AwardScience, award and grant management software, released guest co-editing without an account, Admin Assist mode and an AI chart builder in the week of 10 August 2026. The single most common reason a collaborator never contributes to an application is being asked to create an account at the moment they were trying to help. This week removed that step, and then dealt with the three things that go wrong once you have.
On this page
- Share links with guest co-editing
- Admin Assist mode
- AI chart builder and Analyse with AI
- Co-editing now covers files, images and tables
- No more double charges
- Also in this release
- Availability
Share links with guest co-editing
Share an application with anyone with the link, or restrict it to named people. Guests sign in once and edit alongside the team, with no account creation by an administrator. Links can be sent by email, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, X or Facebook, and regenerated to revoke the old one.
A note for programme administrators: open sharing means applicant data reaches people the programme never registered. If your collection statement names who may see a submission, guest collaborators belong in that description. The restricted list exists for programmes that need collaboration bounded to named individuals.
Share link
Control who can open this link and how it is shared.
Anyone with this link can open and co-edit the application.
People with accessShare link dialog
For IT teams. Per-link guest identity used by REST and real-time sessions alike. Guests are authenticated for load, edit and submit.
Admin Assist mode
Support staff can step into a user’s account to help them complete an application, then exit. A banner is visible the entire time, everything done is recorded as assisted rather than as the user, and sensitive actions — password, email, account deletion, payment — are blocked while assisting.
The blocked actions are what make this acceptable to a compliance reviewer. “Support can log in as any applicant” is a finding. “Support can complete form fields under an audited assist session and cannot touch credentials or money” is a control.
| Name | Contact | Account Type | Status | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maria Ortiz | m.ortiz@example.org | Researcher | Active | 🛟 ⇥ Assist this user |
You are working inside this user’s account on their behalf. Everything you do is recorded as that user.
This action cannot be performed while assisting another user.
Contacts › Assist this user, and the header banner while assisting
For IT teams. Dedicated assist session with audited enter and exit. Blocked actions return an explicit message rather than failing quietly.
AI chart builder and Analyse with AI
Ask the assistant for a chart and it builds it from your own programme data. If the chart cannot be drawn as asked, it offers to fix it and asks before spending the extra credit. On any page with charts, Analyse with AI writes an insight across all of them at once.
Asking before spending is the detail that took the longest to get right. An assistant that silently retries four times is an assistant that produces a bill nobody authorised.
AI Assistant
ClearEdit your form with AI
AI Analysis
Analysing 4 charts on this page
Submissions from APAC rose 38% on last season, driven by early-career applicants. Approval rates are steady across regions except EMEA, where 9 applications are still in review.Form builder › AI Assistant with chart repair offer
For IT teams. The assistant reads a metadata-only catalogue of your data, never the rows. Repair attempts are capped and count against the AI quota.
Co-editing now covers files, images and tables
Uploaded files, images and table rows sync live as well, including across browser tabs. While a teammate is changing a file or a table row, it is framed in their colour.
Tables were the awkward case: a table is locked as a single field while someone edits it, because row-level locking inside a table produces a coordination problem rather than solving one.
| Name | Role | Institution |
|---|---|---|
| Alex Lim | Lead | Harbour University |
| Jordan Sato | Co-investigator | Northwind Lab |
Application form › file field being edited by a teammate
For IT teams. A table is locked as one field while edited. Existing files remain downloadable throughout.
No more double charges
If two teammates try to pay for the same application, or one person clicks Pay twice, exactly one payment goes through. The second person gets a clear message instead of a second charge.
Duplicate charges are rare, and every single one generates a refund, an apology and a reduced chance that the applicant recommends your programme to anyone.
Application fee
POST /api/v1/users/stripe/checkout-session/:formId/:stage → 409 { "error": "payment_in_progress" }
Application payment step with the duplicate-payment message
For IT teams. Per-application, per-stage payment claim held for 30 minutes and backed by a unique index, plus Stripe idempotency keys. Returns 409 payment_in_progress or payment_already_completed.
Also in this release
Column-mapping checks now show sample failing rows for imports, the WhatsApp inbox had a run of fixes, and the Android build was cleaned up.
Availability
Everything above shipped in the week of 10 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.
