Merit's contributor form allows you to invite other people at your school, such as professors, coaches, or organizers, to submit stories for your review. Your Merit approvers can then review, edit, publish and distribute these stories as needed.
Please note that the use of Merit's contributor form requires the approval workflow to be activated inside your account. Learn more about the approval workflow.
Setting up the Contribution Form
To set up your school's public contribution form, you will first need to make sure the Approval Workflow is activated inside your account. Go to the General section under the Settings tab and scroll down to the Approval Workflow block. Make sure the Use the approval workflow box is checked and the appropriate people are marked as Approvers:
Once the Approval Workflow is activated, go to the Contribution Form section under the Settings tab and check the Enable the contribution form box:
Here you also have the ability to allow your contributors to add students to a story using their email addresses in addition to their names.
Pro Tip: Checking the Enable email search for contributions box will let your contributors add students to a story by searching for either their names or email addresses.
Once the form is enabled, your screen will immediately update to include a link to your institution's general contribution form:
You can share this link with anyone on campus. Clicking on the link will take them to your institution's contributor form:
Customizing Your Contribution Form
You can customize the message that appears at the top of your contributor form to encourage members of your team to submit stories about your students. To change the text on this screen, go to the Contribution Form section under the Settings tab and scroll down to the Customize the Form box. Make any necessary adjustments to the text and click Save Customizations when you are done:
Pro Tip: Use this text to encourage your contributors to include an abundance of information to go along with their submissions. Ask them to include the details that will help you turn this story into a good student achievement.
Inviting Contributors
You can have as many contributors as you need at your organization. While anybody can use your school's general contribution form link, you can also create individual accounts for each of your contributors. This will give each of them a private link that they can use to publish their own stories.
To add a contributor, go to the Contribution Form section on the Settings tab and scroll down to the Contributors block. Click on the Invite a Contributor button to create a new contributor account:
Each person will receive an email welcoming them to Merit. This email will contain a link to their private contribution form: