Pre-sales proposal questions

[Mark Regov]

I have a very detailed specific request from a client who wants to convert from a cold fusion site and needs a heavy duty calendaring/events/scheduling plugin. I would like to know if your product has all this capability.

Tie into our Integrated Library System using horizon Web services.
Use SSO through ADFS for staff login.

The Website Calendar background information
1. The calendar is the source of our event listings, online registrations, and Featured Events on the main home page.
2. There are 5 different calendars:
i. Library – where all library events are listed
ii. General – where the meetings that are being held in the public meeting rooms by outside groups are listed
iii. Kids – where library events for kids are copied
iv. Teens – where library events for teens are copied.
v. EBTV (not currently being used)
c. Multiple views of the calendar
i. Each event in the Calendar
ii. Calendar grid
iii. Event listings – List view of all events entered into the calendar (displays the event title and description, as well as the date and time, location, and whether or not it is featured on the home page. It also contains links for copying, editing and deleting for website administrators.)
iv. Room schedule – view of rooms being used for events. It is currently used by our maintenance staff who don’t have to log in to see room setup and equipment requests for an event.
d. Back end calendar support pages
i. Add an event
ii. Support tables
iii. Event administration (also used to pull reports in addition to managing the registrations for library programs, and managing contacts (users) and pages and content management parts of the site.
iv. My event registrations (for logged in registrants) to see what they have signed up for.
e. Searchable – Events are categorized by type and level (age group). (Subject is not being used.)
Event features
a. Events can be displayed in more than one calendar
b. Events are created with the rooms that will be used. The rooms cannot be double booked. Only one event per room time period.
c. Events can contain Setup time and breakdown times (in addition to start and end times). These are used to prolong the time a room is booked for so that maintenance staff can set up and break down the meeting room. The room is not allowed to be booked during those times. However, the times of the event still use the start and end time for the public to see.
d. End date – If we enter a start date and a different end date, the display of the event on the home page spans those days, i.e. that event remains on the home page until the span of days has ended in one container.
1. Sponsored by field
2. Events in the calendar can be public or not depending upon the degree of their completion.
3. Critical – events marked critical automatically show up on the home page.
4. Fields for online registration include:
i. Whether to include online registration
ii. The date online registration begins
iii. Whether registration is open to cardholders only
iv. Whether the event is a single occurrence or has multiple parts
v. Whether multiple registrations are allowed per library card (normally only one registration is allowed per library card number.
5. We can input the cost for an event (with the ability to input multiple cost options)
6. Late fee and days before the event when late
7. Meals (with the ability to input multiple cost options)
8. The Event presenter can be listed in each event in its own field.
9. Additional graphic and URLs are allowed
10. We have a field to denote which room will be used. This is used for the room schedule view to prevent double booking.
11. Number of participants – min __ max __ waiting list # __ actual attendance __
i. Max – This allows us to set the maximum number of seats allowed and will stop online event registration once the max has been reached.
ii. The waiting list field will allow up to the given number of people to register and be told that they are on a waiting list and will be contacted in case someone cancels. When the maximum waiting list number has been reached, online registration is closed.
iii. Minimum – only used for informational display purposes.
iv. Actual attendance can be entered into each event for reporting purposes.
12. Equipment required fields (entered in support tables.)
13. Fee info fields
i. Date approved
ii. Fee
iii. Paid by
iv. Deposit amount
v. Deposit paid date
vi. Balance
vii. Balance paid on
More event features
1. Ability to copy events so that they don’t have to be created from scratch. (This features copies all of the fields used in the copied event except for the date.)
2. Ability to delete an event. Not allowed for events with anything tied to them. (A link to another calendar, online registrations…) We prefer not to delete events in our Calendar but to mark them as cancelled.
3. Send Email to class (used to send a mass email to all registrants who have signed up for that event.)
4. Ability to tie a document to an event. So far, we have tied Professional Development Certificates, i.e., a certification of event attendance. It is automatically populated with the event date, presenter and the registrant’s name and is available for the registrant once they have been marked as having attended the class in the website calendaring system.
5. Add to my calendar link
6. Sign me up link to register
7. Website administrators can see the status of online event registration in the event itself.
8. Featured Events roll off the home page at the end time listed in the event.
9. Featured Images in events automatically resize for home page display.
Online registration
1. Limited to one registration per library cardholder per event. (except some kids events – multiple registrations allowed)
2. Library card and PIN numbers validated by library card catalog database – Microsoft SQL using Sirsi Dynix Horizon product. No data pull out. Just validation using Radius server.
3. Non cardholders can also register for events if allowed in event setup. This must be done with staff assistance currently.
4. Registrations produce a confirmation page which can be printed and is automatically emailed to those providing an email address and copied to the library webmaster.
5. Registrations can be cancelled, but never deleted. A cancellation receipt with a customized message is provided depending upon the cancellation policy of the event and the amount of time before the event. This too is automatically emailed to them and the library webmaster.
6. All registrants, once they register, have a website account. Cardholders can log in using the website login button on the green menu bar (providing library card and PIN numbers). They can access their registrations from there and can cancel a registration from there. They can also access their professional development certificate (or certificate of class completion) in PDF format for printing or saving.
7. Website account holders can log in and comment (if allowed) on content management pages.
Staff Website Administrators
1. Can add or edit events in the website calendars, and forums (Featured News, Featured Item, Staff picks, …)
2. They can assist with online event registrations (from a “Hospitality” page in Event Administration.
3. Each event (in Hospitality display) displays a numbered list of attendees, with their place in the class roster (by date and time registered). If someone before them in the list cancels, it shows their new place in the list. It also displays those on the waiting list. This list is sortable.
4. Each attendee is displayed in Hospitality with name, email address (if provided), phone number, and library card number.
5. From Hospitality, staff can register anyone for an event, cardholder or non-cardholder. If staff registers a cardholder for an event, logging them in with their library card and PIN numbers, they also stayed logged in as administrators themselves when they go back to Hospitality. They can also cancel a registration there. Attendance can be marked there. And the method of payment, as well as comments can be chosen/inserted. The fee will display there depending upon the registrant type.
6. Once attendance is marked in Hospitality the Professional Development Certificate becomes available. Staff can print it out from there or cardholders can log in to their website accounts and retrieve them.
7. We are supposed to have the ability to print badges and receipts from Hospitality. Not currently working.
8. Can print out reports in Excel or Word from Hospitality or Event Administration – class rosters – online registration data and all data in all fields in the eventadd form. There is some ability to limit the output of the report rather than having to export every field and clean up in Excel.

[George]

Hey Mark,

Thanks for reaching out and for your interest in our plugins! The list here is indeed quite detailed.

There are enough details that our plugins do *not* provide that, unfortunately, I’d have to admit that our plugins are probably not the right tool for the job.

Could our plugins be modified to meet all of your needs, in theory? Yes. But in terms of “out of the box” functionality, things like your breakdown of “fee info fields” and the integration with Library PIN card systems are very far outside the scope of what our plugins provide.

The Events Calendar itself is free, so perhaps your best bet is to play around with that firsthand and see if it’s something that’s worth trying to hack to meet your specific project needs.

Event Tickets is free as well; we’ve got a no-questions-asked 30 day refund policy if you’d like to tinker with any of our Premium Plugins, too.

I hope this approach is a helpful one. Best of luck with your experimentation!

Sincerely,
George

[Support Droid]

This topic has not been active for quite some time and will now be closed.

If you still need assistance please simply open a new topic (linking to this one if necessary)
and one of the team will be only too happy to help.

[Author]

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