We are currently working on a solution that lets you create recurring events. It's a pretty big issue, so we're going to do two things here.

First, and in this post, I'm going to give you a summary of our solution. In the next post, I'm going to give you the complete description of the functionality (what we call a 'User Story'). It's a little longer and contains a lot of details, but we'd still love your input into it.

First - here's the brief summary:

After you create an event, you can set a recurrence schedule for it. This means that identical events will be created according the schedule you set up (e.g. 1st of every month, third Thursday of every month etc). All these events are related in the system.

When any event is edited, you'll have the option to either just edit the one event or all the events that were created as part of the recurrence. If the admin chooses just the current event their changes will only be applied to that event. If they choose to edit all of them, then all the events will be updated. Note that the one exception is start and end dates: Those can only be changed for that particular event. If you want to change dates on all events in the recurrence, then the admin has to edit the recurrence schedule.

If you want to edit the recurrence schedule (e.g. change it from every the third Thursday of every month to the second Tuesday of every month), then all events that are part of the recurrence are deleted and then recreated based on the new schedule. If you just want to make changes to an individual event, no other events are changed.

If you want to delete an event, you'll have the option to either delete the event or the entire recurrence.

All of these events will have their own separate registration lists - people won't be able to sign up for all events at once. We are considering this as part of another issue.

Is there anything you'd want to add/take away from this scenario?

Without repeating or debating suggestions already offered, please proceed by Developing/implementing "recurring" capability ASAP! (WA's "paid subscription" Event functionality should EXCEED that of MS Outlook & Mac iCal "one-time license" functionality). Most organization subscribers NEED such flexibility. Recurring enhancement SHOULD offer EVERY possibility available from Outlook/Exchange AND iCal! Anything less will NOT serve ALL your subscribers! Finally, Event enhancement also MUST incorporate ability to send/receive the event as an Outlook/iCal invitation by email, regardless of whether the member registers for the event.

I expect us to post our design ideas here in the next couple of weeks. So far it is shaping up way too complex for our liking so we will be seeking further input on that before we consider proceeding.

Any word on the progress / road map of this integration?

Regular events tend to get scheduled on days of the week and weeks of the month. I'd say that your first two examples ' every XX weeks on a certain day' and 'monthly on certain date' would get little use

Two options would cover the vast majority of requirements.

1. Every week on {day of week}.

2. Monthly on the {first, second, etc} {day of week}.

The first option allows for "Bingo game every Tuesday" and the second allow for "Bingo game monthly on the second Tuesday".

But it must also be possible to cancel all occurrences after a certain date and cancel individual events. For instance if the Bingo game falls on Christmas day it should be possible to cancel that occurrence but leave the rest untouched.

Gordon

We offer classes over a three month period. It would be helpful to have the option to display the class which is on one day per week on that day through some choice in the creation of the event. At present we cannot use the end date of an event as the event is appears to be continous throughout the three months.

I have weekly, monthly and yearly recurring events, and the current functionality is very cumbersome and time consuming for all event types except for the yearly recurring ones.

I think that Gordon has defined the problem well in his posts and I'll not restate his points here. I just want to weigh in on importance of this type of vastly improved functionality.

Reoccuring events are essential to efficient operations. The current system assumes all events are single day, single events. I know you can work around the copying events, and we have done this. It's not time efficient though. The really problem we have is creating events you register for. We run programs/classes e.g. a weekly yoga class. We want people to register for the whole session so we cannot create separate events. And when you create continuous event, then on the monthly calendar view the event as every day from the start date to the end date making the calendar view useless.

This a a huge problem for us. The point of signing up for the system was the integration of membership, calendar, registrations, etc. But it's not functional and we'll have to consider whether is worth continuing with the system.

The calendar/events needs to function like google calendar or outlook or most other calendar programs when you can select the event to reoccurly weekly, monthly, etc. I also like other web calendar programs I've seen that pop up the info when you hover over the event instead of having to click and go to a new page.

Yes please, we have several events that happen every month. Usually the 3rd Friday or something like that.

OK, thanks I see now.

The only difference is in speed and convenience.

I have a couple of hundred events on my calendar. To copy an event I have to work my way through that drop-down list, find the even and select it, remember to change the Visible/Not-visible button to visible, change the date and publish.

Then, to create the next iteration I have to do the whole thing over again - from the top. It takes many setps for me to get back to the point whre I was a few minutes before. It would be much easier if I could just stay at the bottom of that loop and quickly save several versions of the same event.

Gordon

Gordon,

I highly appreciate your detailed reply - and conceptually it makes total sense.

I am trying to understand how your suggestion for 'get it now' solution differs from what how system works now:

1. Click on Add event button

2. Click on option 'Copy existing event'. Select event to be replicated, Click on Copy button.

Done. You now have a replica of the original event open in Edit mode.You can change text, date etc.

Let me know.

I realize that I'm not proposing anything that cannot be done at present. The difference is speed and convenience.

I just created a new event. I had to click on 9 different options (many of which required a new screen to be painted) to get from "New Event" to "Publish". These steps may be easy enough to describe in the Knowledge Base, but become tedious and tiresome for those of us who have to repeat them five or ten or thirty times each month.

Let's remember the distinction between Problem, Requirement and Solution.

The underlying problem here is that creating new events is tedious and complicated. The requirement should be to speed up the process. There are many solutions which satisfy the requirement to a greater or lesser extent.

The solutions vary from the sophisticated self replicating solution you propose in your opening post to an easier-to-develop re-arrangement of existing tools. Frankly, I'd much rather have a way to replicate an event with two or three clicks using current tools - and get it now - than have to wait months or even years for an "Event Wizard" that does it all by magic.

My suggestion for a "get it now" solution would be:

1. Select an Event
2. Select Edit
3. Change date/time or any other text
4. Select Publish and Continue to publish the event but stay in edit mode
- or -
4. Select Publish and End to publish but return to the current "Add Event" screen.

All of these tools are already in the system, the only change is that "Publish and Continue" just saves the event in its current form and allows the user to continue to modify it.

Gordon

Thanks Gordon,

Our original thinking about recurring events is to automatically create a connected sequence of repeated events.This does not easily map to our current functionality and interface.

I was reading your last comment and it sounds like you are really asking about the ability to easily clone one event to repeat it. This is much easier to do - but how is this different from simply using already existing functionality to create new event by copying an existing one?

I have to believe that the vast majority of situations would be satisfied with a Weekly and a Monthly option.

The weekly is easy - just select the day of the week.

Your suggestion to have the monthly on a praticular date each month would get little usage (IMHO). People tend to operate around days of the week rather than dates of the month. The 1st Tuesday, 3rd Wednesday, etc option would get heavy usage.

Likewise, every nth week on a certain day woulkd get little usage, IMHO.

No solution will handle all requirements. For instance, I have a general club meeting on the 2nd Wednesday each month and a board meeting on the preceding Thursday (which is either the 1st or 2nd Thursday). Scheduling these oddball events would be much easier if you could modify the screen flow so that we can replicate an event on any date we specify and then repeat the replication WITHOUT having to go back to the event list screen.

The logic flow might be:

1. Select Event
2. Select Replicate (Rather than "New" or "Copy")
3. Select new date and/or change content
4. Publish
5. Repeat items 3 and 4.

The repeated event would have identical properties as the parent event with regards to visibility, etc but the description of the event could also be changed for each occurrence. Each new iteration would get a new copy of the original event, not the one just modified.

Another way to accomplish the same task would be to allow us to change the date on an existing event and then be given the option to create a new (additional) event with the new date or just to re-schedule the old event to the new date.

Gordon

Greetings,

we would like to make available in the events section this option:

we have events and classes that have a week/month/year periodicity. Is possible for example when we create a class on Monday keep it available on our schedule automatically for each Monday?

thanks

This would be a fantastic feature. I know it's a bit challenging, but we have, for example, recurring events every Friday during the school year (WA is our school's website), and that's a lot of events to replicate manually.

It seems that you could duplicate the MS Outlook recurrance types with some kind of "master" record . If an event has a "master" recurring event record associated with it, before editing any particular such recurring event the user would be asked "update series or just this instance"? If the series is updated, then the master record is what's updated. If the individual record is what's edited, then it "detaches" from the master record (with suitable warnings) and it becomes it's own event. I guess you'd have to flag it so that subsequent changes to the master record wouldn't nuke the updated individual event, or duplicate it. That is, any detached and modified instance of a recurring event would have priority.

For the iCalendar event link you'd want that to be set as "recurring" events for people downloading that "meeting notice" into their Outlook calendar.

If you could duplicate the functions of Microsoft Outlook - Calendar Appointment Recurrence... that would work great

Hi.

Would be great to be able to schedule recurring events in the calendar

Such as: Weekly, Monthly, Every (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th) Week on (Mon, Tue, Wed...)

Mike

A partial solution to this would be to modify the "New Event" work flow,

Add a "Replicate" button which would work the same as Copy except that we could

1. click on the date,

2. select a new date,

3. select "Publish"

Repeat.

All new events created this way are AUTOMATICALLY VISIBLE. The problem with the current scheme is the number of steps we have to go through to copy an event (and remember to make it visible) makes the process tedious and slow.

An improvement to this would be to allow us to give a symbolic name to an event and describe the event only once. Then we could copy the symbolic name in the method described above. The advantage of this is that if some detail about the event changes, the change only has to be made in one place and is reflected to all other occurrences.