Contents

• Overview
• Unpublish a Program Cycle
• Limitations After Unpublish 
  • Program Cycle Accessibility
  • Editing Limitations
  • Function Limitations

Overview

This article provides information and instructions on how administrators can unpublish a program cycle, as well as the impacts and limitations of taking that action.

Unpublish a Program Cycle

When changes or edits are necessary to a published program cycle, the program cycle must be taken offline, or unpublished to make the changes.  

To unpublish a program cycle:

1. Navigate to the appropriate program.

2. Select Program Settings.

3. Select All Award Cycles.

4. Select Open to the desired award cycle.

5. Select Workflow Builder.

6. Select the Unpublish button in the upper right corner.

7. A popup appears asking to confirm the unpublishing of the program cycle.

8. A notification briefly appears on the screen verifying that the program cycle has been unpublished.

9. After a program cycle is unpublished, Next notes that the workflow is paused as well as the date and time when it occurred. 

Limitations After Unpublish

Editing or changing the contents of forms or other elements of a program cycle’s workflow after unpublishing is limited, which is why thorough testing is strongly recommended for all program cycles before they are initially published.  (Please see the article titled Test Mode vs. Publish and the article titled Test Mode Best Practices for more information.)

Still, there are times when changes or edits to a published program cycle’s workflow or components are needed, and it is important to understand the limitations of the edits that can be made.

Program Cycle Accessibility

When a program cycle is unpublished during an intake round, applicants are still able to complete intake forms, but they will not be able to submit them; the system will save them as a draft and provide notification once the program is re-published.  The screenshot below shows an example of how this messaging appears to applicants.

Further, any applications saved will not display to administrators until the program cycle is re-published.  

If the program cycle is unpublished during a review round, reviewers will still have access to their review assignments and are not affected by the unpublishing of the program cycle.

Editing Limitations

When a program cycle is unpublished, the following cannot be edited:

• Edits to eligibility criteria are not permitted.
• Intake Forms:
  • Questions cannot be removed from the intake form but they can be hidden.
  • Once the configuration of a form has been set (with or without sections), the structure cannot change after the program has been published, even if the program is unpublished.
  • Form sections that have been published cannot be deleted.
  • Form fields that are configured to be part of a calculation cannot be edited in terms of their calculated values.
• The intake form submission deadline time zone cannot be changed.
• The workflow cannot be changed.

Function Limitations

• After the review round has started, the intake round cannot be reopened, even if the program is unpublished.
• After the review round has started and the review assignments are made, if there are changes to reviewers, the assignments have to be updated manually and individually; unpublishing a program cycle does not reassign submissions to reviewers.