Events

Summary

Overview

The Events applications is composed of two components or portlets.

1. Events Management: this portlet is used by portal users to create / edit events and manage their attendees.
2. Events Display: This portlet allows the guests and logged in users to view the upcoming public events and register for them.

Features

• Create private (by invitation only) or public events.
• Link events to Liferay Calendar's Events.
• Ability to choose Liferay's Calendar to add the event to.
• Ability to add participants to events by loading a CSV file or manually one at a time through dynamic form.
• Ability to inform the participants about events by sending an email invitation to them.
• Ability to accept/reject an invitation through one click from invitation email.
• Ability to check the attendance status of all invited participants.
• Ability to easily add or delete participants to an event.
• Ability to send notifications by email for changes such as addition of new participant(s), event detail updates and deletion of participant.
• Ability to customize notification templates through UI.
• Ability to send reminders to all attendees.

Installation

The installation steps are as follows:

1. Obtain the Events Portlet application from the Liferay Marketplace.
2. Deploy the application in your existing out of the box Liferay installation. If you haven't already installed Liferay, please download and install from www.liferay.com.

3. Add the Events Display portlet to public or private pages based on who should have access to the events. Add the Events Management portlet to appropriate page and grant permission for users who will be creating and managing the events in your organization.

Configuration

Events Management Portlet and Event Display Portlet must be configured prior to any event creation. An authorized user can manage configuration through portlet's preferences. The access can be controlled by the default permission configuration provided by Liferay portal.

Most of parameters have default generic values, but it is important that the following be setup with appropriate values.

Events Management Portlet

Name and email address of the sender as it should appear in the outbound emails (note that if you are using Gmail, Gmail may not allow the system to override the sender information):

URL of the public page where the Events Display portlet has been added:

Events Display Portlet

Name and email address for notifications when a user goes through the self-registration process (not by invitation but by visiting the events pages):

The rest of the email templates configurations provide a rich set of variables that can be used along with the rich text editor to personalize the email messages. 

The picture below is an example of how the registration invitation email can be customized.

Features In Detail

Create/Edit Events

The events can be created as public or private by toggling the check box during the event creation or while editing them.

The Name, Location, Start Date, End Date and  Description capture the details of the event.

Users can choose the Liferay's Calendar to add the event to:

Liferay's Calendar Portlet will display the event for the chosen calendar:

Invitations can sent during the event creation or later. The interface allows bulk invitations as well as one user at a time.

The Edit event screen facilitates the management of event attendees and to send out new invitation.

Loading a new list of participants via CSV file deletes the previous participants who are not in the new file and sends out a cancellation email to those users. If this is not a desired behavior, the users are welcome to fork the project and customize under the terms of license.

Notifications and Messages

Event Actions	Sample notifications
Each invited person will get an email with information about event and two links: To confirm attendance of the event To reject the invitation The template for this message is configurable from Events Management Portlet under the tab "Regular Invitation Email". The right column shows a sample.
If the invitee clicks on the confirmation link, he/she will see a page with a confirmation message and event information as shown on the right column.
If the invited person clicks on the rejection link, he/she will see a message. This message is configurable from the Events Display Portlet under tab "Not Attendance Message":
If an invited person is removed from the list of participants, he/she will get a cancellation email.  The template for this message is configurable from the Events Management Portlet under tab "Cancelled Event Email":
If the event is updated, all participants will get an update notification except the ones who have already rejected. The template for this message is configurable from Events Management Portlet under tab "Updated Invitation Email":
If the event is deleted, participants will get a cancellation notification, except the ones who have already rejected the event. The template for this message is configurable from Events Management Portlet under tab "Cancelled Invitation Email":
The event manager can send a reminder message to all confirmed attendees and invitees pending confirmation. The template for this message is configurable from Events Management Portlet under tab "Reminder Email":

Listing of Events

The Event Management portlet lists all the upcoming public/private events.

The past events can be accessed by clicking the "Show Past Events" button.

Event Display portlet lists the upcoming public events.

Event Actions

In the list of Upcoming Event in the Events Management Portlet event managers get an action menu for each event.

The list of available actions are:

Action	Image
Edit event information This is also available by clicking on Event's name:
Send Reminder It sends an email notification to all confirmed attendees and invitees pending confirmation.
View Attendees Event managers can view all the attendees and invitees (pending confirmation) through this listing.
Delete Event manager can delete an event through this action. A confirmation dialog for this action is shown. If the event manager deletes an event, a cancellation email is sent to all participants, except for the ones who have already rejected the invitation.

Self Registration

Besides a logged in user or guest can self register for a public event. For logged users, the form is pre-populated with known data:

Code repository

The latest source code is located at the following location:

https://github.com/rivetlogic/liferay-events

Contact Us

We welcome feature/bug reports concerning the Events App and the nature of its data. Discussion helps clarify the ways the app can be used and also helps define directions for future development. Please post your concerns at http://issues.rivetlogic.com/browse/LRA

Change log:

1.0.1