Back in March we introduced a raft of changes to Aiir's News app, and one piece of feedback we heard loud and clear was that customers wanted more notice of these kinds of changes before they're introduced.
Today we're excited to tell you about some new features and changes that are coming soon to Aiir's Events Calendar app.
The changes cover three main areas:
- Changes to how Events Calendar looks on your website
- Changes to the Aiir back-end affecting how you manage events and other content
- Changes to who has access to the Events Calendar section of Aiir
Changes to how Events Calendar looks on your website
We're updating the look of the events pages on websites to make them easier to browse and use.
The changes include:
- Clearer navigation, including improvements on mobile devices
- Highlighted events will appear in a more prominent row format
- There's a new page for browsing by date, which the "month date grid" has moved to
- A new categories page and each category can have an image
- Lists of events can feature images instead of a date icon
- A new look page for each event, with important information more easily visible at a glance
There's a couple of things you can do now in preparation for these changes.
You'll be able to choose whether the index pages show an image preview instead of the date icon which currently appears next to each event. For existing customers, you'll keep the date by default, so you'll need to opt-in to this change. If you've got images for each event, it looks great and really helps them stand out. This is especially true for highlighted events, which now will show in a grid layout.
There's a simpler navigation for the calendar too - breaking it down in to 'Upcoming', 'Browse by Date', 'Search' and a new option, 'Browse by Category'.
This page will list all your categories to help listeners find what they're after. You can now add an image to each category to be shown on this page - so it may be worth going through your existing categories, checking them over and adding images. If your list of categories has got a bit bloated over time - don't worry, the existing tools will let you merge duplicate categories or clear out categories without any events.
We're not enforcing any specific size for event or category images - our advice is to keep them as consistent as you can. If you're not sure where to start, we'd recommend your standard sectional image size.
You can set your image option and category images now, but they'll only take effect on your website when all these changes launch in a few weeks time.
Making it easier to work across your organisation, and share content between stations
If you have more than one station in your organisation, you'll find it much easier to work with the new Events Calendar app in Aiir.
Everything will be in one place, and there will no need to switch site.
Each station will be assigned a new "calendar". You'll be able to add one calendar to multiple stations or sites, if that is what you need. This concept replaces the current "mirror site" option.
It will also become possible to add events, venues and categories to multiple calendars. So if you currently have to duplicate content manually, this will become much simpler to manage.
New things you can do now
There are a couple of features that we've been able to introduce already because they haven't required any changes to your workflow.
They include:
Events without venues
We recently introduced the ability to create an event and not assign a venue. This is useful particularly for online-only events.
Listeners who submit events via your website can select "My event doesn't have a venue" and they won't have to enter location information.
Events in multiple categories
You can now select more than one category for an event to appear in, or select no categories at all.
No limit on custom options
You can now add as many custom options for event submissions as you need, re-order them, and mark them as disabled for archiving purposes.
Changes to who has access to the Events Calendar section of Aiir
At the time these changes are introduced, Calendars will become linked with relevant stations rather than sites, where applicable.
Therefore you will need to ensure that members of your team who need access to the Events Calendar section of Aiir have been given access to the appropriate station(s). You can do this in the Admin section.
"Events Calendar" will be renamed to simply "Events" at the same time.
These new features will be introduced in the coming weeks. Please share this information with any of your colleagues who use the Events Calendar section of Aiir.
If you have any questions, email our team and we'll be happy to help.
