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Collecting Recommendation Letters (External Letters)

Ask referees, teachers or managers to submit a letter or form for a participant's application.

With External Letters, you can collect recommendation letters or short forms from people outside your program, such as referees, supervisors, teachers or guardians. They fill in a form you design, and their answers are attached to the participant's submission.

1. Turn it on

  1. Open the round and go to Settings → Submission Settings.

  2. Turn on Enable external letters request.

  3. Click Save Settings.

An External Letters area now appears for the round, with four sections: Letter Form Builder, Settings, Messages and Received Letters.

2. Build the letter form

  1. Open Letter Form Builder.

  2. Enter a Letter title. Recipients, admins and evaluators all see it.

  3. Build the form. It starts with Your full name, Participant name and Relationship to participant, and you can add text, rating, file upload and Signature fields, or click Use template.

3. Choose recipients and rules

Letter requests go to the people a participant names in their own submission. So first, make sure your submission form asks for each referee's name and email. Then open Settings:

  • Recipients selection: choose the form fields that hold each receiver's Name (optional) and Email (required). Use Add another receiver for more than one referee.

  • Require signup to fill in the letter form

  • Allow form editing after submission

  • Show received letters to evaluators

  • Mark all letters as accepted by default

  • Send letter requests while the submission is still a draft

  • Requests deadline: for example Match round deadline.

Click Save Settings.

4. Set up the emails

In Messages you can edit five emails, each with its own Auto Send switch:

  • External Letter Request

  • External Letter Reminder

  • External Letter Received Confirmation

  • External Letter Notice (Participant)

  • External Letter Received Confirmation (Participant)

Use short codes such as ['receiver-name'], ['participant-name'] and ['form-url'] to personalize each email.

Tip: we recommend leaving CC the participant off.

5. Review letters

Received Letters lists Completed and Drafts, with the receiver, the main submission and the status. Select letters to Accept, Reject, Return to pending, Send email, tag, add a note, or Export.

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