🗓 Discourse Event

[JQ331]

Hi There. Really enjoying testing out this plugin. I was hoping to raise these questions (sorry if already covered in the extended discussion above - I did not see them quite addressed directly):

1. Calendar View: Is there a way to show the time of the event in the calendar view? (right now just seems to show event title)

2. Calendar view: Is there a way to view by week, not just month? By week is the default I would prefer.

3. Time Zones on the Event listing in a post: To clarify, does the time shown here adjust to a user’s time zone?

4. Feature request: Would be very helpful if users could say they want to go to an event while looking at it in the Calendar view (not having to go to the specific post where the event is listed). Basically, my users would prefer to just go to the Calendar view and handle all events stuff from that view, where they can see the big picture.

Thanks!

[unpatent]

I enjoy this plugin and it’s been a very good feature to add to my community.

Here’s a few issues that I noted recently while trying out this plugin:

• Limit of 5-30 characters in the Event title. If this hard limit stays, please implement a character counting feature on create/edit so that users don’t have to count characters manually.

• Encode characters such as the ampersand, which if used in the title, and then edited are shown unencoded, and so may go over the title character limit and show an error to the user.

• If an event that happens later today, is created with a starting time, and then edited later where an ending time is added, the event is expired and closed - despite not reaching even the start time.

• Add a Location field to the event create/edit screen, and display the result in the resulting event box.

• Event ending times often/always jump over a time of 2 hours, offering 1 hrs or 2.5 hrs. Offer more 30 minute increments for smaller time windows, and lesser very long time windows 6+ hours.

[oca]

Thanks,
It’s been frustrating to see the calendar being depopulated as long as the time flies. It was nice with the Events plugin to be able to check on the calendar the pasts events.

I’d like to see it back, maybe with a setting so it’s not default behavior for people that don’t want it !

[oca]

It would be nice, not to personally subscribe but to allow websites or other online resources to display the calendar.

[laurent.c]

@unpatent

Limit of 5-30 characters in the Event title. If this hard limit stays, please implement a character counting feature on create/edit so that users don’t have to count characters manually.

Tips : you can leave empty and the default title will be the topic title having no limit.

[unpatent]

@laurent.c

Tips : you can leave empty and the default title will be the topic title having no limit.

Yep, which is weird from a usability and UI perspective. Why is there a hard character limit for one field and not for another when they can be used for the same purpose? So there’s no good reason for the 30 character limit in the Event title?

[unpatent]

There’s a lot of issues around adding an ending time to the event.

The times on my current day event with starting and ending time reverted to a time 16-17 hours earlier - a different timezone? - and when I tried to edit it back to the actual time in the evening, it changed it to the next day instead. I ultimately could not get it edited to display the correct times, and had to remove the ending time in order to get the correct start time to stick.

[evenrue]

For #1, I was able to add some CSS that enables the start time.

#upcoming-events-calendar .fc-event .fc-time,
#upcoming-events-calendar .fc-event-dot .fc-time { display: block; }

Hope this helps.

[evenrue]

Hi,

Sorry to be a pest, but is there any update or ETA on the timezone issue fixes? I have been asking my users to change their events to UTC time before posting, which only resolves part of the problem, unfortunately.

[James_Cribbs]

Does this plugin account for location? Is it possible to display “Events Near Me” for users?

[sunjam (james.network)]

Have you tried the locations app?

Locations Plugin

Repo: GitHub - paviliondev/discourse-locations: Tools for handling locations in Discourse This plugin allows you to associate locations with topics, and list topics with locations on a map. Additionally it allows users to record their position (voluntarily) and this can show up on a map of Users in the Users directory. You can see an example of it here. Maps are handled by Leaflet.js and multiple geocoding providers are supported. Both are customizable via admin settings as explained below i…

[James_Cribbs]

@james.network I did see that, but I am unable to install it because I am on discourse hosting. Looks very cool though.

I’m leaning towards creating an events directory in wordpress and then having those events automatically create topics in Discourse each time a new one is created

[sunjam (james.network)]

@James_Cribbs

I am on discourse hosting

Wouldn’t you be able to simply ask them to install it for you?

[nathankershaw]

Now that this has become #official ( yay!!! ), would you mind giving us an indication of the roadmap for fixing some of the issues it has that we have been living with?

The Events functionality has the potential to enable us to be a meaningful alternative to the use of Teams / email events / etc and keep a lot of stuff within our Forums.

I’m talking:

Timezone / dates mismatch

@joffreyjaffeux

Yes timezone is a WIP, I have been on other urgent things for the last few days, but this will get fixed.

Tweak the Notify label to improve the UX

@keunes

Just wanted to share some feedback: from the label Notify users it isn’t super clear what this does. My impression was that it was to notify the users in that meeting , e.g. with a reminder, a link to a whiteboard tool in advance, or the minutes afterwards. But my colleague explained it was to inform users not in the meeting yet about this event.

Improving the .ics interactions

@uffehe

It seems this can be achieved through the sending of .ics files. So there appears to be 2 issues to solve:

1. Sending meeting invites and subsequent updates:

• I tested again the method of sending the ‘Add to calendar’ .ics file via a Discourse notification and it works as long as you allow attachments (Settings-> email total attachment size limit kb).
• So we need a ‘Send email invite’ feature that will send an email with the .ics attached regardless of notification settings etc.
• The file should contain all event details incl. link to online meeting etc. as specified in the event.
• I imagine updates are handled the same way i.e. whenever the event is updated, the user is asked if they want to send an email update to the participants.

2. Receiving RSVP replies: I assume this could be handled through the reply-by-email feature but I have not been able to test whether it would in fact work.

@nathankershaw

I’ve noticed a bit of mucking about with the dates function, with the option for Google Calendar / .ics download being added recently (as well as a setting in Discourse Meta - The Official Support Forum for Discourse to control the default). I wonder if this might benefit from including the post text and/or post link as part of the package. That would increase the utility markedly for low cost / effort:

Enabling non-admins to edit the post containing the Event

@laurent.c

Yes ! I have been blocked with this limitation. In my community, admins create the post to prepare an event and when the animator is found, we change the author to give him the permissions to adapt content. But when he saves, he gets this message:

Having the upcoming events calendar obey the Calendar plugin user preference for start day

@Tomas_Vavrda

Is there a way how to set a week to start with Monday not Sunday? Discourse Calendar plugin starts on Monday while Discourse Event “Upcoming Events” calendar starts on Sunday.

[RGJ (Richard - Communiteq)]

Would you be open to a PR that brings a checkbox that allows past events to be displayed on the upcoming-events page as well? (And/or which makes the upcoming-events page accessible under all-events )

[James_Cribbs]

I don’t believe you can have discourse team install plugins for you, maybe I’m wrong? My understanding is with Discourse hosting, you are limited to the plugins on your plan: Plugin directory | Discourse - Civilized Discussion

I have set up my forum to have categories for each state in order to allow my community members to find events in their area. I am considering building out a more dedicated events page within wordpress, that automatically posts the events to discourse for future discussion. That way, I can display the events on a map, calendar and allow users to search for events near them.

Is it possible to use Discourse to handle my events with location and allow users to find events near them, instead of having to use wordpress for events. Is this possible with this plugin or some customization?

[sunjam (james.network)]

@James_Cribbs

I don’t believe you can have discourse team install plugins for you, maybe I’m wrong?

No idea. I host my own. I do not understand why you would pay anyone to manage your discourse if they were unwilling to install a plugin. I would imagine they would have zero trouble installing a plugin or theme component for you.

[oca]

Would it be possible to add a html element for the absolute date <span class="event-date event-absolute-date future"> in the topic list ? Idealy that would be displayed before the title, next to the pin, as it was done in the Events Plugins.

I think lonely attributes for the date start like day="14" month="06" year="2022" would be easier to deal with than data-starts_at="2022-06-14 18:00:00" in order to add a custom display with CSS.

Maybe something can already be done with CSS from attr(starts_at), but I don’t know how to manage the data.

[laurent.c]

Hi, I have an error with the commit using applyLocalDates

DEV: Use `applyLocalDates` helper (instead of jQuery) (#247)

The console error:

I use Discourse 2.8.3 with Cloudron.

I have to rollback the previous commit to use the plugin. Any idea to fix it ?

[Benjamin_D]

I think you need 2.9.0.beta4

DEV: Include helper in core for `applyLocalDates` (#16325)