The Timeline section lets you set deadlines for your Challenge. There are two kinds of deadlines you can set: Restricted Dates and Flexible Dates.
Restricted Dates
A 'Restricted Dates' schedule uses fixed, absolute dates. This is good when you know exactly to start or end your Challenge. This schedule provides the following fields:
Open call date: The first day participants can start a project for your Challenge.
Last date to register team: The last day participants can start a project for your Challenge.
Application deadline: The last day participants can join a project for your challenge.
Submission deadline: The last day participants can submit their projects for your Challenge.
Each of these fields has a Description, where you can convey more details about your deadlines.
Flexible Dates
A 'Flexible Dates' schedule provides deadlines relative to the day the participant joined. This is a good setting to use when you want to deploy Challenge over a long period, but give each participant the same amount of time to complete it.
Selecting 'Flexible Dates' gives you the following fields:
Flexible date number: The number of days, weeks, or months you want to give participants to complete their project.
Flexible expire date duration: Determines whether the 'flexible date number' measure days, weeks, or months.
Automatic alert: Lets you schedule alerts to send to users when their deadline is coming up. This field allows a combination of two options:
A week before submission deadline
A day before submission deadline
Challenge deadline: This optional field lets you set a hard cutoff date for all projects.
You can also set additional deadlines in the 'Flexible Dates' view by clicking Add Custom Date/Deadline.