Acceptd Program Wizard

A step-by-step guide to building and publishing a program with the Self-Service Program Setup wizard.

This guide walks Account Owners through creating a new program, or editing an existing one, using Acceptd's guided, seven-step Program Wizard. It replaces the older workflow of editing separate settings in various locations.

Overview

The Program Wizard is a single guided flow that covers everything a program needs, from its details to a live preview before publishing.

The Wizard has seven steps, shown as a progress bar at the top of the screen:

1. Program Details
2. Eligibility
3. Stages
4. Application Questions
5. Recommendation Questions
6. Adjudication
7. Preview

You can click any step in the progress bar to jump to it directly, with one exception: Program Name, dates/deadlines, and guidelines/confirmation message in Step 1 must be completed before you can move on to another step. Acceptd autosaves your work as you go (look for the “Saved at [time]” indicator near the top-right or bottom-right corners of the screen).

Before You Start: Enable the Wizard

The Program Wizard is currently a beta feature and must be turned on for your organization before it appears.

1. Go to the Organization tab → Organization Settings dropdown.
2. Scroll to the bottom to find the Beta Features section.
3. Check the box for Self-Service Program Setup. The change takes effect immediately.

Organization Settings → Beta Features → Self-Service Program Setup

Starting the Wizard

There are two ways to open the wizard:

• Create a new program: start a brand-new program from a blank Program Details form.
• Edit an existing program: open any program from the Programs list and choose to edit it. The same seven-step wizard appears, pre-filled with that program's current settings.

Either way, you land on Step 1.

Step 1 (Program Details) when starting a brand-new program

Step 1: Program Details

This step configures a program's identity, dates, capacity, and applicant-facing guidelines and confirmation message. It is organized into four sections.

Program Information

Set the program's core identity:

• Program Name: The name applicants will see.
• Cycle: The season or year the program runs (e.g. “2026-27”).
• Discipline: Acceptd Directory categories such as Dance, Music, Theatre, Visual Art, etc.
• Timezone for Dates: Controls how deadline times are interpreted and displayed.
• Category-Specific Fields: Dance Interests, Dance Type, Music Interests, Instruments/Voice Type, and similar fields that appear based on the discipline selected.

Application Dates

Set when the program accepts submissions:

• Application Opens: Date and time applications open.
• New Application Cutoff (optional): Applicants can't start a new application after this date. In-progress applications can still be continued and completed.  
• Visible Deadline: The deadline advertised to applicants; leave blank to display “Rolling.”
• Hard Deadline: The final system cutoff. Submissions are no longer permitted after this date and time. The hard deadline is not visible to applicants.  
• Max Applications Per User: Number of applications one applicant can submit to a single program.
• Program Capacity: Total number of submissions a single program can receive. To prevent a limit, check Unlimited.

Program Guidelines

Guidelines are the instructions applicants see before applying.

• Guideline Templates: Reuse a saved template from your organization's library, or create and save a new one from the Add Template dialog (Templates / New Template tabs).
• Custom Guidelines: Add extra instructions specific to this program using the rich-text editor.

Program Details — Application Dates and Guideline Templates

Tip: Guideline templates are saved at the organization level, so a template you build once can be reused across future programs.

Confirmation Message

Edit the message applicants see immediately after a successful submission.

Step 2: Eligibility

Eligibility requirements are statements applicants must acknowledge before they can start an application. Including them is optional.

1. Click + Add Requirement to add a new statement.
2. Use the up/down arrows to drag and reorder requirements, or the pencil and trash icons to edit or delete one.
3. Click Save, or move on using the Stages → button at the bottom of the page.

4. 

Eligibility Requirements — reorder, edit, or delete acknowledgment statements

Tip: Reordering an eligibility requirement affects every program it's assigned to, not just the one you're editing — the wizard flags this with a warning banner.

Step 3: Stages

Program Stages define your program's workflow, or the path an application follows from submission to decision.

Each stage has a type:

• Application: Applicant-facing steps, such as the initial application, deposit payments, registration details, etc.
• Adjudication: Review steps, such as Prescreening, Live Auditions, or an applicant being categorized as “Accepted,” “Waitlisted,” or “Denied.”

Use +Add Stage to add a new stage, drag and drop to reorder the workflow, or use the trash icon to remove a stage. Reordering stages will affect every program that shares those stages.

Application stages can also have their own guidelines, confirmation message, and deadlines that override the values set in Step 1 — useful for a deposit or registration stage that needs different instructions or dates than the main application.

An eight-stage workflow example with Application and Adjudication stage types

Step 4: Application Questions

This step builds the questions that applicants will answer, organized by stage (e.g. Application, Registration, etc).

1. Click +Add Question on a stage tab to open the question picker.
2. Choose from the Question Bank (reusable questions already defined for your organization) or select New Question to build one from scratch.
3. Open a question's Edit icon to configure Answer Options (active, disabled, or archived choices), mark it Required or Blind (hidden from adjudicators), and set up Conditional Logic so a question only appears based on a previous answer. This works like the "parent/child" question relationships: the child question only displays when its parent question's answer meets the condition you set.
4. Admin Questions cannot be created by Account Owners from this table. Reach out to your Account Relations Specialist (ARS) to have Admin Questions added, or add the question to the Application Questions table instead.

Add Question — pick from the shared Question Bank or create a new question

Tip: Questions with conditional logic are visually indented and labeled Conditional in the question list, so you can see at a glance which fields depend on another answer.

Step 5: Recommendation Questions

Recommendation Questions are sent to recommenders (teachers, mentors, employers, etc.) to fill out on an applicant's behalf.

Similar to application questions, recommendation questions support required fields, file uploads (e.g. a letter of recommendation), rating/choice questions, and conditional logic. For example, showing “Subject you teach” only after a recommender selects a particular recommendation type.

Recommendation Questions — required, conditional questions for the Application stage

Step 6: Adjudication

Adjudication settings control how reviewers score and comment on applications. This can be configured separately for each review stage (Prescreen, Round 1, Live Auditions, etc, shown as sub-tabs).

Stage Settings

• Enable Discussion Thread: Lets reviewers leave free-text feedback.
• Show Recommendation Buttons: Yes / Maybe / No buttons to indicate final thoughts about a submission. If Yes / Maybe / No are not preferred, the labels are customizable by stage! A popular alternative is Accept / Waitlist / Deny.
• Ratings Description: Optional text field, often used to provide instructions for adjudicators above the rating scales.

Rating Scales

Click + Add Rating Scale to add scoring criteria to the program. These can vary per stage if desired!  

Each scale has a type (e.g. Enumeration, Slider, Textual Enumeration, Yes/No, or Only Notes) and can additionally display a follow-up free text field for notes about a specific rating. Numeric rating scales can be included or excluded from a composite average score calculation.

Adjudication → Prescreen — recommendation labels and rating scales

Step 7: Preview

The final step, Preview, lets you review different perspectives of the program.

• View Selector: Toggle between the form as seen by an Applicant, an Adjudicator, and a Recommender.

Tip: Before publishing, submit a test application to see the program from an applicant's perspective. See the guide on creating a test applicant account for step-by-step instructions.

• Desktop / Mobile: Toggle to check how the form renders on a mobile device versus a computer.

When everything looks correct, click Publish (if the program is in a Draft state) to make the program live (or Unpublish to take a published program offline for edits). The header shows the program's status as “Draft” in yellow or “Published” in green next to its name.

Complete your updates and email us at least 1 week prior to your desired open date as we need to check your account before it opens to ensure accuracy.

Preview & Publish — Applicant View of the Applicant Information step

Additional Tips

• Autosave: Any changes made in the wizard save automatically; the timestamp next to the Save button confirms the last save.
• Editing many programs at once: You can select multiple programs from the Programs list and use Group Actions → Override to apply the same Program Basics, Eligibility Requirements, Application Questions, Recommendation Questions, or Adjudication and Ratings settings to all of them at once. This is useful for programs that should have synchronized settings.
• Shared content: Since guideline templates, eligibility requirements, and stages can be shared across programs, editing or reordering a shared item updates it everywhere. The wizard will warn you before this happens.
• A program does NOT need to be reverted to Draft state to make edits. You can open a Published program to make changes at any time. Your progress will save automatically!