With a Timely account, you can set up a Front End Submission Form in the public view of your events calendar, and accept event submissions from your community and local partners. With this feature you can populate your website calendar with events hosted by other organizations effortlessly.
1. Creating a Front End Submission Form
Once you log into your Timely account, click on the "Settings tab" on the left menu on your dashboard. Then, in "General Settings", click on "Event Submission Form". The area will expand and you can click the “Enable event submissions form” to enable the feature.
2. Event Submission Form Set Up Options
Once you have enabled the "Event Submission Form" in "General Settings", you will be able to see the following additional set up options:
- Automatically approve new submitters: if you check this option, all submitters will be automatically approved by default. This will be the general rule, even if you had previously set up individual approval rules.
- Automatically approve new events submitted: if you check this option, all events sent by all submitters will be automatically approved by default. If you enabled this, any previous individual submitter approval setting will be disregarded.
- Hide add event button: This option removes the "+ ADD EVENT" button from your public events calendar. However, it will not make any changes to the submitters settings and approvals.
3. Event Filter Options
The “Filters” option will list all default filters, like Categories, Tags, Venues and Organizers.
All filters created by you will also appear on this list. For example there is a Workshops custom field that was created in the Filters menu that will show up in the “Event Submission Form” settings as well.
The default filters have two options:
- Required: if required is checked, then the submitter needs to choose one option;
- Show new button: if this option is selected, then a button will appear next to the dropdown and will let the subscriber add a new option to the filter.
While the custom filters only have one option: if it is required or not in the form.
In the following image “Category” is a mandatory field (checked as required) and will be marked in red in case the submitter does not select an option from the dropdown menu. Both “Category” and “Tag” don’t have the “NEW” button, so the submitter can’t add his own categories and tags. And “Venue”, “Organizer” have the “NEW” button, so the submitter can add his own venues and organizers. For the last one, “Workshops”, the “NEW” button is always an option.
4. Custom Fields for your Event Submission Form
The “Fields” settings let the Calendar Owner add custom fields that will be added to the form in the Public View. A field can be of two types:
- Text;
- Checkbox.
To add a new field simply click on the button “Add Field”. Each new field can be customized as text or checkbox.
In the following image there is an example of a text field that asks for the occupation of the submitter and it is not required. The second example is of a checkbox that asks to confirm if the submitter is 21 and it is required. Also you can choose if this field must be shown or hidden in the event details.
The example above will show in the submitter form as text field and checkbox, as it can be seen in the following image:
5. Disclaimer Option
The “Disclaimer” option, if enabled, will allow the user to add a customized disclaimer for the Front End Submission Form. The user can also choose if the submitter has to agree with the disclaimer by clicking the option “Event submitter must agree to the disclaimer before submitting an event”.
If enabled, the disclaimer will show up near the end of the form in the Public Image, as shown on the following image:
6. Receiving Events Submissions from the Community
When you enable the Event Submission Form option, the public view of your website events calendar will show a new button “+ ADD EVENT” on the top, close to the current date.
6.1. Sign up / Sign in Requirement
When someone clicks on the “+ ADD EVENT” button on your website calendar, a popup box will open. For security reasons, event submitters must create an account with Timely to be able to submit events to your calendar.
New event submitters will receive an email from us asking them to verify their email address to activate their account.
If the event submitter already has a Timely account, he or she just needs to sign in to the application.
6.2. Submitting Events through the Front End Submission Form
After successfully signing in, a front end submission form will open in the screen. with the option to add information to the event that will be submitted. Some fields are mandatory and will be highlighted in red in case the information is missing.
Once the event details are filled out and the event submitter press the "Submit Event" button, a "Thank you for your submission" message will appear on the screen, confirming the event was submitted to the events calendar owner.
7. Approving New Event Submitters
When a new user signs up to your events calendar as an event submitter, you will receive a notification by email. You can then login into your Timely account and approve or reject the new event submitter. You can also choose to automatically approve all events submitted by that particular event submitter.
8. Managing your Event Submitters
To manage your event submitters, in your Timely account, click on the "Settings tab", and then the "Submitters tab". There, you will find information about all your submitters, and be able to change properties for each of them, individually.
8.1. List your Event Submitters
You can list your submitters by their statuses. Just click on the desired option, and the list will be filtered accordingly. The list options are:
- Approved;
- Pending; or
- Rejected.
8.2. Edit your Event Submitters' Information
To edit any event submitter's profile, place the cursor over the selected submitter, and then click on the Edit option.
A panel will open on the right side of your screen. You will be able to see the submitter's First Name, Last Name and Email, but cannot change this information. Only the event submitter can change these fields.
The fields you will be able to change are the following:
a) Role / Permissions:
- Author;
- Editor;
- Administrator; or
- Submitter.
* Be careful when changing permissions because you turn a submitter into an administrator of your calendar, with full permissions.
b) Status
- Approved; or
- Rejected.
* The pending status is only available when the submitter creates an account using the Public Calendar and you need to decide whether you will approve or reject this submitter.
c) Automatically approve all events from this submitter
* To enable this option, disable the “Automatically approve new events submitted” setting under the Event Submission Form section in general settings.
8.3 Delete an Event Submitter
To delete a specific event submitter, place the cursor over the selected submitter, then click on the Delete option.
A popup will open for you to confirm the decision. Click the Delete button to confirm, or the Cancel button to go back to the list of event submitters.
For more user guidance, please go to our Help Center. If you have any questions or need additional assistance, do not hesitate to contact us. Alternatively, you can open a support ticket from your Timely account’s dashboard.