As noted in the article on Importing/Creating Submissions, SparqFest does not work with the submission data. It's simply there for getting things going. Everything in SparqFest operates on “selections” and the process of turning a submission into a selection is called “promotion”.

The process of promoting a submission kicks off a number of workflows. You can start the process in two ways:

• Click “☼ promote all submissions” in submission list view
• Select an individual selection and click the “Promote This Selection” button

In both scenarios, a dialog will pop up asking you about the promotion:

If you want creators to start coming into the Creator Portal to manage their selection, click “Yes”. Otherwise, click “No”. If you click “No”, you will either have to manage the selection yourself or invite the creator at a later date.

SparqFest then creates a selection record for every submission category of every submission. One submission may therefore become multiple selections. To better understand why, review the section on “Revisiting Submission Categories” in Importing/Creating Submissions.

At this point, if you opted to send invitations, an invitation will go out for each selection that is created. A filmmaker with two selections created for the same project will receive two separate invites.

This process can take a long time to complete. Once complete, it will give you a report on how many selections were created during the process. You can then go to “Programming” > “Selections” to see all of the newly created selections.