AwardScience, award and grant management software, released account-approval gates, message retries with channel fallback and whole-file import validation in the week of 24 August 2026. Two different kinds of silence cost programmes entries. The first is a registration that lets anyone in and leaves staff sorting out afterwards who was actually eligible. The second is a message that was sent, never arrived, and was never reported as having failed.
This week addressed both, and neither is the sort of thing that appears on a feature comparison chart.
On this page
- Account approval gate
- Guests upgrade to full accounts
- Automatic retries and channel fallback
- Bulk import checks the whole file
- Colour by, source rows, and steadier co-editing
- Also in this release
- Availability
Account approval gate
An account type can now require approval. New registrants submit a short application into an approval flow, and until something approves them they see only their To-Do list. Admins can correct a status by hand where needed.
This is how you run a programme restricted to members, licensed practitioners, or staff of partner organisations without maintaining an allow-list by hand or opening registration to everyone and pruning later.
Approval required
Decide whether people who register as this account type are let in straight away, or wait for a flow to approve them.
Approval required — decided byPick a published flow and anyone registering for this account type submits an application to it instead of getting a working account. Leave blank and registration works as it does today.
Account type › Approval required
For IT teams. Approval flow per account type (ADRs 0008–0010). A flow action sets the approval status, and a new field shows the registrant’s profile to the reviewer.
Guests upgrade to full accounts
A share-link guest can complete their profile and become a full member, keeping every shared application and all of their history.
Without this, guest access is a dead end: the colleague who helped with a budget in March has to start from nothing when they want to apply in their own right in June.
Upgrade your account
Complete the remaining profile details to turn this guest account into a normal account. Your shared applications and history will stay with you.
Account type
Choose the normal account type that best describes you. Only account types open for public registration are listed.
EmailProfile information
Complete the required fields for Researcher.
Upgrade your account
For IT teams. Only account types open for public registration are offered. SSO users set a password during the upgrade.
Automatic retries and channel fallback
If an email, SMS or WhatsApp message fails, it is retried on a schedule you set and then sent on a fallback channel. A Delivery & retries report lists every message that needed help, with a Send again button. Approved WhatsApp document templates keep reviewers receiving application data after WhatsApp’s 24-hour messaging window closes.
The 24-hour window is the detail that catches most programmes out. A reviewer who replies on Monday can be messaged freely until Tuesday; after that only an approved template gets through, and without one the panel simply stops hearing from you.
Delivery & retries
Every automated template message that did not go out first time.
| Status | Template | Channel | Recipient | Attempts | Follow-up |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Retrying | Award Result | +44 •••• 3812 | 2 · next 14:30 | — | |
| Sent via fallback | Review Invitation | SMS | +65 •••• 0457 | 3 | Re-sent on Email |
| Sent | Submission Receipt | p•••@example.org | 2 | — | |
| Failed | Payment Reminder | k•••@example.net | 3 | Send again |
Messaging › Delivery & retries
For IT teams. Per-workspace delivery settings, a delivery runner, and a failure-simulation mode so the fallback path can be tested before it is needed.
Bulk import checks the whole file
Spreadsheet imports are validated across every row rather than a 500-row sample. Problems are grouped by column with example rows, and where rows cannot reach a later stage you are told why in plain words. Click a reason to highlight the rows it applies to.
Sampling is fine for estimating and useless for importing. The rows that break are, reliably, not in the first 500.
Column D
2 issuesColumn G
No remaining parsing issueStage progression
Panel Review: 14 rows have data here but cannot reach this stageClick a reason to highlight its rows
Data migration › issues panel and stage progression
For IT teams. Server-side patch sessions owned by their creator, with expiry and size caps. Errors are coded rather than free text.
Colour by, source rows, and steadier co-editing
Charts can be split by colour — submissions coloured by status, for example — and editors can inspect the raw source rows behind a chart. Separately, co-editing became more reliable: the server now decides the final state when two edits land together, and checks permissions on every change rather than at the start of the session.
Inspecting source rows is there because the first question anyone asks about an unexpected chart is which records produced it.
Source Rows
showing the first 50 source rowsCopy as TSV| Reference | Region | Status | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| CG-0412 | APAC | Approved | 86 |
| CG-0413 | EMEA | In review | — |
Chart editor › Color by and Source Rows preview
For IT teams. Server-authoritative co-edit engine. Source-row preview is capped for the editor.
Also in this release
New options for “can submit any time” and “can apply after completed”, a stage-submission refresh fix, and an extensive set of new unit tests.
Availability
Everything above shipped in the week of 24 August 2026 and is live now. Features marked Pro or Enterprise are noted as such in their technical notes; everything else is available on every plan.
If you are comparing platforms, these are reasonable things to test in a trial rather than take on trust — alongside the questions in our RFP guide.
Book a live demo to see any of this on your own programme, or review pricing.
