Generously funded by Zing, Civicon London will see the launch of new functionality enabling Civi to handle recurring events and much more. Rather than being restricted to ‘one-off’ events, Civi will now handle far more complex scenarios.
The new features will be incorporated into the core of CiviEvent but there are added bonuses as the recurring functionality has wide-ranging applications within Civi. Do you want to schedule volunteers every Tuesday at 4pm and on the third Friday of every month? Do you need to make a room booking every Monday evening for 6 weeks, three times a year? In time, the recurring functionality should make this possible in extensions such as CiviVolunteer and CiviBooking.
Back to Events, Civi will now be able to deal with:
1. Events with multiple sessions - An event such as a training course with several sessions and a defined start and finish date. It may last for 10 weeks but a participant registers once (either at the start or as the course progresses).
2. Repeating Events - The same event that repeats on several occasions eg a one day training event repeated monthly. Different people sign up for different dates.
3. Recurring Events - An ongoing event eg a regular class or group. Set it up once and it can either run ad infinitum (eg youth club every week of the year) or you can block out weeks when it doesn't run (eg no debating group in the school holidays).
Users will have the ability to:
• Create events/courses that run for several weeks/months but require just one registration
• Alter session times and insert breaks for holidays etc
• Re-use schedules
• Assign participants at any stage
• Record and report on attendance
The screenshot below shows some work in progress.
Working for Woodlands Church in the UK, this new development will open up lots of possibilities for us. We'll be able to handle our termly 9 week Alpha Course, bi-annual Marriage Course, weekly youth club and much more. When recurring functionality is added to CiviVolunteer we could start to use it for the hundreds of volunteers who serve week by week on different 'recurring' teams and a recurring element in CiviBooking could handle our regular, ongoing room bookings. Many Civi users will have their own use cases - scheduling clubs, classes, courses, groups and more.
If you’d like to read more about Recurring Events, please check out the Wiki's implementation plan and make comments either here or on the Wiki. I can be contacted on lindsey.mansfield@woodlandschurch.net It’s an ongoing project and there’s more in the pipeline… particularly around recording attendance for Civi Groups, so watch this space.