Event Organiser Guide

The purpose of uCONFLY is to assist you in managing documents for your event.

An event contains one or more sessions, each of which has a number of templates that attendees can use to create documents. Requiring attendees’ documents to share a common set of templates ensures a consistent style and will make it easier for you to publish the outcomes of your event.

For example, you may create a template that is pre-formatted as a blog post. You would then be able to directly copy the content from user-created documents to publish on your institution’s website.

Events

In order to create sessions, templates and documents you must first create an event. Events will appear on the front page of uCONFLY and be searchable using the search field in the navigation bar at the top of the page.

The properties that can be set when you create an event are:

  • Name - required
    • The name you wish to give to your event
  • Description - optional
    • A brief description of your event
  • External URL - optional
    • If you have a web page for your event outside of uCONFLY, provide a link to it
  • Start Date - required
    • When does your event start?
  • End Date - required
    • When does your event end?
  • Banner Image - optional
    • Image to display as a banner at the top of the event page
  • Thumbnail Image - optional
    • Image to display as a thumbnail on the front page of uCONFLY
  • Status - default is ‘draft’
    • Determines how attendees are able to interact with the event - see below
  • Organisers - required
    • Who has permission to edit this event? NB: If you remove yourself from this list you will no longer be able to edit the event
  • Attendees Require Permission - default is ‘yes’
    • Do attendees need to be approved by an organiser before they are allowed to join the event?
  • Short Unique Identifier (slug) - default is derived from name
    • Forms part of the event URL in uCONFLY - the URL will be displayed just below the form

Event Statuses

The status of an event determines the way in which users are able to interact with it:

  • Draft
    • The event will not be displayed on the uCONFLY front page and users will not be able to sign up
    • Use this status while you are still preparing the event
  • Allow Signup
    • The event will be displayed on the front page and users will be able to sign up
    • Use this status once you have finished preparing the event
  • Active
    • Same as ‘Allow Signup’
    • Use this status while the event is running
  • Archived
    • New attendees will not be able to sign up, but existing attendees will still be able to view the event
    • Use this status to lock the event after it has finished

Managing Attendees

If you opted to require that attendee requests be approved by an organiser, you will need to do this via the attendee management page. This page is access by clicking the ‘Manage Attendees’ button on the event page.

On this page you may:

  • Approve or reject requests for attendees to join the event
  • Pre-invite attendees by email address
  • Remove existing attendees from the event

Pre-Inviting Attendees

If you know in advance who will be attending your event, you may wish to pre-invite them to uCONFLY. Users who have been pre-invited will be added as attendees of the event immediately if they already have a uCONFLY account, or at the first time they log in if they do not.

To pre-invite users to your event:

  1. On the ‘Manage Attendees’ page, click the ‘Invite Users’ button
  2. Enter the email addresses of users you wish to pre-invite with one email address per line
  3. When you click ‘Invite Users’ you should then see them listed in the ‘Invited Users’ table

Sessions

Each event should have one or more sessions; these sessions are where you will create templates and event attendees will create documents.

Many of the properties that describe a session are the same as those that describe an event, so when you create a new session many of the properties will be copied from the event as default values. The properties that can be set for a session are:

  • Name - required
    • The name you wish to give to your session
  • Description - optional
    • A brief description of your session
  • External URL - optional
    • If you have a web page for your session outside of uCONFLY, provide a link to it
  • Start Date - required
    • When does your session start?
  • End Date - required
    • When does your session end?
  • Banner Image - optional
    • Image to display as a banner at the top of the session page
  • Thumbnail Image - optional
    • Image to display as a thumbnail on event page
  • Status - default is ‘draft’
    • Determines how attendees are able to interact with the session - see below
  • Voting Enabled - default is ‘no’
    • Should users be able to vote on documents?
  • Short Unique Identifier (slug) - default derived from name
    • Forms part of the session URL in uCONFLY

Session Statuses

Sessions have the same set of statuses as events, with similar behaviour:

  • Draft
    • The session will not be displayed on the event page and attendees will not be able to create documents
    • Use this status while you are still preparing the session
  • Allow Signup
    • The session will be displayed on the event page and but attendees will not be able to create documents
    • Use this status once you have finished preparing the session
  • Active
    • The session will be displayed on the event page and attendees will be able to create documents
    • Use this status while the session is running
  • Archived
    • The session will remain visible, but attendees will not be able to create documents
    • Use this status to lock the session after it has finished

Templates

Templates in uCONFLY are what allow attendees to create documents sharing a common format. Each template is a document stored in Google Docs that you may edit freely. When an attendee creates a document from a template, the template document is copied, defined template tags are filled in and the resulting document is uploaded to Google Docs. A session may not contain more than one template of the same type.

To manage the templates available within a given session, use the templates panel on the session page. To add a new template:

  1. Click the ‘Add Template’ button at the bottom of the templates panel
  2. Select the document type you wish to create a template for
  3. Click ‘Add Template’ at the bottom of the template form
  4. You will be taken to the template details page

To edit to content of an existing template:

  1. From the session details page, in the templates section, click the ‘Template Details’ button on the template you wish to edit
  2. From the template details page (step 4 above), click the ‘Go To File’ button at the bottom of the page
  3. You will be taken to the document in Google Docs, you may edit the document however you wish (see template tags section below)

To remove an existing template:

  1. From the session details page, in the templates section, click the ‘Remove’ button on the template you wish to remove
  2. You will be asked to confirm that you wish to remove the template - it may not be possible for you to do so if the template has already been used to create documents

Template Tags

Template tags are parts of a template that will be replaced when attendees use them to create documents.

There are a several tags which take metadata from uCONFLY and should always be present in a template:

  • {{document_name}}
    • Replaced with the name of the document in uCONFLY
  • {{short_identifier}}
    • Replaced with a code based on the document type and the order of creation
  • {{creator}}
    • Replaced with the name and email address of the attendee who created the document
  • {{event_name}}
    • Replaced with the name of the session when a template is added to a session
  • {{event_date}}
    • Replaced with the start date of the session when a template is added to a session

You may choose to add your own template tags using the same format {{tag_name}}, in which case attendees will be asked to provide a replacement when they create a document.

Google Docs uses an HTML representation to store documents, with formatting mixed in, so if formatting is not consistent within a template tag it is possible that it will not be recognised. In order to help you identify these cases, on the template details page within uCONFLY you will see a list of the template tags detected within the template. Please ensure that this list matches the tags that you expect to see. In the case that a tag does not appear in this list, it is usually resolved by deleting and replacing the tag in the template.

Documents

As an event organiser you will be able to create your own documents and will have full control over documents created by attendees. This includes the ability to edit metadata, register and delete documents.

Please see the attendee documentation for details on managing documents.