Creating Events

The Stacks Events feature is a great way to promote events, trainings, and other occurrences that help you further engage your patrons or users.  From the Events Management tile in the Dashboard, users with the Administrator, Moderator, Program Manager, or Event Manager role have the ability to create, edit, and delete events that are associated with your organization.  

Considerations

Before creating new events consider how your users/patrons will be interacting with this information. Site labels can be updated to ensure field names and other terminology matches what your users/patrons expect to see. Events can also be filtered/grouped using the Category, Topic, and Type filter vocabulary fields, consider creating or editing these list values before creating new events.  

Both filter vocabularies and site labels are discussed in more detail in the Considerations for Creating Content article.

Lastly, administrators have the ability to modify the email notifications that are sent to the users/patrons who register for an event. Be sure to review the configuration of the event emails and update them as needed. 

Creating an Event

This quick video tutorial will walk you through the process of creating an event, step-by-step instructions can be found below. 

General Event Details

1. From the Dashboard, click the Events Management tile
2. Click the Events tile, then click + Add Event
3. Title - enter a name for the event
4. Enable Event QR Code - when checked, individuals who register for an event will receive an email notification which includes a QR code that can be scanned to confirm their registration and access to attend the event, similar to a ticket
5. Body - enter a description of the event and any other relevant details you wish the patrons to see when viewing it on your Stacks site

Event Scheduling

Stacks supports a number of scheduling options to accommodate single events or recurring events, this section will describe the different scheduling options available. 

Recur Type

Excluded and Included Dates

If your event series is scheduled over a period where one or more instances can't be held, you can add excluded dates to ensure these instances are not scheduled on these specific day(s).

• For example, if your series is scheduled to run every Monday at 9am but one instance falls on a holiday and your location is closed, you can add an excluded date to ensure that instance is not scheduled.

Similarly, you can add included dates to schedule event instance(s) on certain dates that would fall outside of the recurring schedule.

• Using the same example as above, we could choose to include a Tuesday at 10am as a replacement event for the excluded date we added above.

To Add Excluded or Included dates:

1. Excluded Dates
   1. Select the date to exclude
   2. Click Add another item to open another set of date fields, and repeat as needed for additional excluded dates
2. Included Dates
   1. Select the date to include
   2. Click Add another item to open another set of date fields, and repeat as needed for additional included dates

Event Registrations

Whether you use the built in Stacks event registration system, our EasyForms, or a 3rd party registration system, you can configure options to allow for your users/patrons to register for events.

External Signup

This option is typically used if you are using a custom built EasyForm for event registration (rather than the Stacks registration described below), or for adding a link to a 3rd party event and registration service.

1. 1. Click the External Signup title to expand this section
      1. Click External Signup
      2. URL, type or copy/paste the URL for the registration link
         1. Note: for Stacks EasyForms you only need the URL alias, for external links enter the full URL
      3. Link Text, enter the value users/patrons will see and click to access the registration link

Event Registration

This is the built-in Stacks registration system, configuration options here allow you to control which roles can register for events, when registration is open, as well as enabling a waitlist for the event.

1. Enable Registration - check this box to enable registration for the event and to specify the capacity for the event, and if applicable allow for a waitlist
2. Restrict registration to once per email address? - check this box to limit registrations to only 1 per email address
3. Which roles can register for this series? - check the box beside the role(s) that can register for the event
   1. Note: Leave all boxes blank to allow anyone to register for the event
4. Registration Dates
   1. Select whether registration is open or can only be made within a specified period
      1. Note: if Open Registration is selected, people can register up until the start time of the event
5. Total Number of Spaces - enter a numerical value for the number of people that can attend the event
6. Enable Waiting List - check this box to enable a waitlist for people who register after an event's registration has reached its total number of spaces
7. Users added to the waitlist will automatically be promoted to the "registered" list if space(s) become available
   1. Registration Notification - check this box to enable notifications to be sent to the event creator notifying them of registrations for the event
8. Enable Registration Reminders - check this box to enable registration reminders
9. Contact Info
   1. Name - enter the name of the contact person
   2. Phone - enter the phone number of the contact person
   3. Email - enter the email address of the contact person
   4. Click Add Contact, to open another set of the above mentioned fields to add the details for an additional contact, repeat as needed
   5. Click Remove, in the top right corner of each contact to remove that contact from the event listing

Note: its important to note editing event dates/times for events where registration has been enabled will result in registrations being deleted. Ensure you update the Event Emails to inform users/patrons they may need to re-register for an event if the date or time has been changed

Additional Event Details

Addtional information can be added to the event to supply supporting information or to allow for filtering when users/patrons are viewing your list of events.

Supporting information

1. Event File, this can be used to upload fliers, waivers, or other documents that may be relevant to the event
   1. Click Upload/Select File to select a previously uploaded file or browse your computer to upload a new file
2. Event Image, this can be used to display an image when users/patrons are viewing the detail view of the event
   1. Click Upload/Select File to select a previously uploaded file or browse your computer to upload a new image 

Filter Vocabularies

Filter vocabularies are list values that users/patrons can use to filter or group lists of information on your Stacks site. For events, this will allow users/patrons to filter your list of events by category, topic, type, or location. 

1. Event Category
   1. Click into the field to search for and select the appropriate category for the event, this will allow your users to filter events by category, which can be helpful if you have many events
      1. Note: the Event Category, Event Topic, and Event Type values come from the Filter Vocabularies, if the appropriate category does not exist, you can save the event, then go to the filter vocabularies to update the list, then come back and edit the event to update this field
   2. Click Add another item to add another applicable event category value, repeat as needed
2. Event Topic
   1. Click into the field to search for and select the appropriate topic for the event, this will allow your users to filter events by topic, which can be helpful if you have many events
      1. Note: these values come from the Filter Vocabularies
3. Event Type
   1. Click into the field to search for and select the appropriate type for the event, this will allow your users to filter events by type, which can be helpful if you have many events
      1. Note: these values come from the Filter Vocabularies
4. Location, location is technically not a filter vocabulary, but can be used as a filter option by users/patrons (assuming you have more than 1 location added to your Stacks site)
   1. Click into the field to search for and select the appropriate location for the event
      1. Note: these come from the locations created in the Location and Hours area of the Dashboard 
5. Update the Publishing Workflow as needed
6. Click Save to save and complete the creation of the event

Once published, the event will be accessible to your users/patrons when they navigate to either the calendar view (/calendar) or the list view (/events) page of your Stacks site.