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Phil Evans
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August 24, 2016 at 3:24 am
Hi,
Im looking for new calendar plugin to replace The Events Calendar Pro as it doesn’t quite do what I need it to do.
I have a complex scenario for which I’m trying to find a calendar plugin.
I have a total of 8 identical events. Each event is a basically a training course.
Each event takes place over 9 weeks with a total of 17 days within each event.
The first 16 days of the event recur on a Weds and Thursday over consecutive weeks (total of 16 days, 2 days per week) with the final day occurring a few weeks later (the day of the week for this last day varies).
I’ve been setting up similar events using the recurring feature in The Events Calendar pro without a problem, but to avoid any confusion for our customers, we would like to be able to append the event title with identifiers automatically so we don’t have to manually edit each entry.
For example.
Event/Course 1 – Week 1 – Day 1
Event 1 – Week 1 – Day 2
Event 1 – Week 2 – Day 1
etc
Event/Course 2 – Week 1 – Day 1
Event/Course 2 – Week 1 – Day 2
Event/Course 2 – Week 2 – Day 1
etc etc
The Events Calendar wont set this automatically. Would your EE allow me do that?
Thanks
Phil
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Tony
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August 25, 2016 at 4:04 am
Hi Phil,
With EE4 it works a little different, each of those course would be a single event and each date a ‘datetime’ (and instance of the event). Each datetime shows up as an instance of the event on the Calendar but they all link back to the same event.
With your courses are you wanting user to be able to purchase single days, multiple days all days etc or if they register or they always registering for all days?
You can do all, but if you can provide details of your setup I can show you an example of how this would work in EE4 to see if it suits your needs.
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Phil Evans
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August 25, 2016 at 4:36 am
Hi Tony,
That sounds like it might work better for us.
Basically we have multiple occurrences of the same course happening at different periods through the year.
Each course is held over a 9 week period. The first 8 weeks has two days per week, with the 9th week having one day.
Here are a couple of examples we’ve set up using Events Calendar Pro
https://www.impactmh.org.uk/event/pathways-recovery-leighton-buzzard-course-1/all/
https://www.impactmh.org.uk/event/pathways-recovery-dunstable-course-2/all/
https://www.impactmh.org.uk/event/pathways-recovery-bedford-course-3/2017-01-18/
That all works OK, but Events Calendar Pro treats every day of each course as an individual event which looks confusing when its presented in the calendar and on the associated pages. For example
https://www.impactmh.org.uk/events/2016-10/
and
https://www.impactmh.org.uk/mental-health-peer-support-services-and-training/mental-health-pathways-to-recovery/
We do want to display all dates in a calendar to help students and tutors (the iCal import is really useful), but we want to be able to automatically display each calendar entry as a day of each course. e.g.
Pathways To Recovery – Leighton Buzzard – Course 1 – Day 1
Pathways To Recovery – Leighton Buzzard – Course 1 – Day 2
Pathways To Recovery – Leighton Buzzard – Course 1 – Day 3
etc.
Currently we cant automate this process in TEC Pro. We’d have to create the recurrences and then manually edit each page. Which is a huge amount of work.
Users can sign up through various methods. Currently we provide an online application form https://www.impactmh.org.uk/pathways-recovery-application-form/
but as some point soon we want to be able to allow people to book online. Sme courses are free, others may be charged for at a later date.
Does this make sense 🙂
With thanks
Regards
Phil
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Tony
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August 25, 2016 at 9:41 am
Hi Phil,
So I created a quick example event here:
http://demoee.org/justademo/events/pathways-to-recovery-leighton-buzzard-course-1/
With the Calendar available here:
http://demoee.org/justademo/calendar/
(Note the output can and will change depending on your theme)
Basically you’d have a single event with multiple datetimes, you can seem them all listed within that single event currently. The ‘Full Course Ticket’ adds the registration to each of those datetimes. I’ve also created a September and October ticket, if you click the ‘show details’ link below either of those you’ll notice the ticket only applies to datetimes for the respective dates.
Would that work for you?
Creating individual day tickets is a little more tricky with this setup as you have a lot of datetimes for the event, so to allow each single day to be purchased separately you’d need a ticket for EACH of those datetimes.
Here is how that setup looks within the event editor – http://take.ms/FuP7r
If you’d like to test out EE4 for yourself you can sign up to test drive here:
Test Drive Event Espresso 4
Or if you’d prefer I can use the email address assigned to your account and add an account to the above site so you can see exactly how its set up, it’s a demo site created in the same way as signing up to testdrive.
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Phil Evans
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August 25, 2016 at 10:10 am
Wow. Thanks Tony. Nice work 🙂
As people would be signing up for each event as a whole (the full 17 days), we wouldn’t need to sell tickets for each day individually so wouldn’t need to create individual day tickets.
Could you assign my email to that demo account? Before I commit, I’d like to run through it with the person who will be managing this.
I really appreciate all your help with this. Impact are a social enterprise so don’t have major budgets so I need to make sure we spend wisely.
Thanks again
Regards
Phil
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Tony
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August 25, 2016 at 10:19 am
You’re most welcome.
I’ve just added your account to that site, feel free to add events, registrations etc. However note that Demo sites are automatically cleared periodically as they are just used for user testing.
If you don’t receive and email please sign up to test drive EE4 and post a link to your site here.
I’ll re-create the event on your site so you can take a look there.
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Phil Evans
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August 25, 2016 at 10:23 am
Got it, thanks. Going through it now with the admin people.
One final question – we have an application form that we use for people to register
https://www.impactmh.org.uk/pathways-recovery-application-form/
This is built using Gravity forms. Can we use that as part of the purchase/registration process?
Thanks
Phil
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Tony
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August 25, 2016 at 10:37 am
No, not without a fair amount of custom development.
However what you can do is add as many custom questions to the EE registration form as needed. So you should be able to grab most (if not all) of the details required during the registration.
Would that work?
Take a look within Event Espresso -> Registration Form.
You can add custom questions there, then add those questions to custom question groups.
Then within the event editor you can select the question groups that should be requested by the event.
We have some details here:
https://eventespresso.com/features/event-registration/
(Click the EE4 tab)
and
https://eventespresso.com/wiki/add-questions-event-espresso-question-groups/
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Phil Evans
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August 25, 2016 at 10:42 am
That should work nicely. We’ll go ahead and start buying the plugins and add ons now.
Thanks again you all your help.
Regards
Phil
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Tony
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August 25, 2016 at 11:04 am
You’re most welcome, Phil.
I’m glad EE is a good fit, if you have any further questions just let us know.
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