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!

[Eric Suesz]

Hey, Julie. Well-spotted. While it seems easy to implement, it is a bit complicated to add this capability. That said, it is something we are actively considering. We know how important of a request this is for NCs.

[CocteauBoy]

I'm not sure if this is a solution for some people (I don't particularly like it, myself), but if you bookmark the link to any calendar entry, once that date has passed, you can then go in and edit the date to represent the next time it should be on the calendar. This is the next-best-thing to a "copy" feature.

It works, but for me it's not that great because of the matter of RSVPS carrying over so that any new event (resulting from the editing of the date) wouldn't have an accurate rsvp count.

But maybe this will help someone.

troy

[Vipster]

Ning also needs double alerts like on Facebook. You get an email, plus you see an alert next time you log in at the site. RSVPs are dismally low on Ning. This would help to increase the number of people who RSVP. Instead of creating a separate link, it could all be done in a single alert window like on FB or here...

 

Or here...

Its one of those things that seem to have become fairly standard on social networks.

[Michael H]

I wrote a support ticket to Ning...

"I, and every other imaginable NC with a network about dance, music or other similar areas, need a better event calendar. Recurring events, preferably a very simple "'Copy" feature. Click "Copy" on the event, change the date. Click "Save". Problem solved. I'm amazed that Ning continues to ignore this matter, as it has been repeatedly requested on the forum for years. If I could find another platform I would have changed a long time ago, too bad I don't have the necessary knowledge for Joomla etc."

They replied...

"Hi Michael,

Thanks for writing us about this. We plan on revising the Events feature down the road, as can be seen on our Product Roadmap at http://creators.ning.com/page/product-roadmap. As regards the recurring events aspect of it, there is already a request filed to make this change to the Events feature, and I'll be happy to add your vote to the request. While I don't understand the particulars about it, it sounds like the process to make this happen is a bit more complicated than noted in your message.

We try to do things democratically here, and features with the most votes tend to move up the ladder faster, in terms of what the team works on.

Thanks for your feedback! Every bit counts.

Best,
Monica"

[Patrick Dominguez]

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). 

 

I would be curious to hear what network the person you mentioned has moved to...

[CocteauBoy]

I'm curious, too. I almost left for SocialGo, but that was a big mistake... as frustrating as Ning has been, it is nowhere near the mess of code and awful pricing structure that is SocialGo.

[Janine Cuthbertson]

I ditto all of the comments regarding recurring events - Ning, please update this feature! My members and my admins and I (on 9 different ning sites) are all frustrated and limited by the inability to make an event recurring. 

I would also like to request that the time be adjusted. Currently the time posts from May 1 @ 7am - Sept 1 @ 8:30am which is so dumb. It should at least say May 1 - Sept 1 from 7am-8:30am. To get around this I just check All Day and make the time very clear in the body of the event. This seems so rudimentary coming from iCal, Outlook, etc. 

The worst part of the current event feature is that events are posted for example from May 1-Sept 1 and sit at the top of the Event list looking stale and hiding the current events. The Events for "Today" end up way down, sometimes on page 2 or beyond! 

The only way around this I have found is to make an event for one month i.e May 1-May 31, then on May 30th, I will go in and edit each one to the next months dates June1-June30. This way it looks a little more fresh, but this is just too much work and often I miss an event and it falls off the calendar and I have to recreate it - ugh!

Ning, please update this very important feature to our network. I am losing revenue and frustrating members due to the inability to make recurring, accurate events. 

Thank you, Janine

Moms for Moms Communities 

[Admin, LORN]

yup - have done so

had a response that "it is on the list" but doesnot seem to be much of a priority despite the fact that this has been a serious request for so many years. 

I thought that changing to an all pay for place was going to mean that the NING became more user friendly

[Jens]

Hi Michael, did you hear something new to this topic ? - Yeah, members can now make a copy of one event to get two, three and more event entries - but did you hear that some one the points here will be included in a NING roadmap ?

[Ed]

I'm giving that a big +1. Long standing events need to update their start dates automatically otherwise you get what everyone's been saying for the last year and a half - old-looking content.

At the moment I have to manually update all of the events, which isn't great because all my emphasis is on member responsibility for their own content but you can't expect someone to enter an event for every day.

 

[Shelli Russell]

For the record, I'm still very interested in getting the calendar/events upgraded. It's a hassle like it is. I'm frequently seeing visits to my site as a result of a Google search for some event - and I don't always have it up because it's too darn inconvenient to spend my entire day posting events. I have other things going on that need doing. Import please! ASAP! 

(MySaline.com & Arkansite.com)