as you like, as the votes between all of the juror users get averaged for each submission. Jurors can also leave optional 'notes' on each entry. The admin has the ability to hide the user details from the jurors, making the process anonymous. The admin user can see each juror’s votes on each submission, and sort the entries by average vote, category, and many other criteria.
Once the jurors have finished voting on the submissions, the administrator user would then mark and notify the users of the entry status. The admin user can mark submissions as either 'in' or 'out' according to the average vote threshold. Once the submissions have been marked as in or out, the admin user can send a customizable notification email to the entrants notifying them as to the status of the entry. This notification email could then also have instructions on physically submitting the artwork to your show. The administrator user has full control over the system and can see call statistics, generate reports, print name tags, create CSV files, and set up all of the options for the call.
There are a few other handy features that our system has which we'll briefly discuss in this section.
The attendant user is a user who only has access to mark entries as 'received'. This user account is handy if you have people who are physically receiving submissions at your show. You can mark them as they come in, and see which user received the entry. They also have the ability to print page receipts.
A page receipt is generated for each submission. This receipt is very handy for keeping track of the submissions as they come into the show. The top half is commonly taped to the back (or kept alongside the submission), while the bottom half is kept by the entrant. Each portion has all the important information about the submission and user. When the show is over and the entrants come to claim their artwork, they will bring this claim receipt with them. Usage of these receipts is completely optional, but most shows have found them very helpful.
There is a simple name tag generation print view which will print a page which can then be cut with name tags which can be mounted alongside each submission. You could also use the generated CSV file to mail-merge your own design should you wish.
You can generate a CSV export of all of your submission data to go along with your call. Once generated you can custom sort the data in any way, and store it for backup.
Your call's site features an optional public web gallery. This page is 'un-published' by default, should you want to have a public web gallery, simply publish this page under the 'Pages' tab of your call. All juried in entries will then appear in this gallery. Any visitor to your website can then see the submissions. The gallery works great on desktop, tablet, and mobile phones and is touch/swipe friendly too!
As mentioned, you can also charge your users a registration or submission fee for their entries into your call. We handle all of the checkout directly on our site, so the user never has to leave, and all of the payments go directly into your payment processor. This allows you to issue refunds, request payments, and have full control over your funds. All transactions are subject to credit card processing fees outlined in your Admin account panel.
You can customize any of the content on your websites pages, along with the sidebar and menu items. The entire website is protected over https (SSL) and is also tablet and mobile friendly. You can even run your call on a custom domain name should you choose.
There are plenty more little options and customizations you can make to your website and call for entry, so log into your free demo account and play around a bit. We're sure you'll find it easy to use. This system literally saves shows hundreds of hours of manual work!