Create a subsession

A parent session is the block on your agenda. A subsession is a segment inside it — three papers in one poster session, five talks in a lightning round, the individual presentations within a full-day workshop. Subsessions are grouped under the parent but have their own titles, speakers, times, and details, and a subsession speaker sees the parent and its other subsessions in their portal.

Training video · 5:36Abstracts: collect, review, and build sessions from themWhat an abstract is and how it differs from a session, the Submission Setup choice that makes a form collect abstracts, the Abstracts list and its status queues, reviewing an abstract, Create a subsession (one subsession per abstract under a new or existing parent) and Merge into one abstract, the Linked badge and Connections tab, the Agenda content setting, and the Abstracts tab an author sees in their portal.

1. 0:02Abstracts and sessions
2. 0:36What the form collects
3. 1:15Abstract Information
4. 1:44The Abstracts list
5. 2:19Reviewing an abstract
6. 2:52Create a subsession
7. 3:28Confirm
8. 3:46Linked abstracts
9. 4:24Agenda content
10. 4:46What the author sees
11. 5:12Next steps

Training video · 4:32Sessions, scheduling and the agendaCreating sessions by hand, the session editor, subsessions, and building the schedule in the agenda views with conflict rules.

1. 0:02The sessions you add yourself
2. 0:21The sessions list
3. 0:45Add a session by hand
4. 1:19The session editor
5. 1:42Subsessions
6. 2:15Agenda settings
7. 2:41The agenda
8. 3:05Scheduling by drag
9. 3:33Conflict rules
10. 4:04Next steps

You can create subsessions from scratch, create them in bulk from submitted abstracts, or convert existing sessions into subsessions. A subsession can also be reverted to a parent session.

Why use it

Subsessions let a panel, a symposium or a poster block keep one slot on the agenda while each talk inside it has its own title, speakers and files. Filters, roles and exports treat the people on a subsession as part of the parent, so a track chair scoped to a track or language still sees everyone who presents in it.

Create a subsession

Note

A parent session can hold up to 500 subsessions. You can set a lower limit for your event — and apply different limits to different kinds of sessions — under session settings.

Open the parent session

Go to Program → Sessions and click the pencil on the session that will be the parent.

Connections

Select the Connections tab. The Subsessions panel lists any existing subsessions, with Convert Submissions and Create Subsession at the top.

Create Subsession

Click Create Subsession. The panel has the same Details and Participants tabs as a new session — title, status, description, start and end, format, track, and speakers.

Save

Click Create Subsession at the bottom of the panel.

Two rules apply:

• The subsession’s date and time must fall within the parent session’s date and time.
• Speakers on the parent and its subsessions are linked. Add a speaker to a subsession and they are added to the parent too — following Participants shown on the parent session in agenda settings — so the parent always knows who is in the room.

Create subsessions from abstracts

If you collect abstracts through a call for papers, you can turn a batch of them into subsessions in one step instead of rekeying each one.

1. Go to Program → Abstracts and select the abstracts using the checkbox on each row.
2. In the action bar, click More and, under Abstracts, choose Create a subsession.
3. Under Parent session, choose where the subsessions should live: Create a new parent session (enter a title and Sessionboard creates it) or Add to an existing session (search and select the parent). Click Continue.
4. Check the preview and click Confirm. Each selected abstract becomes its own subsession under that parent, inheriting the abstract’s title, description, track, format, level, and language, and taking the parent’s date and time.

Collect and review abstracts covers how abstracts are collected and reviewed before this step.

A few things to know about this flow:

• The abstract is not consumed. Each abstract stays in your Abstracts list, marked with a Linked badge, and remains fully editable — including its presenters. Open it any time to make corrections.
• Participants roll up. Speakers on each abstract are added to the new subsession. Which of them also appear on the parent follows Participants shown on the parent session in the side panel, which starts on the event’s agenda setting: all participants, the presenting author only, or none.
• Linked abstracts cannot be deleted, withdrawn, or duplicated while the link exists, so the subsession never points at a missing record. Remove the link from the abstract’s Connections tab first. If you try to delete a linked abstract, the delete fails with a message saying why.
• If your selection would push the parent past its subsession limit, Sessionboard tells you before creating anything — nothing is created partially.

To combine several abstracts into a single abstract instead, use Merge into one abstract in the same menu.

Reorder subsessions

By default subsessions are listed in the order they were created, with start time as the tie-break. To set your own order, open the parent’s Connections tab and drag a subsession by the grip handle on its left edge (the handle appears once there is more than one subsession). Sessionboard saves the new order immediately and confirms with Subsession order saved; if the save fails, the previous order is restored.

The list can be reordered with the keyboard, too: Tab to the handle, press Space or Enter to pick the subsession up, move it with the arrow keys, and press Space or Enter again to drop it (Escape cancels).

• Display IDs do not change. A subsession keeps its number and its ID whatever position you drag it to, so references in exports and emails stay valid.
• The agenda and embeds follow the admin order. The parent’s pop-out in the agenda, the Agenda embed, and the session detail view list subsessions in the order you set.
• New subsessions land at the end. A subsession created or linked after you reordered has no position yet, so it is listed after the ordered ones, by start time. Drag it into place to include it. Unlinking a subsession, or moving it to another parent, clears its position.
• Integration partners receive the order. Subsessions read through Sessionboard’s public API include their position and come back in the same order.

Schedule subsessions back to back

Instead of setting each subsession’s time by hand, you can schedule them in sequence.

1. Open the parent’s Connections tab and click Sequence times.
2. Set First subsession starts (…) — shown in the event’s time zone —, a Default duration (minutes), and an optional Gap between subsessions (minutes). Under Duration by session type (minutes), give a type its own length; leave it blank to use the default.
3. Reorder the subsessions if needed, then click Preview to see each one’s start and end time.
4. Click Apply.

The parent session’s times are not changed. If the last subsession would end after the parent ends, the preview warns you before you apply.

Many parent sessions at once

To schedule the subsessions of several parents in one go, select the parents in the Sessions list or Agenda → List and choose More → Sequence subsession times…. Set a Default duration (minutes) and a Grace gap between subsessions (minutes) (or use the default duration set for each session type in Program settings), and a Start time — Per session, starting from each parent’s own start, or Same start time for every session. Session types you tick under Exclude session types are skipped (a type named Forum is excluded by default). The preview lists every parent with its subsessions’ times, and any it will skip and why: no subsessions, no start time, an excluded type, or a selection that is itself a subsession. Click Apply; parent times are never changed. You need permission to update sessions.

Common questions

Can I email subsession speakers only? Yes. In Sessions, select the parent sessions — or every session matching a filter — and click Send Emails. Set Sessions to include to Subsessions only, or to Selected sessions and their subsessions to reach the parents’ people as well, then choose the role under Who should receive this email?. Each speaker’s email carries their own subsession’s merge tags. See create & send emails.

Can I add a moderator, chairperson, sponsor, or exhibitor to a subsession? No — those roles belong to the parent session.

Are subsessions shown in embeds and the portal? Yes. The agenda embed and the session detail view list a parent’s subsessions in the admin order, and a subsession speaker sees the parent and its other subsessions in their portal — see viewing subsessions within the agenda.

Do subsessions sync to integrations? It depends on the app. Cvent has a Sync Subsessions to Session Programs setting; see Cvent and the article for your app under Apps. Subsessions are always available through Sessionboard’s public API, including their order.