Guide to the Google Summer of Code^TM Web App for Mentors and Organization Administrators

This document is a work-in-progress. Additional information on how to use the application will be added as Google's program administrators receive questions via either our program discussion list or to our support alias.

Overview: Using the Web App Once Your Organization Has Been Accepted

During the student application and ranking phase, the mentor/administrator facing side of the GSoC web app will:

• Allow mentors and organization administrators to officially register for the program
• Collect information about the organization to be published on http://code.google.com/soc/, e.g. license information, organization's description
• Collect personal information about each mentor and organization administrator for use by Google's program administrators, e.g. so Google can contact you with questions, plot your information on our yearly GSoC Map. (KML files for 2006, & 2007; file requires Google Earth or can be viewed using Google Maps.)
• Allow mentors and administrators to review, comment on and rank student applications
• Allow mentors and administrators to post public comments on a student's application asking for more detail
• Allow mentors and administrators to review student responses to these public comments
• Provide early warning to organization administrators and mentors that a particular student is likely to be accepted by another organization

Registering to Participate in the Program

Once an organization's application has been accepted, the organization administrator who submitted the application, along with any backup administrator(s) and mentor(s) listed on the application, will receive an email with instructions on how to register to use the web app. Should another individual wish to apply as a mentor or organization administrator for a particular organization, s/he should follow this same process to register for the program using the web app. Applications for mentorship will need to be reviewed an approve by an organization's administrator before an individual is considered a mentor for a particular organization.

1. Login to your Google Account.
2. Start registration by reviewing and accepting our program Terms of Service.
3. Once you have accepted the Terms of Service, you should automatically be redirected to the mentor dashboard.
4. Click on the "My Profile" link in the left hand navigation menu. Please update your personal information.
5. At the bottom of profile page, there will be a list of all organizations accepted into the program. Click the checkbox next to any organization for whom you would like to become a mentor and submit by clicking the "Become a Mentor" button.

A few notes on the registration process:

1. All mentors and organization administrators who were listed on the application for an accepted organization should notice that they already have at least one organization checkbox already ticked. Do not uncheck any checkboxes unless you no longer wish to work with that organization for Google Summer of Code 2008.
2. You can apply for mentorship at as many organizations as you would like by simply repeating the steps listed above.
3. Mentorship does not require approval from an organization administrator if a mentor's Google Account information was listed in the accepted organization's application.

Additional Registration Items for Organization Administrators Only

Upon updating all of her/his personal information, an organization administrator should plan to visit the organization's mentor dashboard. There will be two links on the dashboard that are not available to other mentors, "Edit Organization Profile" and "Edit Organization Mentors."

• Click on "Edit Organization Profile" and add/update any information on your organization. The Organization Name, Home Page, Ideas URL, Preferred License and Description will populate your organization's "About" page, e.g. http://code.google.com/soc/2006/google/about.html.
• Return to the mentor dashboard. Click on "Edit Organization Mentors."
• From the Organization Mentors page, you will be able to accept or reject and mentorship application to your organization. You can also make an individual an administrator by checking the "Admin" checkbox. Don't forget to click the "Save Changes" button before navigating away from this page.

N.B.: Once a mentor is rejected, her/his information will disappear from the Organization Mentors Page. It is not possible for her/him to apply to work with your organization using the same Google Account that s/he originally used to apply to your organization; an entirely new Google Account would need to created and the mentor would need to reapply for mentorship, so be very careful in rejecting mentors! You can, however, at any time remove or regrant administrator status to any accepted mentor.

Reviewing and Ranking Applications

Please note that you will be able to review student applications and comment on them during the student application phase, but you will not be able to score them until the application period closes. Students will be able to respond to your requests for comments and will be able to update their applications during the application phase, but not once the application phase has closed. See the timeline in the FAQ for full details.

Accessing Student Applications for Review

Any mentor or organization administrator may review an organization's list of applications by visiting the mentor dashboard and clicking on the "Applications" link next to the organization's name. If a mentor or organization administrator is signed up with more than one organization, a list of all organizations s/he is signed up with will appear on the mentor dashboard.

Each application an organization has received will be listed according to score, with the highest ranked applications listed first.  Please note that an application that has a mentor assigned to it will be more highly ranked than an application that does not have a mentor assigned, regardless of the application's numeric score. There is no way to determine whether or not an application is new except by viewing the "Last Modified" column. The application's title will be a link to the actual application provided by the student.

Reviewing Student Applications

Each student application page will display the following:

• Application Title/Summary
• Student's Name
• Student's Email Address
• Student's Major (Field of Study)
• Student Degree - this is the next degree the student will obtain
• Student Graduation - this is expected date that this student will obtain her/his next degree
• Organization Name
• Assigned Mentor - if no mentor has been assigned to a student's application, this information will not be listed on the application page
• Score - this is the cumulative score received for a given application
• Abstract - students can edit this information later
• Detailed Description - this text cannot be edited once the student submits her/his application
• Public Comments text field - see Comments section, below
• Comment History - this is a history of all comments and scores for a given application, including the comment/score made and the name of the mentor/org admin who made it
• Evaluation - see Scoring section, below
• Mentoring Buttons - see Requesting Ownership and Assigning Mentors sections, below
• Cumulative Evaluation - this is a list of the total points added/subtracted from an application's total by each individual who evaluated the application

Before an application receives a score, there will also be a link titled "Ineligible" on the application page. See "The Ineligible Link" section, below.

In addition to the above, an organization administrator will also have an option to assign an application to Google. See Assigning to Google section, below.

The Ineligible Link

Before any application has been scored, there will be a link on the application page to mark the application "Ineligible." Clicking the "Ineligible" link gives the application a score of -10 and drops it to the bottom of the application list. Use the "Ineligible" link only for applications that are spam. To be clear, a badly written application is not ineligible, it should simply receive bad scores, e.g. -2. Proposals that are copied directly from an organization's Ideas list are not ineligible, they are just poorly written and should be scored accordingly. An example of an Ineligible application would be one in which the student simply states "I like to program, can I work with you guys?" but does not provide a project proposal for a project.

Comments

There are two types of comments, public and private. Public comments are shared with the student, private comments are not. Both public and private comments are logged in the application "Comment History" section. Mentors and organization administrators may make as many public and private comments as desired to a given application, and students may post as many comments to their applications as they would like, without or without a mentor request for more information.

Adding a Private Comment

To add a private comment, add text to the "Comment:" text field and press the "Add Comment/Eval" button. The comment will then be visible in the application's comment history. A comment can be added as part of scoring the application, but one can add a comment without changing the application's score. If you would like to add a comment without changing the application's score, simply leave the Evaluation drop down list on the "N/A" option (default) when clicking submit.

Adding a Public Comment

To add a public comment, add text to the "Public Comments - Comment" text field and press the "Add Comment" button. Posting a public comment will trigger an email notification to the student that feedback has been added to the application and that s/he should log in to the web app and respond to the comments. Both the mentor/org admin public comment and the student response to the public comment will be logged in the application's comment history.

Once a mentor is assigned to a student application, the assigned mentor will receive an email requesting that s/he log in to the web app to view the student's response to the public comment. If no mentor is yet assigned to the application, the email ping will be directed to the organization's administrator.

Scoring

Any organization administrator or mentor can score an application an unlimited number of times. The cumulative scoring history for each mentor will be displayed in the Cumulative Evaluation section.

To add a score to an application, select a numeric value (+4, +2, +1, -1, -2) from the "Evaluation" drop down list and click "Add Comment/Eval." You can also post a private comment as part of adding a score, but it is not necessary to add a comment when scoring.

Please note that scores are not taken into account by Google as part of the student allocation process. The scoring function is solely to allow organizations to rank applications. Please note that an application that has a mentor assigned will always appear higher on an organization's application list than one with a higher score but no mentor assigned.

Requesting Ownership of an Application: The "I am willing to Mentor" Button

Requesting ownership of an application means that a mentor has stated that s/he would like to mentor a particular student should the student be accepted. Multiple mentors can request ownership of the same application, but only one mentor can be assigned to any one application.

To request ownership of an application, click the "I am willing to Mentor" button on the student application page. Clicking this button will change the status listed "Mentor" column on the organization's application list page to "(ownership requested)". At this point, your organization administrator can assign this application to you.

If you decide that you no longer wish to be the mentor for a particular student application, push the "I am unable to Mentor" button. If you have already been assigned ownership of the application, you will retain your ownership of the application until it is assigned to a different mentor by your organization administrator. Please contact your organization administrator so s/he can assign the app to a different mentor.

Assigning Mentors: Organization Administrators Only

Once ownership of an application has been requested by a mentor or multiple mentors, the organization administrator can then grant ownership of the application to a particular mentor. From the student application page, the organization administrator should select the appropriate mentor's name from the "Mentor Assignment" drop down list. The default mentor assignment for any application is "Nobody" until ownership of the application is granted by the organization administrator.

If an organization administrator needs to switch the assigned mentor for an application, the previously assigned mentor must first push the "I am unable to Mentor" button. The organization administrator will then be able to reassign the application to another mentor, or to "Nobody" until another mentor requests ownership.

Please note: Assigning a mentor to a student application causes the application to jump to the top of an organization's application list regardless of the application's numeric score. The idea here is that an application with a mentor assigned will be an application that can proceed in the program, whereas the most highly ranked and best application, sans mentor, cannot proceed in the program.

Student Allocations & The Likely to be Accepted Line

In each organization's application list, there is a line which reads "Applications below this line are less likely to be accepted." Prior to allocation of student slots to organizations by Google, this line is set based on the number of student projects the organization's administrator has listed in the Organization's Profile in the "Desired Number of Projects" field. Once students slots are allocated, meaning Google advises each organization of how many students participants for the program will be funded for that org, this line will be frozen by Google's program administrators based on the number of slots allotted. Organizations should make sure that the student applications that they most want funded are modded up to be above this line.

Google's program administrators allocate students slots based on several factors, including:

• number of projects requested by the organization
• number of student projects with mentors assigned to them

While we will make every effort to announce the number of allocated student slots for each organization sooner rather than later.

Duplicate Likely to be Acceptedness: Detection and Resolution

If a student has an application at another organization that is likely to be accepted (meaning a mentor has been assigned), a very prominent warning will be displayed on the student's application page. The warning will read "This student has an application with a mentor assigned at the following organizations: (organization names). You may still assign a mentor to this application, but please contact the other organizations involved first, since a student can not be accepted for more than one organization."

Please take the following course of action to resolve duplicate likely to be acceptedness:

• First contact the other organization administrator(s) to discuss the student's application.
• If the organizations cannot decide among themselves which organization would benefit most from the student's participation, contact the student to determine which project s/he would most like to undertake.

In general, Google prefers that organization's go with the student's choice when resolving duplicate likely to be acceptedness. In cases where a student's project would be a nice to have for one organization vs. a critical feature for another organization, it would be great if the organization administrators could discuss the duplication amongst themselves and present their thoughts to the student.

Once it has been decided which organization will "take" the student, the organization which is "dropping" the student should unassign ownership of the application, then mod down the application's score until the application falls below the "Likely to be Accepted" line.

The "Assign to Google" Button: Organization Administrators Only

If your organization finds an application that looks good, but is best mentored by another organization, you can assign the application to Google. We will then reassign the application to the other organization. Please post a private comment on the application indicating to which organization(s) you'd recommend we reassign the application and let us know that you've put the application in our review queue.