Fundamentals: Events

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Overview

Introduction to creating Events.

Objectives

Understand when to track a meeting using activities and when to use CiviEvent, understand the meaning of the most common CiviEvent options.

Requirements

Basic familiarity with searching.

Description

30 minutes

Explain

Activity vs Event (5 minutes)

There is a super easy way to track that someone went to a meeting: create an activity of the type Meeting with the date of that meeting. Super!!

If you only want to track that someone was at an event, using an activity is the way to go – far simpler.

You only need to use Events if you require: * Handle online and offline registration * Track who actually came to the event * Limit to a given capacity and have a wait list * Have a public web page with the event details with social media links and a map * Setup and collect fees * Send Reminder Email * Allow people to tell a friend

Demonstrate:

Don't follow along on your computers: Watch, then everyone will have a chance to create their own.

Demonstrate creating Event

Create an Event for a regular membership meeting.

Page 1 (Info and Settings)

• Importance of filling out End date (will mess up searching)
• Public Event: controls whether it is available via the web. It's useful if you are sending outreach emails or twitter posts, etc that advertise the event – you can just add a link to the event and not have to repeat all the data. Make it a public event.

Page 2 (Event Location)

• Choose from existing locations. This info will be displayed on public page and used to create map. For address, enter an address near where people are canvassing:

2400 Wallingford Rd, Winston Salem, NC 27101

Page 3 (Fees)

• Payment processor: Should be setup by your Admin. We don't need a payment processor because the meeting is free.

Page 4 (Online registration)

• Demonstrate choosing from existing profiles.
• Provide brief explanation of what a profile is (a collection of fields to collect data). We will cover profiles in more detail in advanced.

Page 5 (Schedule Reminders)

• Skip – advanced topic

Page 6 (Tell a friend)

• Skip – advanced topic

Page 7 (Personal campaign pages)

• Skip – advanced topic

Demonstrate what you can do:

• Click on link to event info and then follow to event registration
• Show how to manually add registrant via the back end (register two people)
• Show how to search for all registered participants and update event participant status to change from registered to attended.

Final Exercise

No exercise: practice during combined contribution page/event page exercise