Nominating awards using this scheduled task is similar to nominating awards using the Awards manager.
Only non-subjective awards, that is, awards which have defined rules for their eligibility, can be chosen here. When VSys generates the awards it will use the status you select here rather than the status defined within the award itself. You can optionally not save the generated awards, for example to get a list of who would be eligible to receive awards but not actually nominate them.
The Effective date can and probably should be a relative date so that the awards are nominated relative to the date this task is run rather than a fixed date.