Organization Application Period

The Organization application period is the most important part of your responsibilities as an Organization Administrator. The primary Organization Administrator submits the organization application to the program and if accepted, ensures that the organization's homepage on the Google Summer of Code website accurately and effectively represents the organization.

Submitting an Organization Application

The organization application is filled out on the Google Summer of Code website. To create a new organization application, go to the homepage and click on Apply as a new Mentoring Organization. If you want to edit an existing organization application before the submission deadline, go to My Dashboard, click on My organizations, and choose your organization from the list. You can also click on the Or edit your organization application from your dashboard link on the homepage.

1. Choose an "Organization ID". Make sure that your Organization ID is descriptive of the name of your project. For example, "The Apache Software Foundation" could be "apache" or "asf".  Please do not choose a Mentors' name, or something only a project "insider" would understand.
2. Your "Organization Name" should be the full, formal name of your group, e.g. The Google Open Source Programs Office or The Linux Foundation.
3. For "Public Email", please enter an email address to be used by would-be Mentors or Students seeking additional information. This can be an individual's email address or a mailing list address; use whichever will work best for your organization. This email address will be used as the primary mode of contact by Google throughout the program, e.g. the email address which we will use to subscribe you to the Google Summer of Code mentors/admins-only mailing list.
4. For IRC channel and mailing list, please note that these are not required text fields. If your organization does not use IRC or you use forums instead of mailing lists, enter this information in these fields.
5. For Description, please provide an overview of your organization that will be publicly displayed on its profile page should the organization be accepted. 
6. For the ideas list, please provide a URL to a page listing project suggestions for student applicants. 
7. As part of Google Summer of Code, you must specify a backup administrator. Make sure that your backup administrator has created a profile prior to submitting your organization's application so you are able to add her username details on your application.
8. Be sure to include tags on your application. By entering tags such as programming languages and the version control system your projects uses such as "Python" or "git" and descriptors of what your project does.
9. The rest of the organization application form should be self-explanatory, but if you have questions, please contact the Program Administrator(s).
10. Please review the Mentoring Organization/Mentor Participant Agreement and, if you agree to the terms therein, click the "I Agree to the administrator Agreement" check box. You will notice that this agreement incorporates the Program FAQs and Terms of Service for reference. Make sure you have reviewed these documents prior to agreeing.
11. Clicking the Save Changes button submits the application, and returns you to the organization application edit form. If you do not see an "Application Saved" confirmation message the submission was not successful. There is an error somewhere on the form, e.g. a required field missing. Such an error will be shown in red - but you may need to scroll down to find it. (You will see the "Application Saved" confirmation message at the top of the page if your submission was successful.) You can confirm the status by visiting the Programs -> GSoC 2013 -> List My Organization Applications link in the left hand navigation menu.
12. You will be able to edit your submitted organization application via your dashboard until the application submission deadline. You cannot update your application after the deadline. 

How do I know if our organization has been accepted?

You will receive an email - sent to the email address indicated in your profile - from the Program Administrator notifying you whether or not your organization was accepted. Emails will be sent at the time specified in the program timeline for the announcement of accepted organizations.

Our Organization was accepted! How do I create my organization homepage? 

You will receive a direct link to the Organization profile page for your organization in the email you receive announcing your acceptance into the program. Please note that your organization will not appear in the Mentoring Organizations list linked from the homepage until you have completed all the required fields in the Organization Profile form. Alternatively, you can edit your organization home page by going to My Dashboard -> My organizations -> click on the name of the organization whose profile you want to edit from the list -> Edit.

Much of the information you entered when submitting your organization's application to the program will pre-populate to the organization profile page. The information requested is also largely self-explanatory, but here are some tips for filling out this page:

Who can see which sections in Melange after my Organization has been accepted?  

All information you enter in the Homepage Info part of your organization profile, as well as everything entered under Public Info is publicly available. Only Organization Administrators can see:

• the sliders used to "ignore", "accept", and "assign" Mentors for their Organization in the "Mentors" field of their Dashboard
• Mentor evaluations from their students 
• Mentor emails 

How do I designate Mentors and other Organization Administrators?

The default Organization Administrator is the user who submitted the organization's application. You can invite more users to be Organization Administrators if they have created a profile in Melange for the current year's program by going to My Dashboard -> My organizations -> Click on the name of the organization -> Invite Admin. They will receive an email with the invitation. Organization Administrators have to be explicitly invited. They cannot request to become Organization Administrators. 

A backup administrator is simply the Organization Administrator who is listed on the organization's initial application in the "backup admin" text field. When you specify an Organization Administrator after the acceptance deadline that user has the same privileges as all other Organization Administrators. 

Mentors

How do I accept someone as a Mentor?

In addition to directly adding a Mentor, they can also request to be added to your organization. Once a user has either applied or been invited to be a Mentor for an accepted organization, that Organization's Administrator will be able to view their application in their organization's Mentor request list reachable from My dashboard.  The My requests page will provide an overview of all requests received to become a Mentor for the organization, and all invitations sent by you and your other Organization Administrators to users to become Mentors or Organization Administrators for all the organizations for which you are an Organization Administrator.

To respond to a request by a Mentor, simply click on the entry corresponding to that request. This takes you to a page where you can then accept or reject the request. Accepting a request triggers an email to the accepted Mentor. Rejecting a request does not trigger any notification to the user. However, the user may reapply to your organization.

How does a Mentor resign? How may I fire one of my organization's Mentors?

A resigning Mentor informs their Organization Administrator that they no longer wish to be involved with the program. The Organization Administrator then send a request to a Program Administrator to have the account of a former (resigned or dismissed) mentor deleted from Melange.

How do I resign as organization administrator? 

Send a request to melange-soc-dev@googlegroups.com requesting to resign as a Mentor and have your account deleted from Melange.  Please make sure that you have also contacted the Program Administrators to notify them you will be leaving and that your Backup Administrator is aware of the change.

I administer an umbrella organization. How do I identify my sub-organizations? 

You can add a sub-organization column to each proposal by clicking on Edit on your organization homepage. After adding the column you can edit its value in the Proposals submitted to my orgs page, accessible from your Dashboard.

How do I load my organization logo into Melange? 

Visit My Dashboard -> My organizations.  Click on the corresponding organization in the list. On your Organization homepage, click on Edit.  Under "Logo URL", enter the URL where your logo is available for download as a JPEG, sized 64 pixels by 64 pixels or smaller. 

Logo Troubleshooting

If you don't like how your logo displays in Melange, please send email to melange-soc-dev@googlegroups.com.