How to manage your local calendar of meetings and events

If you’re a public body, perhaps a town council or parish council, chances are you require the functionality of a calendar, with built in meetings and events on your website. This is in order to provide the public, and your electorate, the information to ascertain what meetings/events are happening, at what time and where.

Jolojo, our content management system (CMS), provides a comprehensive, in-built calendar engine plugin ‘out of the box’. This allows you to quickly and easily publish meeting dates on an intuitive to use calendar. Added functionality comes in the way of having the ability to add agendas, minutes and supplementary information as required.

We’re going to walk you through the features of our calendar and how to manage it.

Calendar

Events added to the calendar can be singular (e.g. a one-off flower show) or a series (e.g. committee meetings) and can have documents attached to each meeting date or link to a unique URL. Due to the ability to add a series of events, its possible to add an entire years’ worth of Council meetings in just a few minutes. Agendas and meeting minutes can then be added at a later date.

Below you can see the calendar function in action, where documents have been added to an Event (in this case a planning meeting). 

The Calendar display plugin then has different modes:

A month grid view, which in the below image is displaying all categories. However, as highlighted, there is the option to filter the calendar by category. 

A month list view, which again is displaying all categories. As before, the option to filter the calendar by category remains. Highlighted are the icons correlated to the individual calendar views. Clicking the calendar icon will display the grid view, whereas selecting the list icon will display the list view. 

Each of the events added to the calendar will either link to an automatically generated page to display common information (such as meeting location) and documents or a user selected page which can contain further, detailed information about the event. 

Managing the calendar

Your starting point, when managing the calendar plugin, should always be the CRM dashboard. The dashboard can be seen below. The CRM dashboard allows you to navigate to the main pages needed to add important information to your calendar: categories, locations and events. 

Adding a category

Adding a category is often the first step in the process. Categories are important as it allows for events and information to be organised. Categories provide users with more data as to what the actual event is regarding (e.g. is the event an activity or a councillor meeting). Categories, as spoken about earlier, also provide users with the ability to filter through calendar events.

To add a new category, you’ll want to navigate to the categories tab. You’ll be greeted with the page you see below. Click on the highlighted plus icon. This should produce an empty row (seen in the screenshot), in which you can enter your desired category name. The ‘parent’ column refers to a category that may have sub-categories associated with it. For example, in the screenshot below ‘committees’ is the parent category, in which other categories (community and business development, finance and general purposes) fall under.

Once you have entered all of your data, if you wish to save it, click on the tick icon located towards the end of the created row, below the original plus icon.

If you wish to cancel the creation of a category, just select the cross icon.

Adding locations

The general public and your electorate, depending on the event, will need to know where that event is taking place. For this reason, events must have a specific location assigned to them. 

As can be seen below, the first step to adding a new location is to select the plus icon.

After selecting the plus icon as highlighted above, you will be presented with a data collection tab. The tab in question can be seen below.

As can be seen above, a variety of data can be inputted. You would input the location details of the venue or area in which the event is taking place at. The more details the better, as this will allow those interested in the event to find it with greater ease.

Now I want to draw your attention to the ‘Map Data’ section of this form. This section allows you to input more specific, detailed location data. The ‘Google Maps Link’ refers to a hyperlink which you’re able to obtain from the Google Maps platform, that links to the exact physical location of your event. Anyone who clicks the link will be sent to Google Maps, where the event location will be highlighted with the option to get directions.

Longitude and latitude are available if you need to provide users with a more precise location.

Adding events

Now what you’ve all been waiting for. Adding events. The process starts of in the same manner as adding categories and locations. Navigate to the ‘Events’ tab using the side navigation bar.

Again, start by selecting the plus icon on the far right. This is highlighted in the below image. 

After you select the plus icon, you will be greeted with a data popup. The popup can be seen below. 

As can be seen, there are a few sections that need to be filled out. Firstly, the name section. Quite self-explanatory, it refers to the name you wish to give your event. This name will be displayed within the calendar plugin.

Secondly, the location. As indicated by the downwards arrow in the location section, on selection a drop-down menu will appear. Scroll through this list until you find the location in which you added earlier.

Thirdly, the category. Again, as indicated by the downwards arrow in the category section, on selection a drop-down menu will appear. Scroll through this list until you find the category in which you added earlier.

Fourthly, the URL. As we spoke about earlier, you have two options. Enter a manual URL which you want individual to be sent to or leave the URL section blank and a randomly generated URL will be produced to host your event page.

Finally, the calendar section. This section allows you to select the date of your event. Upon selecting a date, you will be provided with more options to enter data. These options can be seen below.

You will be presented with the option to add a specific time. For example, if the event only lasts between 9am and 11am on a given day.

You also have the option to attach any relevant documents. As can be seen, a drop-down menu can be used to select any of the following to categorise the attached documents: unadopted minutes, adopted minutes, agenda and supporting documents. More than one document can be attached.

You would then select the ‘File’ icon in the data box below and continue to upload and select your document from the file manager.

Below, you can see a completed event section, whereby all the relevant information has been filled out. Notice the functionality to attach multiple documents, under separate categories.

After you’ve finished entering all relevant data, select ‘create’. This will create your event and display it in the calendar on-page.

Congratulations, you have successfully categorised and uploaded a brand-new event to your in-built calendar plugin on your Council website! 

Conclusion

As has been demonstrated, Jolojo for Councils helps you manage your Council website with ease. Our bespoke, in-built calendar engine will ensure that your constituents have all the right information easily available to them. Intuitive and quick to use, Jolojo will revolutionise the way you manage your Council website.

However, Jolojo for Councils isn’t just a calendar plugin. There are a number of other unique features that Jolojo for Councils offers, including news pages, inline editing and auto image sizing.

If you’re a Council website not currently supported by our Jolojo CMS platform but want to learn more – get in contact with one of our professionals today. Either fill out a contact form or call 01323 735 800.