The calendar needs to be upgraded

[Product Ideas & Suggestions]

I host a music community  and have had to suggest work around strategies on several occasions because there is no way to post a recurring event.  This is particularly annoying to those who host weekly events in the same venue (a jam session or open mic are good examples).  These people often stop posting their events on my site's calendar out of frustration.  Musicians are pressed to do all of the things to perfect their performances and need ways to disseminate critical information effectively.  I have requested this enhancement of Ning in the past, only to be told that it wasn't on their priority list.  Well, it is on mine and every creator's who has a viable calendar of events.

Mike

P.S.

One of our creators who moved his community to another network invited me to join. His calendar has the facility to handle recurring events (as does my Google calendar).  Ning has to step it up!

[Vipster]

Agreed

[Jevante Qirashawn]

wow..great idea....that one made me feel dumb!...lol..

[Jevante Qirashawn]

Hey I tried that. It don't work...

[Jevante Qirashawn]

You are still in edit mode, so you will still be editing the same event.

[Gayle]

Yes yes yes.....that is probably my number 1 biggest problem with Ning. Not so much the recurring part. But I want a screen size calendar, I want to import ical, I want private calendars for groups that can be rolled up into 1. I know I can embed a google calendar. But it's a pain!

[Jens]

Michael,

I agree with you. What I see is, that members adding events over a longer time window and that's ugly. If an evening class happen from Feb to Oct each Tuesday - members add these recurrent events as one event from Feb to Oct and not as single events.

Many event calendars allows to import data from iCal and Outlook. Therefore members have to edit and copy and paste events here and there. It would be easier to use a form which allows to import data from iCal or Outlook. I asked serveral times to simplfy the event calendar that only 3 items be required. Actually members have add a title for the event, a type for the event, a description for the event
and the location for the event. If the first line of the description of the event could be the title of an event (like it is the case for a blog entry) and if member do not have to add a type item, they could use it easlier and faster. As NC I can now edit titles of events and I have the level to re-edit event types - why are these items required ?


Another point is the export of all event data. Actually I can export the NING calendar as a RSS feed - for example with RSS.Graffiti as upcoming events to a facebook "I like page" what you can see here posted as OMN Event Feed. But this export is limited to post and integrate it otherwhere ...

[Jevante Qirashawn]

Wait...are you saying we can only invite 5o people to an event now? Is this why my members are complaining that their are cannot invite people to their event?

[Jens]

Hi Jevante .. have you seen this announcement: "If you're on the Ning Pro, you can set this number from 1-200. Default values are 50 for Plus and 100 for Pro."

[Jens]

Two other points what need to be upgraded: it will be nice and useful if a member could embed his event entries to other sites in the world wide web like it is possible to embed a Google Calendar to other webpages.

And: the admin options are too less. I can flag blog entries, videos and photos - but as admin of my network I can't flag event entries if they are spam, inappropriate, contains sexual content or illegal stuff. I have to delete these entries all the time.

It would be fine if someone from NING will response to this topic here that we know what's on the upcoming agenda for the event calendar which is really a very important tool for my musician network too.

- Thanks,
Jens
www.overtone.cc

[Jens]

AND it would animate members to use this event features. Since NING lauchned this event feature I feel sometimes that the purpose of the event calendar was for birthday parties and colleague meetings - but not usable for professional events. BUT if NING changed now their business concept and claims to provide social network platforms only I hope they will pick up some ideas from this forum.

• iCal and outlook import and export
• embedable event calendars
• on the one hand: simply to use event calendar with less required event items
• and on the other hand: good funtionalbility of event entries (for data export not only by a RSS feed
• .... and ...

- for single members and for the complete network to spread the word about special events (have you seen my tip for using the RSS feed of your network events on facebook? RSS Graffiti re-post all upcoming events of my network to my facebook fanpage. If members add an event to my network it will display on facebook 3 - 5 days before this event will happen. I configurate this app for one reason only: to motivate members to use the event calendar of my network. To present on my site what's will happen in the niche and small family of overtone musicians it 's so needful that using the event calendar will be attractive. I think you know that but I hope it will be on the radar of the NING stuff too.

[Jens]

Hi Michael, I try to find this thread here again and again but i can't find it with tags like EVENT, CALENDAR ... could you add some of these tags to your discussion? See here - calendar or try this event until now you can't find this discussion in the forum. You started this topic on May and I don't understand why NING ignore this topic. For my own I started a topic about the announced improvements for the invite page and also this topic is ignored here by the NING stuff. I see that "events" are discussed on creators several times but I can't find any discussion about the improvements which are discussed here.

[Jens]

Thanks Michael ... maybe this motivate the Product Manager of NING to give us a reply here in this forum?! ... would be nice ...