By default, the concurrent sessions in your schedule will display alphabetically. For example, if you have several workshops from 10:00 am to 11:00 pm, they will be shown alphabetically within that time period.
We understand you might want to display concurrent sessions in a specific order—perhaps to have sponsored sessions first, to list presentations by topic, or to list them in a numerical order you've set up. Using our ranking pro tip, you can specify the order of concurrent sessions.
Ranking Sessions
As stated above, without rank, Builder sorts sessions that start at the same time alphabetically as demonstrated below.
You may be fine with this order, or you may want to highlight a specific session, or make sure the sessions like "Noontime Activities" and "Afternoon Activities" show up first.
If your data is already in your guide, you'll need to export the data from your guide in order to make the changes discussed in this article. We typically suggest waiting to add rank until your content is mostly set—of course, you can continue to make edits and changes—because rank doesn't hold if you need to import an updated template; you have to add the rank information again.
If you've exported your data to set rank on concurrent sessions, open the export spreadsheet that was emailed to you. If you do not have any sessions in your guide yet, open the template you are working on or download a template.
The first step to add rank to sessions is to add a column between the “Description (Optional)” and “Allow adding to my schedule (Optional)” columns. Call the column “Rank”.
For sessions that start at the same time on the same date, you may add a number to the Rank column. Lower numbers will appear first in the guide. Note that sessions that end at different times can still be ranked, the sessions just need to have the same start time. Use “1” first, then “2”, etc. for however many concurrent sessions you have. You will begin at “1” again for a group of sessions beginning at a different time.
Please note that you will not see the rank numbers reflected in Builder, but the sessions will re-order according to the rank they've been given:
FAQs
What if I already have sessions in my guide?
If you have manually added sessions to your guide or you have imported a template and need to add ranking, you'll want to export your schedule data.
Once you export your data, you'll notice that the first column has Session ID's. Don't change this, as this is how Builder identifies which session is which. From here, you can add the rank column, number the sessions beginning at the same time, save, and re-import.
If you have to export the schedule data a second time after you've already added rank, be sure to have your initial ranking spreadsheet handy; the rankings do not hold on import, so you'll need to re-add the Rank column and input the order again before re-importing your data a second time.
Can I put rank on sessions that have the same start time, but a different end time?
You can. You can set the rank on any sessions with the same start time, even if the end times are different. For example, if you have three 10:00 am to 11:00 am sessions and three 10:00 am to 11:30 am sessions, you can use the rank option on all six of these sessions.
If I have multiple sets of breakout sessions in one day, how do I use ranking?
Great question. Let's say your first set of breakout sessions is at 10:00 am, your second set is at 3:00 pm, and there are six sessions in each set of breakouts. For the six 10:00 am sessions, label 1 through 6 in the rank column in the order you want the sessions to appear. Then, start at 1 again for the 3:00 pm sessions, labeling those 1-6 as well.