Create an event

Events always belong to a community. You create a new event from the admin panel of the community you manage.

Go to the Events area

Open your community in the admin panel and go to Events in the left menu. This area lists your community's events on the Current Events and Past Events tabs.

Press the Create Event button in the top right. The create form opens on the same page. (Pick Create a series from the arrow beside it and the same form opens for a programme that gathers several events — see Event series.)

Basic details

First you set up the event's identity:

• Cover image: Press the box on the left of the form and upload an image. Covers are square; you crop the image you upload to a square. It shows on your event page and on its cards.
• Title: Write a short, clear name in the large field at the top of the form.
• Event Description: Explain what will happen. You can format the text and add headings and lists.

Event or training

Under the description, in the Event type section, you pick Event or Training. The third option in that menu, Series, creates not a single event but a programme that gathers several — see Event series.

It is more than a label — it changes the words the page speaks. Pick Training and the "Speakers" section becomes "Instructors", in the admin panel too. Ticket and payment wording stays exactly as it is: "ticket" is the word on the invoice, the refund and the QR pass, and renaming half of them would only confuse.

You can switch between event and training later in the event's settings too; the page switches to the new words straight away.

Date, time, and place

Pick the start date and time. If you leave the end empty, it fills in three hours after the start, and you can adjust it however you like.

Under Event Location there are two choices side by side: In person and Online. Pick in person and you choose the location from the search box or the map — if a venue matches what you're typing, it appears at the top of the list. Pick online and you either paste a link or open a built-in video room with one click on Create MeMeet Room.

You can also say which city the times are meant to be read in, from the time zone control at the top right. See Your event's time zone.

Participation type

The Participation Type menu has two options, and the form opens with One-click RSVP selected:

• One-click RSVP: Attendees join with a single click. You do not need to define separate tickets. Pick this and, right below it, you can enter a Registration Limit and turn on the Waitlist (while the limit is empty, that switch is called Require approval to register).
• Ticket entry: Attendees join by getting a ticket. You add your free or paid tickets inside the form, in the same section, and keep editing them later from the Tickets area — see Set up tickets.

The date field beside it sets when registration or ticket sales begin. The participation type cannot be changed once the event is created. For capacity, the waitlist and visibility in detail, see Registration, capacity, and waitlist.

Publish state and privacy

In the form's top bar, next to the time zone control, there are two separate choices. The first says who may see the event: Public, Private (only community members), or Unlisted (only people with the link). On a phone this choice sits inside the form, under Event Visibility.

The second is the Create Event button itself. Press it and the event goes live the moment you save. Press the arrow on its right-hand end for the other choices about when it opens:

• Save as draft: creates the event straight away but shows it nowhere, and not even someone holding the link can open it. You publish it when you are ready.
• Schedule: a "When should this event go live?" section opens in the form and the button becomes Schedule and create. You pick a date and time and press that button; the event opens itself at that moment. Until then it stays out of search, popular and category pages; you and your community's other admins see it in the list with a "Scheduled" badge. If you change your mind about scheduling, press Publish now instead in that section.

Scheduling is asked only while you are creating an event — one that already exists has answered the question. You can move a scheduled event's date in its settings, or end the wait with Publish now instead.

To publish a draft, go to its settings: the visibility menu says Draft. Choose who can see the event and press Save Changes, and it goes live. The same menu holds one more option: Archive. It takes a published event back down and removes it from every page; to bring it back, pick a privacy from that same menu. A published event cannot go back to being a draft.

Add organizers

You are added as an organizer automatically. In the Organizers section at the end of the form you can add other people who will manage the event with you. There is no search here — the people who qualify come as a list: only admins of this community, or the venue's managers when the event is held at a venue, can be added. If you can't find someone in the list, make them an admin of the community first.

A co-hosting community's admins join that list on the event's Organizers page once the collaboration is set up. To co-host the event with another community or add sponsors, see Co-hosting and sponsors.

Create the event

When you are ready, press Create Event. Your event is created and its overview page opens (if you created a series, you land straight on its Events in this series tab).

You can require attendees to answer a form — questions of your choosing — before their ticket is issued. Set this up from the event's Event form area, under the Registrations group; the event is pre-selected for you. See What forms are for and Reading form responses.

If your community has streaks turned on, whether this event counts toward the streak is chosen not in the form but on your community's Streaks page, on the Streak events tab — see Streaks.

The event's overview page

When you open an event in the panel, Overview sits at the top of the left menu. This page shows how the event is doing at a glance:

• Next to the title there are two buttons: Clone opens a new event form with the same details (set the dates and each ticket's sale dates again before publishing), and Share opens the event's link, social sharing and a QR code. Once the event has ended, a Post-event survey button joins them. Clone and the survey are for the community that created the event: a co-host gets only Share, as with mailing the participants.
• If the event is scheduled, the top of the page says when it goes live ("Publishes on …") and counts down to that moment.
• If the event is part of a series, a "This event is part of a series" box appears; Edit the series takes you to the series.
• Four cards sum up the numbers: Registrations (excluding cancelled and refunded), Checked in, Ticket types, and Days to go (days since, once it has ended).

While nobody has registered yet, a Complete your event list stands where the charts will be: Add a cover image, Add a schedule, Add speakers, and Add an event form, marked Optional. Complete on each row takes you to the right page, and a finished row turns into Edit. The progress bar counts only the three required steps; a form is not a condition for publishing.

Once the first registrations arrive, the list gives way to four charts: Registration timeline, By day of week, Check-in progress, and By ticket type.

Preview a draft before publishing

While your event is a draft, the button in the panel's top bar says Preview (on a published event the same spot says Go to Event). Press it and the event page opens in a new tab, as attendees will see it.

A strip across the top says "You're previewing — this page isn't live yet." Joining is off in the preview; the buttons work once the event is published. Only the people who manage the event can open the preview; anyone else following the link gets a page-not-found. After the event is published, the preview link takes you to its real page.

If you change the date or the place later

If you change the event's start date or its venue in its settings, a confirmation comes up before you save: what changed, how many people will be emailed, and that the email cannot be recalled.

Everyone who bought a ticket or saved the event gets an automatic notice. The emails go out within ten minutes. Someone who both saved the event and holds a ticket gets one email, not two.

Moving only the end time, editing the location field of an online event, changing an event that has already ended, or putting a value back the way it was sends nothing. Once an event has ended, its date fields are locked.

Delete an event

In the event's settings, press Delete Event at the bottom of the Details tab. The window that opens says the event will be deleted for good, along with every ticket, speaker, sponsor and participant record. To confirm, you type the event's name into the box; until it matches, the Delete button stays disabled. This can't be undone.

Once your event is live, attendees can add it to their calendar (see Add to your calendar), and after it runs you can recognize attendees with certificates and badges.

In the app

In the app, tap the + button at the top right of your community's event list and choose Create Event (the same menu has Create a series). The form asks for the same details; for a ticketed event, you add its tickets from Tickets once the event is created.

When you open an event you manage, the Manage event screen comes up. At the top are the event's name, date and state, and below them the Registered and Checked in counts (plus Waitlisted when the waitlist is on). View event page opens the event's page, and Check-in opens the screen where you scan attendees in. If the event is a draft, a notice appears; Publish now takes you to its details, where you publish it.

Tap the event's name and Overview opens. The four cards, the Complete your event list and the charts from the web are here too; Clone, Share and Post-event survey sit in the menu at the top right.