Events Manual

[Roxianna]

Here is the draft manual for the events application in your guild sites. I'll field any event module questions, bug reports and feature requests here as well.

Events
The GuildCafe event system is powerful application designed to support the types of events that are common in games: raids, quests, tournaments and other events where your attendees will typically play a particular role or character type. Events can be one-time or recurring and have a large number of features for you to control and track attendance.
(Much thanks to the Section One guild who ran this application for all their raid events on the Archimonde server for over a year and developed the "business rules" regarding, standbys, benching, permanent slots and attendence.)

Important Concepts
Because the event system has a lot of options, it is helpful to understand some of the key concepts within it. The system was originally designed to handle large, 40-person (or larger) raids and PVP events in MMORPGs, but has grown to support events large and small, MMO-and-not. A number of the terms and techniques used in the event system were developed based on what was learned to work well in making things streamlined and easy to manage.

Recurring Events
A recurring event is one that occurs at a regular interval: daily, weekly or monthly. Recurring events have special challenges, such as maintaining the attendance list from event to event and rewarding those with good attendance. The GuildCafe event system helps you with this by allowing you to record attendance and transfer the list of people who showed up for an event to the pre-registered list for the next iteration of a recurring event—or to penalize no-shows by removing them from the recurring roster.

Permanent Slots
Permanent slots are a concept around recurring events, as far as the GuildCafe is concerned, these folks are merely registered. The concept becomes important in cases like WoW where finding and getting in a group for high level content is difficult. Permanent Slots are away of rewarding people who reliably show up for an event with preferential treament. A person/character that has been accepted by the event manager as Registered for a recurring event is considered to occupy a Permanent Slot and thus be guaranteed a place everytime the event runs.

Stand-bys
When there are no permanent slots available or a person thinks they might like to attend, but are not sure if they can really make it, they can "go on standby" This allows the event manager to keep track of people who are interested but not committed to showing up. If someone with a Permanent slot "benches themselves", the event manager may choose a player on stand-by to fill in for that recurrance. Stand-bys carry over from recurrence to recurrence unless dropkicked by the event manager.

Waiting for a Permanent Slot
An event manager may promote a person/character on standby to Waiting for a Permanent Slot at their discretion. This reminds the event manager that this person is someone who is ready to commit to attending the event regularly so that they can be given priority when a temporary or permanent slot opens up. Like Stand-by, people who are Waiting for a Permanent Slot carry over from recurrence to recurrence unless dropkicked by the event manager.

Benching
A "benched" person is someone with a Permanent Slot who knows in advance they can't make it. You can configure whether an event allows "benching." If so, allow a person to remove themselves from the current occurance event in advance. If not, registered attendees will only have the option to remove themselves permanently from the event A benched person person is automatically returned to their permanent slot when the next iteration of the recurring event is created. Benching for multiple recurrances must be accomplished manually by the event administrator. It's a nice way of keeping track of members who ordinarily show for a recurring event but who need to be away for a period of time, but don't wish to be permanently removed.

Slots
A slot is a position in an event that must be played by a particular character type. For example, in an MMORPG you could indicate exactly how many slots you need to be played by a given class.
Coordinating Events

There are three main steps to coordinating an event:

• Create an event from the Events tab.
• Have your members register for the event
• Run the event!
  • Close out the event. If it is a recurring event, the coordinator can choose to copy attendance lists, drop kick absentees create the next iteration of the event.

Creating an Event
From the management interface, click on the "Events" tab. There, you'll see a calendar that's marked with the dates of any events you've scheduled already, as well as a list of upcoming and previous events. Click the "New Event" button to create a new event.

On the form that appears, you'll be able to customize your event as follows:

• The date and time! Choose the date off the calendar control, and the time from the selection boxes. Use whatever local timezone you have set for your GuildCafe account (which will be displayed right below the calendar). When other people look at the event later, the dates and times will be automatically adjusted for their own timezones.
• Title. Keep it as short and descriptive as possible.
• Description. Give any additional information on the event here, such as where they need to be, what you're general plan is, and so forth.
• Requirements. If there are any special requirements (such as levels, mods, a Ventrilo channel, equipment requirements) they can be mentioned here.
• The game. Choose the appropriate game for the event from the drop-down list. This allows the system to create slots that are specific to particular classes you'll need for the event. If the event isn't specific to a game (like it's a chatroom event or the date your buddies will get together for a real-life get-together) you can leave this set to "None."
• Recurs. If the event will happen regularly, then choose this. You can make it a weekly or monthly event. Weekly events will happen on the same time, separated by one week; a monthly event will happen on the same day of the week once per month.
• Event type. Most events are for your members only. But if you'd like to create an event that is open to other members of GuildCafe, you can do that by choosing a different option here. The options available are
  • Standard, Member Only – only your own members can register for the event.
  • Standard, Open Event – your event will be advertised elsewhere on GuildCafe, helping people learn about what you're up to; all GuildCafe members will be able to register for the event.
  • PVP Open Challenge – This is an unimplemented feature that will allow you to publicize PvP challenges and tournaments
  • Special options. You can control whether you want to allow "benching," stand-bys, or whether you want to manually approve every person to registers for the event.

Once you've done the basic setup for your event, you'll be taken to a page where you can edit any of the things you just entered—or add slots to the event. If you chose a particular game for the event, then you'll be offered a list of the classes that are used within that game. For example, a World of Warcraft event will allow you to create slots for shamans, paladins, warriors, etc. Pick the number of slots for each, the associated class, and then click "Add Slots."

Joining an Event
Your members may join an event by clicking on the "Events" option from your group's navigation bar. They might also arrive at a specific event by clicking on the "Upcoming Events" advertisement that's automatically included in your announcements section (if you created a public event, they might arrive here from other event directories on GuildCafe as well.)

Managing Registrations
As people register for the event, they'll be recorded based on the class they play; in other words, if someone plays a "warrior" then they'll automatically be added to the warrior slots for an event.
You can review the list of registrations for your event by visiting the Events tab from the management interface. Under "Modify User Registrations" you'll see the total people who have registered along with their member names (as well as the character names they plan to play). From here, you can change anyone's status: remove them from the event, change them to a standby or bench them, or approve them (if you're requiring approval).

Seeing a registration log
You can see a list of everyone who has registered, been approved or been removed for an event, as well as a log of any of the editing changes, by clicking on the button labeled "View Log for this Event" on the event management/editing page.

Closing an Event
You close an event when the event has finished, or when you've decided to cancel it. If you close a recurring event, this is when you have the opportunity to review everyone's attendance and decide whether they should be carried over to the next iteration of the event, or dropped from the registration roster.

To close an event:

1. Go to the "Events" tab in the management interface.
2. Select the event that you're closing from the list.
3. Click the "Close Event" button. Choose either "Event Cancelled" or "Event Complete" for your reason.
4. If the event is complete, go down the list of people who attended.
5. If this is a recurring event, choose the appropriate option with regards to whether you'd like them to be automatically included for the next iteration.

[Skrymir]

Feature request: Make it possible to put the calendar on the front page in lieu of linking to it.

[Galadolas]

I think it would be nice to allow players to also register the fact they cannot attend an event (and if possible allow a few lines for them to give reasons). This will do two things:

1. Allow a player to show he has seen the event post and acknowledged it

2. Show the event organiser a more realistic picture of who has seen the event. At present the organiser only sees the attendees and probably wonders how many have actually seen the post other than those that have said they are attending.

Players want to support their guilds but when RL committments get in the way it's only polite to allow people to make their apologies

[Oryonn]

It would also be nice to have more general classes to choose the slot openings like Tank, Healer, DPS. I don't care necessarily how many Paladins, Priests, Shaman, etc show up but I do care how many healers will be there.

[Theheretic]

Is there a way to show multiple events at once on the home page? if not, can we make this a possibility please?

[NiaJade]

I began an event but now want to remove it - but I cannot. Is there a way to remove an event that has been listed?

Yes, I did cancel it.

[Roxianna]

Event module customers will be happy to know that this feature is being worked on as part of a whole upgrade our guild hosting.

Being able to delete events is already on the list. I will add displaying more than one event on the homepage to the list.

[Katreena]

We had an event that was reoccuring, but we closed and canceled it. Now, it shows up every week on the calendar as canceled.

Also, the drop kick absenteees feature is not working, it still has everyone from the week before whether or not the boxes are checked/unchecked.

It would be nice to have the option to clear attendance and/or create the next run with a blank roster (ie, people have to sign up every week for that event regardless of past attendance).

[Coverfire]

What does it take to have rights to post an event, when I use your instructions I do not have an events tab. I am however listed as a guild leader.

[Kitsunekurai]

I set up a reoccurring event, but the date and time are not showing up correctly. It keeps saying it's for Nov 30, 1999 at 1pm. It should be for every Friday at 5pm. Any way to fix this? I've tried repeatedly to edit it, but it still comes up the same.