Events booking workflow

Events

Event Refers to all scheduled workshops/courses/seminars that are included in the Events Booking Administration Channel, whether they require booking, or not.

Event is also the name given to the title and description element of each of these workshops/courses/seminars, whilst Schedule is the name given to the time, date and venue element.

Is it an entirely new event?

If it’s an entirely new event, the Event first needs to be created, then a Schedule is added for each instance of the Event.

Is it a new occurrence of an existing Event?

If the Event already exists on the system, you only need to add a Schedule (comprising date, times and venue) for any subsequent occurrences of the Event via Manage Events

Do you want to edit an Event?

This can be done within the Manage Events tab by simply clicking on the event title and then clicking Edit Event details tab

Do you want to add, cancel or email Attendees (Participants)?

You can make a booking for an Attendee, cancel a booked place or email Attendees in the live events overview, found in Manage Events, Live events, and by clicking on the Event title. Click on the places total (eg Places: 14/25) in this overview and options will come up to perform these tasks.

Is the venue, audience, contact or categories already set up on the system?

Before you embark on adding your first event, you may prefer to set up these details within your Provider Profile. It may already have details entered by others in your Provider group which you can make use of, but you can add to these yourself.

This means that once you begin entering your event on the system, much of the information you will need to put in will be there in dropdown lists as you go.

You can add details as you create your event, by using the relevant tabs within the Create Event screen. However, Feedback Forms must be created in advance via the Provider Profile.

Set Provider Details

The Provider Profile lets you manage the Contacts, Audiences, Venues and Categories that you might want to use when creating or managing your event. If you are creating a lot of new Events, it is easiest to manage these details here, rather than during the Create Event process. You will only need to add the Contacts, Audiences, Venues and Categories once and they will be saved to your Provider Profile for future use by you and all those in your Provider group.

Venues

In the Venues section within a Schedule you can enter text to clearly identify to the Attendees where this instance of the Event will take place. Venues can also be added in the Provider Profile page.

NOTE: If a venue is edited this will effect all events that currently use it.

Contacts

The Contacts section allows you to manage the contacts that you can select from when you are creating an Event. This is usually the administrator who is responsible for the Event, or the person that will be contacted if a booking or cancellation is made for your Event.

You can add a contact by selecting Add Contact. Once you click Save the new contact will be added to the list and you will be able to select it from the list when you are creating an event. This can also be done in the Provider Profile page.

NOTE: If a contact is edited this will update all events that currently use it.

Audiences

In the Audience section you can select from pre-defined groups. If you want to refine your audience group, select Add Audience from the Define a New Audience Group panel on the right. This can also be done in the Provider Profile page.

NOTE: If an audience is edited this will effect all events that currently use it.

Categories

The Categories section allows you to manage the categories that you want to use when creating an Event.

Feedback Forms

Feedback forms can be created with as many questions as you want, using one of these styles for each question:

• Free Text (optional)
• Rating (5-point with agree/disagree context)
• Rating (5-point with better/worse context)
• Rating (5-point with good/bad context)
• Tick box
• Yes/No

Once you have recorded the attendance at your event a link to the form will be emailed to everyone you record as having attended.

Other Settings

Enter the Default final booking date offset  for your Provider. This is the default number of days before a given schedule start date that attendees will be sent a reminder. This can be amended when a schedule is created.

Create an Event

If you want to add an Event that has not occurred before, begin by selecting Create an Event. Remember that it will be easier to go quickly through the process if you first add any new details of Contacts, Audiences, Venues and Categories that you’ll need to your Provider Profile before you Create a new Event.

N.B. if you miss any of the mandatory information from the Create Event page, you will be notified in Red text next to the appropriate section of the form.

Event Details – WHAT is your event about?

The Event Details section allows you to enter the main details about your event, including:

• Title (the name of your event as it will appear in the MyEd booking channel and websites with integrated event feeds)
• Description (a short paragraph explaining what the event is about)
• Contact Details (usually refers to the person who is responsible for dealing with queries about the Event. Their details will be published with the course information so that participants can contact this person if they have any queries about the event)  
• Event Type ( lets your audience know what to expect from the Event, e.g. if it is a seminar, lunch, conference etc).
• Provider Category (refers to the categories that you will use to link the Event to the relevant section on your website if you are publishing the event details there)

Audience - WHO can attend your Event?

In the Audience section you can select from pre-defined groups. If you want to refine your Audience group, select Add Audience from the Define a New Audience Group panel on the right. This can also be done in the Provider Profile page.

Event administrators can see all the Events for their Provider in MyEd regardless of the Audience groups.

Schedule – WHEN and WHERE is your Event taking place?

You must add at least one Schedule as part of the Create Event process, and you can come back later and add additional Schedule(s) via the Manage Events function. If you want to create an event without a published schedule then simply leave the publish date blank or put a publish date that is far in the future (such as 2099).

The Schedule page allows you to add the Event date and start time, Event to date and end time, Venue, Number of Places, Publish Date, Final Booking Date, Tutor Name and Tutor Email address.

• To add the time and date of your Event click Add a Schedule. This will take you to the page where you can add the details. 
• The Venue can be selected from the drop down menu. If your venue is not listed, you will need to add it in the Provider Profile before you begin.
• The Number of Places box allows you to set a maximum number for you Event, or you can select This is an Open Event if booking is not required and you just want to publish the Event information without the requirement to book a place.
• The Publish Date allows you to select a date in the future for your event to go ‘live’ on MyEd. If you select today’s date, it will go Live once you have finished the Create Event process. Alternatively, if you don’t want to publish the Event yet, if you have outstanding details for example, you can leave this blank but will need to come back to it when you are ready to set a Live date.
• The Final booking date allows you to define when bookings will close. This can be useful if you need to finalise numbers for catering etc, before the Event. Alternatively, you can enter the date of the Event if you are happy for people to book onto it up until the day.
• The Tutor Name and Tutor Email is not mandatory and will not be published with the Event details.

Once you have completed this page, click Add Schedule at the bottom which will save the details and return you to the Create Event page to complete the rest of the details.

If you want to restrict the number of times that a participant can book onto your Event, select an option from the Are there any restrictions on attendance? Box.

Notifications - What do you want to be notified about?

The Notifications section allows you to select what booking and cancellation actions you want to be notified about, and to set up a Reminder message.

The Notifications will be sent to whoever is listed in the Notification Email box, i.e. the event organiser. You can enter more than one address if you separate each with a comma. These can differ from the address listed in Contact Details in section 1 of Create an Event page, for example, the event manager or speaker might be listed in Contact Details if they are most appropriate to answer questions about the Event, but the Event administrator might be most appropriate for the Notification Email box if all they need to know about is how many bookings and cancellations have been received.

Reminder message A Reminder Message can be sent out in advance of the Event. However, it is only possible to have two automatic reminders here so any further reminders will need to be sent via email in the Manage Event section. The text for the automatic reminder is standardised and cannot be changed [Items in brackets are automatically updated]:

You are booked on: Event - [Event Title] Occuring - [DD/MM/YYYY] at [HH:MM] Venue - [Event Venue] If you want to cancel your booking then please follow this link: https://www.events.ed.ac.uk/index.cfm?event=cancelBooking&bookingID=[ID] THIS MAIL IS GENERATED BY AN AUTOMATED SYSTEM - PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO IT

Ask the Audience – What would you like to ask your audience?

The Ask the Audience section allows you to ask a question which Attendees/Participants will answer when they make their booking.

There are 2 pre-set questions that will automoatically be asked:

• Do you require any specific support to be put in place in order to attend this course (e.g. access requirements)?
• Do you have any specific dietary requirements? NOTE: This question only appears if you indicate the event is fully catered in the Event Admin section.

To add a question, click on Add a booking question. This will take you to a page where you can add the question and select the type of answer that you require. You can add more than one question and these can be reviewed later by selecting either Remove Question or Update Question

Feedback Forms

Feedback forms must be created (normally in advance) via the Provider Profile

Event Admin– Anything else?

Add any further notes here  that you may want to keep about the Event. This information will NOT be published so you can leave reminders etc here.

Catering (Notes are not public - attendees cannot see them)

Select from dropdown here from the 3 options available to indicate to Attendees what to expect regarding catering, with an option to respond to questions in the case of fully catered events.

Manage Events

On the Manage Events screen you can select from tabs containing Live, Pending or Past Events, or see all Events together by selecting the all tab. Once you’ve identified the Event you require, it is from here that you can go in to manage lists of Attendees, individual Attendees, Cancellations etc.

Events Filter

• Live events are those that have published schedules that have not yet happened
• Pending events are those that have schedules that are not yet published
• Past events are those whose published schedules are in the past
• All events tab will show you all your events

Quicklinks

Look in the quicklinks drop-down next to a scheduled event to find commonly used options for managing events.

Event…

• View Event Details to see the details of the event.

Schedules…

• Add a Schedule Use this to add another Schedule for the same Event.
• Edit Schedule (future schedules only)

Attendees…

• Show attendees takes you to the attendee list
• Record attendees is only available for past events
• Make a booking or Make a retrospective booking

Make a (future/retrospective) Booking

Select this option to Make a booking by entering a UUN or Email address (for people external to the University). The confirmation screen will alert you if there would be any restrictions to the user attending but you may proceed anyway.

Record Attendance

By checking the box next to the attendees name you mark them as having Attended. This will trigger the overnight sending of a link for them to complete a Feedback Form if you are using one, and can also be used in reports.

Show Attendees

Selecting this will take you to the attendee list where you will find the Attendee Management options below.

Attendee Tasks

These are accessed via the Show attendees

Cancel Event Schedule

To cancel an event schedule click on the event title in the list of schedules under manage events (Live or Pending tab). Then click the Cancel schedule button as indicated in the screenshot.

If you wish to prevent an event appearing on your website then you should edit the event and change the event category or remove the audience so that it will not appear in the appropriate feed(s).

Export Attendees

When looking at the Show Attendees list, you can click the Export this list button.

This will export all the key information from that booking, eg name, event and venue details, eligibility type, booking status, as a CSV file and that you can save and then manage the data as required in Excel.

Email Attendees

When looking at the Show Attendees list, you can click the Email these people button. Once you click Email Attendees, 2 fields come up where you enter Subject and Body text as required.

In most browsers, the Body field can be resized by dragging the bottom right hand corner. Once you have entered your subject and message, click the Email Attendees button to email all Attendees.

Cancel Booking

Easily done by clicking on the Cancel booking button next to the Attendee’s name. You then need to confirm cancellation on the next screen to complete the process. The Attendee will receive an email confirming cancellation. Cancelled Attendees will remain in the system for reporting purposes.

If you as event administrators cancel a booking and there is someone on the waiting list they will be promoted even if it is the on or after the day of the event. Please ask users to cancel their own booking to avoid this, you should not mark people as attended instead if they do not attend.

Definition of “Event”

It may be a little confusing to get your head around the event booking system as the term Event and Schedule have distinct meanings:

1. The title and description of the event is called Event
2. The Schedule is time, date and location of an instance of the Event and contains fields such as as Event date, Venue, etc.

Participants

Another term used on the system with same meaning as Attendees.