Creating and managing events

This article covers a core service of the majority of county associations - events (forums, webinars, training, meetings) many of these repeat throughout the year and set up on a quarterly or annual basis.  These regular events lend themselves to both standardisation and automation to help free up important administration time and offer county associations a more professional approach to event management.

Note: this guide is based on the approach taken by SALC, each individual ALC may want to customise some elements in a different way and should account for this as pat part of their implementation plan.

JAMS offers an opportunity to refine processes and move away from the reliance of email group contacts with attachments and information which the delegate might lose.   The system can help manage bookings, delegate packs, reminders, surveys through the member portal.

• Overview of the approach

• Types of events, categorisation and tags

• Event configuration including creating delegate packs and standard email templates

• Creating your event and styling your events pages

• Bookings and attendance administration

Overview

FREE EVENTS - such as clerk networking/councillor forums can take advantage of automated booking and the administration associated with that.  Here the process develops sees a clerk making a booking through the portal on behalf of themselves or their councillors, adding email and contact information to a simple screen.  When the booking is made immediate confirmation will appear on screen and automated emails with pre-defined text and links to information will be sent at the relevant intervals (eg: immediately upon booking, a day before the event, the day of the event).  Automated emails can include links to reoccurring Zoom rooms and folders on, say, Office 365 that contain the agenda or programme for the event, even surveys asking delegates for information before they come. 

PAID EVENTS - such as councillor and clerk core training, finance and budget training, CiLCA, planning, marketing and communications and e-learning.  The only difference between paid and free events is that the ALC team would need to be alerted to send an invoice using their financial package (unless they have integrated this into JAMS and automated the invoicing element).    The clerk will receive confirmation of the order by email when the booking is made and receive a pdf document called QUOTATION.  This is not an invoice but at least provides the council with email confirmation immediately the booking is made.

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Types of events, categorisation and tags  

       Go to events - event tags and set up the tags (note this is an important first job and the name choices you choose here also need to be duplicated for event categories so that they match.  This will become more apparent when you see the event page on the website.

       Create tags

Creating TAGS allows you to have a suite of useful drop down menu choices for member councils. Above is an example of how to create tag categories and the linked tag names.  Simple hit create, decide on your parent category (this is what will be displayed as a drop down folder on the website) and then the tag that goes with it.  See below as an example.

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Next - go to configuration - event TEMPLATES.   Below is an example of how you might approach this. 

o   Clerk monthly networking

o   Councillor core training (if these are individual modules, you can use this template and configure when you create an actual event)

o   Certificate in Local Council Administration (CiLCA)

o   Finance training

o   Planning training

Go to categorisation and EVENT TEMPLATES and CREATE , naming your event template in line with the suggestion above.  

Name of the event category (eg: CiLCA support or Councillor REMEMBER TO REPLICATE THESE WITH THE TAGS 

o    Select automatically send emails – NB you will be editing this area later and changing the templates to your own email templates when you have set them up

o   Tick automatically confirm registration and ticketing

o   Add any questions to help you know more about your delegates – NB you can only set up selection list questions not open questions.  As the booking will be set up by the clerk they will enter the name of the delegate, email address and contact tel number and the booking will be linked to the council/organisation.  You might, for example, want to know the role of the delegate, time in post, whether this is new training or refresher.  These questions should be set up against the category but they can be removed if, for example, they are not applicable to a particular event.

o   SAVE

Prepare your delegate pack-  ways you can reduce administration

If you are sending these in advance, we suggest they are stored on a shared drive, such as a Google Drive or OneDrive folder.  This allows you to embed links in an email template in advance and reduce administration.  Electronic delegate packs also save paper and recipients should be encouraged to download them onto a local folder rather than printing them off.

If your event is online and is a regular event (like councillor training) we suggest you set up re-occurring Zoom Rooms that match your event categories.  This allows you to embed the meeting room url and password into an email template which can be used multiple times and reduce administration.

If you usually do an end of event survey consider smarter ways of doing this – such as an online poll in your Zoom room or a link/QR code in the meeting room chat to encourage delegates to give you immediate feedback.  You can also, in addition, or instead of, set up an online survey from within the membership management system and send a link in an email template and set it to go automatically to the delegate the day after the event along with details of future training.

Create standard email templates:

Template 01 – confirmation of registration (sent immediately on booking to delegate)

Template 02 – delegate pack, Zoom room (sent two days after booking to delegate)

Template 03 – reminder 1 (sent one week before the event to delegate)

Template 04 – final reminder (sent one day before the event to delegate)

Template 05 – follow up with survey/request for feedback/details of future events (sent one day after the event to the delegate.  Could possibly include a copy of the recording where appropriate.

To create your standard email templates - Go to USERS and SETTINGS, settings, email templates

·     Template 01 – we suggest you use the standard template already in the system.  This particular template is prone to not working if you edit any of coding - which is easy to do accidentally.  If you duplicate and simply rename or just use the existing template out of the box this should work ok.  This template merely confirms the booking has been made and is sent immediately after registration.   

·     Template 02 – go to a standard template already in the system called “EVENT REMINDER” – edit and duplicate this.  You can then rename this to match your event category or event.  REMEMBER if, for example, you have individual modules for online events for councillors you will need individual email templates that link to the relevant delegate pack and appropriate Zoom room.  Whilst there is an advantage in having a reoccurring Zoom room url and password embedded, delegate packs will vary depending on the module/course.

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Follow on templates that are reminders can just be a copy of the delegate pack and url of the event.  This is often useful as it is common for delegates to lose information received by email. 

·     Now you have set up your templates you can now create your events.  You will need to remember the names of your email templates so that you can attach them to the relevant event.

Creating your event and styling your event pages

It looks more professional if you establish a standard format and layout for your events and once this is finalised you can duplicate it and set up multiple dates 

·       Go to the events menu and select create

·      Give your event a name and check the other fields such as organisation, who is leading etc.,  NB: if a third party is running the event such as Breakthrough       Communications or Steve Parkinson you can add details here so you have a distinction between your own events and those managed on your behalf.

        Select the category – referring to the set up above, choose the generic category “councillor” in this instance.  This means you are inheriting all the standard settings   you have already added to the system such as “online”, “automatic registration”, “send automatic emails”, “min and max no. of delegates”, “questions for delegates”

·      Set the date and time and tickets.  The system will automatically suggest a product “Event Registration” – this comes from the products area of the system.  If you   need any additional configuration you will need to discuss development needs with Junari

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 If this is a FREE event then remove the price that has automatically been added and replace with “00.00”  If the event is a PAID event add the value.

·      Next go to the tab “communications” and edit as follows:

o   Retain the email template “event registration” and note it will be sent automatically to the delegate when their place is booked

o   REMOVE the two standard event reminders and pick up the templates you have set up for the type of event eg: Councillor module 01 training by selecting ‘add a line’, search template, select, set when you want each email to go out automatically then SAVE

Continue with the email templates until you are happy with the set up.

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You can now visit the website page that is automatically set up for events.  Use the GO TO WEBSITE button and see how it is styled.  You can configure this by clicking edit and setting a design for your different types of events.  

·        Finally publish the event

The event is now live on your event page linked to the member portal.  It is also linked to the category “councillor” so that clerks can filter events by category as well as date or see all events that are coming up.

NEXT go to the events menu and go to configuration - choose event templates

·     Add the location of your training venue here if your workshop is face-to-face if not leave this blank.  You can add multiple locations if necessary. You can also add an organiser - for example if it is e-learning with Nimble or a webinar in partnership with Breakthrough Communications or Steve Parkinson Associates.   Next go to event categorisation and using your list of types of events set each one up as follows:

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Bookings and attendance administration

From an end user perspective, the clerk will see on screen confirmation