I would like to suggest a feature that allows members to submit events to the calendar for approval by an admin.

Can you elaborate how do you see this working?

These suggested events should be hidden from everyone else until admin  approves them correct?

I do not see members setting up the pricing and registration parameters - so I assume admin would have to add that, what do you think?

How is this different/better from having a discussion forum thread for this purpose - members can post ideas about events and admin can create appropriate events as needed?

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

Yes,  correct on hidden for approval and also not able to set pricing or registration parameters.

We use the events as a calendar as well and one of the things we do is help our members promote their events via our site.

Before switching over to your platform we used a calendar system that allowed members to submit and that worked very well for us and they liked it as well.

It is not mission critical as we now have them email us and then we input the event.  It would help us streamline the process if they could submit their event on your platform and we could set pricing & registration parameters if needed.

Thank you for your prompt response! 

OK, thanks for the details.

It's on our list, though it will be a while before we get to this particular thing. 

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

 Yes, We are looking for this option too! We would like to offer members the option of posting their own events. Also, is there a future option for those registered for the events to view who else is registered and leave a message? THANKS!

 

kwmarketing:

I would like to suggest a feature that allows members to submit events to the calendar for approval by an admin.

I've been reading through the discussion on this thread and would like to present this suggestion:

A member could create an event. This event might not necessarily be run by the organization, but may be an independent event where there is an overlap of interest between the organization and the person posting it. There would only be certain fields that they could enter and would be publicly viewable, but they would not set a price or a registration form.

Once the event is submitted, it would have to be approved by the admin/organization. At that time it would be added to a calendar.

Perhaps instead of thinking like this as an "event", with all the fields associated with it, we should be thinking of this as a "calendar entry", which would have a limited number of general purpose fields for posting something to a date (it could be an event, or could be reminder of an important date, like all fees are due on this day, or an external event) that need not have a Registration associated with them. A member generated entry might be in a different colour, or even on a separate calendar of affiliated events.

Not all events require registration or payment. Sometimes you just want a calendar of things that are happening. I've only been trialling WA for less than 24 hours, and already I see the need for logged in home owners to add calendar items.

I'd be OK for them to go through an approval process if the even required registration or payment, but not if it doesn't. Having to get people to email their requests or hand them to a committee member with privileges is not good enough as it requires someone to be monitoring the website or their email on a very regular basis. Our group of owners numbers about 100 and I'm a single volunteer with a full-time job away from this. Most of our owners are well into their 60s and some find it hard enough to deal with the technology as it is. Adding a barrier to collaboration - like having to email someone the details - will only turn them away.

After not being able to find an answer to my calendar question I just posted a new thread.  Then I continued searching and found this thread.   I think what Rhonda said above is right in line with what I am looking for.  We are an HOA with the need to have several different calendars that show simple events or reminders without any need to set other parameters.  For example, the Pool chairman should be able to easily go into the pool calendar and add swim team dates or pool party reminder on certain days.  And the Tennis chair should be able to add simple entries to days on her calendar as well.  The Events Calendar does not fit this bill.  And the Monthly Calendar template is really just a static table with no features such as numbered days, scrolling from month to month or being able to change views to weekly, daily, monthly.  Isn't a large part of WA's clientele HOAs and clubs?  This feature seems like a no brainer and I am in disbelief that a simple calebdar is not built in.  Am I missing something?  This is easily a requirement for any HOA of decent size and is a deal breaker for us to use WA as our peremanent solution.

Up until now the proportion of HOAs on our platform was much lower than other types of organizations which need full-blow events with registration.As you can see, this thread does not have that many comments and votes.

Your feedback is noted but realistically I do not expect us to make any progress on this for at least a few more releases.

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

Regardless of the site type, HOA or not, I am still shocked that a simple calendar function is not available on WA.  Makes me appreciate our current HOA host which I had been cursing up to this point.  I think you ought to make it more clear in your summary literature that the event planning function does not allow for simple calendar entries.  Or maybe I am the only person that made the assumption that if a detailed Event planning calendar function was included that by default a regular calendar was achievable.  Call me crazy.

Regardless, kudos for your quick response.

I agree

So can anyone recommend any calendar services that will integrate nicely into WA (even though we moved to Wild Apricot to get away from the band-aided web site).  We have tried Google calendars...not integrated enough.  I have seen a few other suggestions on here but none have made the cut yet.  Come on WA, this should be basic stuff.

We are not a HOA either, but we do need the ability to have a calendar or event list that would allow members to directly add events. We do not need them to have the ability to set up an event registration, just the ability to post the following. Date, title, location and link to the key contact person.

 Ideally, it would be a page listing the events chronologically or a calendar that would allow people to see what is coming up at a glance. Our members are teachers in two states who need to know about many conferences, workshops and seminars-- none of which that we sponsor. As it is, we cannot post most of these events because it would be a nightmare for one person to  the list (Or to coordinate shared responsibility for maintaining).

So, count us in on the list of people wanting this function. And count us in as a group who is also looking for something else to integrate into our site until WA a "shared" event page.

Thank you for listening to our requests, WA.

 

 

What is the progress/release date for calendar/event entries by members?

Thanks

We are still collecting feedback and analyzing this, it looks like there are many different scenarios/needs.

Thus, there is no definite plan/timeline yet.

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

Many of our customers use their calendar as the "official community calendar". Registration for events that are not "sponsored or hosted by the Organization are not handled via the W/A system... simply the event posting. If one combined calendar is not possible with approval  before posting, might it be possible to have two calendars live at the same time - one for the Organization's events, another for community events?

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Kenn Penn
President/CEO
ChamberSolutions
Association Benefits Alliance
4-Members

Kenn,

You are making a good point - we will definitely keep searching for ways to implement this.

One possibility I see is a member-facing simplified interface for events which would not include any registration options.

Also, such events can be separated with a special tag - and we can potentially have events with different tags use different colors on the calendar.

 

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

This would also be beneficial to our organizations.

I wholeheartedly support this function. We have a lot of events on behalf of our members. Currently I've created a form that they can download from any calendar then email it to us, but the time involved in then us personally adding all of these to our calendars is overwhelming. Looks to me like many people would like this feature. ANYTHING you can do to move this up in the time line of implementation would be GREATLY appreciated.

I agree...this is the functionality I would love to see move up the development timeline as we have been looking at other event management websites because of this.

We are an art gallery mainly using the Event Mgmt piece of WA....our challenge is we host classes\events in our gallery and receive countless requests to do a class or event in email and then I have to manually read the email and add into WA. I also have to collect payment (outside of WA) for a deposit, setup fee, etc. I would love to see it where people (even non-members since we dont use this piece) pull up a calendar, request a time slot, and then it goes to someone for approval or not (admin or whoever)...It would also be nice to enhance the payment feature here also where you could charge a deposit\setup for events\classes etc....And then you could use the existing payment feature when people register.

Thanks for listening

We use the event function to promote member readings and to post notices about upcoming conventions. None of which are things that require registration.  At the moment, I've created a bandaid by having members fill out an online form which sends an email to a calender moderator, who then cuts and pastes the information into the event calendar.

 I would very much like a functional page with a stripped down version of the Event Calendar dashboard, that would exclude the registration tabs.

I also wholeheartedly support this function. We post and announce events on behalf of our members. (No registration through our website) The idea of a second community calendar is nice, as long as we have the option to approve events that we consider relevant to our organizations! We constantly get email submissions for events and the time involved personally adding all of these to our calendars is overwhelming. PLUS so many of the submissions are hard to find in an already overloaded inbox... PLEASE can you help us make this easier for ourselves and our members!!! Looks to me like many people would like this feature. ANYTHING you can do to move this up in the time line of implementation would be GREATLY appreciated.

It would be really wonderful to have a way where members could fill out a form to post events. The submission would go into a holding section of the Events area, an email would be sent to Admin upon submission advising of the new request. And then admin could go in and activate.

This would be extremely helpful. I was told it might make it into the next or one after update. PLEASE try to implement this soon. I realize it means some fundamental adjustments, but it would be so worth it!!

 

We would also find great benefit in having simple calendar items submitted by members but remaining hidden until admin approval. As with others here we have had no use for paid / registration events so far. We tend to use the "Events" section as more of a "What's on locally guide"

If event organisers could submit their own entries directly, that would be fantastic.

The multiple calendar option suggested by others wouldn't work for us - we like the possibility of having all events visible in a single calendar.

Colour coding or categorising events that are "our own" as opposed to relevant local events not organised by us would be a plus, but not essential.

I would like to see this too.  In addition, once approved the event would optionally be provisioned with a wiki page for the organizers to pull together the details.