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Centre Program Calendar 2.0 – training videos

We are delighted to announce that your centre’s calendar and website will be upgraded with some new features on Monday November 30.  We have all been waiting for this upgrade to the SDB-Website system.  Thank you for your patience and encouragement that has resulted in tools that will  be helpful to all of us.  Let us know what you think of these new features.

Sincerely,

Cameron, Candlin, Bernard, & Greg (your friendly neighborhood IT staff in Shambhala)

New Calendar features at a glance:

Faster program browsing and redeisgned SDB Admin view

Now we can find programs much faster by sorting them into Single/ Multiday Programs and Recurrent events.  Adding and editing programs is easier and more intuitive now now with color cues and a cleaner flow of information.

(To watch in full screen, click on the movie to go to youtube, then select HD and full screen)

Multi-day programs

This feature is designed specifically for our levels and weekly courses. Easily create programs that span across many days with different start and end dates for each day and only one registration.

(To watch in full screen, click on the movie to go to youtube, then select HD and full screen)

Recurrent Events

Perfect for open houses and ongoing events, this feature allows you to create recurring events for years in advance in just a few clicks. For total flexibility each event date can be customized via title, teacher, intro text, price, etc.


(To watch in full screen, click on the movie to go to youtube, then select HD and full screen)

Adding rooms to programs and events

You can now add rooms to programs and events. Before you can add rooms, you have to set them up in your Centre Profile (below).

Once you have added rooms to your centre’s profile, they will appear in a pop-up menu when you create a new program. The rooms will also appear on the monthly calendar view.

Adding rooms to the Centre Profile

The local Center’s DBA sets up a list of rooms that is then available to all the administrative users.

  1. From your Centre Profile page, click ‘Edit Centre Info’.
  2. Look for rooms at the bottom.
  3. Click the “add another room” link.
  4. Type your room name in the box and click add.
  5. Add as many rooms as you have.

You can also edit room names and delete rooms.  Once set up you will see them listed on your Centre Profile and they will be available on the location pull-down when you create new programs and events.

(To watch in full screen, click on the movie to go to youtube, then select HD and full screen)

New Monthly Calendar design

Your centre’s calendar will now have the look and feel of your centre’s website design including the centre name, colors and background.  Also while browsing the monthly calendar on your website , viewers will enjoy a ‘quick view‘ of the crucial details for each program such as intro text, teacher, start & end times. Just hover over the event on the calendar with your mouse and all the important details pop up.

(To watch in full screen, click on the movie to go to youtube, then select HD and full screen)

Converting upcoming programs

We have automatically converted your programs’ first date into the new format. For programs that have many days, you will need to add the additional days to it. (i.e., the Friday night of an existing Level has been converted; you will need to enter the Saturday and Sunday).

Note – please immediately check and update the ‘end times’ for the programs that have been automatically converted as they may have changed during the conversion and they will be showing up on your website incorrectly. We appologize, but this could not be avoided.

Some programs have registrations across multiple listing dates (this will be the case if you have listed a program in the SDB once for each day, so for a Shambhala Level you may have 3 listings; accordingly different participants may be registered on each listing). For programs with registrations across many dates, we suggest that you:

  1. Transfer all registrations from other dates to the first date of the program (e.g., for a Shambhala Level, transfer the Saturday and Sunday registrations to the Friday listing)
  2. Delete the other program listings (Saturday & Sunday)
  3. Add the days you need to the program listing (Friday) using the ‘add a day’ feature

Converting recurrent events

For a recurrent event, such as an Open House, you may want to create the recurrent event first before deleting your old instances of the event. This way you can use two screens and copy and paste easily between the old and new.

When you make your recurrent event, you may want to make dates that span for a year or two. Then next year, you’ll need to remember to extend the ending date to create more dates before they expire.

Once the new recurrent event is made, you can simply just copy and paste the event details from the old instances , such as teacher, topic, etc. into the new recurrent event dates. Once you create a recurrent event (e.g, open house), you will see below the name of the event, ‘Hide/show event dates’. Click here to see and edit any of the event dates for the Open House.

Helpful hints for converting programs:

To make copy and pasting easy, use the Multiple Tabs feature in your browser. Open 2 copies of the SDB in different tab, so you can cut and paste between them.

You may also want to print out your programs listing page so that you have a list of the programs you need to convert.

Some helpful definitions:

Single / Multi day program

Single or Multi-day programs are programs that span one or many days, such as Shambhala Levels & SSBS courses.

Recurrent Events

Recurrent events is an umbrella term for a series of event dates that repeat on a regular time (e.g., open house open sitting, practice group meeting, or staff meeting).

Each instance of the recurrent event is called an event date; e.g., a recurrent event could be ‘Open House’ and an Event Date could be the Open House on Nov. 17, 2009.

Using the recurrent events feature, you can create years of events at once, yet each event date can have different details, such as teacher, titles, description, price, etc. An event date can also have its own registration.

You control whether recurrent events do or do not show on the program listing page of your website.  For example, you might want your weekly Open House in the programs listing, but not your monthly Ashe Society or Council meeting.  If you don’t include these in the program listing, they will still appear on your calendar.

Finding your monthly calendar view

Many Centers will just find their calendar by clicking the “monthly calendar view” link as you have always done.

Understandably some Centres switched to other calendar services for the monthly calendar view. If your centre is one of these, you will still link to your other calendar from the website link.

If you would like to see how the new calendar looks and interacts with the new program formats in the SDB, you can visit your centre’s template-produced monthly calendar view here: www.yourcentrename.shambhala.org/calendar.php — replace “yourcentrename” with the name of your center.

This calendar will have all the features, except clicking the program names will not open a window with details on the program.  To see how this works, check out one of the Centres that are using our calendar as their main calendar, for example Nelson:  http://nelson.shambhala.org/calendar.php

Check it out!  We are hoping that you will find the new calendar will work for you.  If so, talk to your webmaster or us about changing back.

Support contacts

For Issues with the SDB calendar interface please contact Candlin Dobbs ([email protected])

For issues or concerns with your website’s calendar or programs pages, please contact Pawel Molenda ([email protected])

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2 responses to “ Centre Program Calendar 2.0 – training videos ”
  1. Elaine Dunlap
    Dec 9, 2009
    Reply

    Thank you for these helpful videos.
    I am unable to preview my database-generated calendar, since the calendar service we’ve been using in the meantime already existed at ~/calendar.php

    Can you please advise how I can preview the new calendar and compare its functions to the existing system I use (google cal)?

    Thanks,
    Elaine

  2. Hi.

    Does the new calendar system support syndication via CalDAV?

    – Bob


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