Event Templates

The event template allows you to specify the details of how events are added to your calendaring system. You can specify: 

• the information that should appear in the event title, location, and description/notes by using merge fields such as class ID, course ID, class description/name, campus, building, room, block, class URL, and more

• the event visibility for others when viewing the attendee's calendar

• whether event attendees should be able to view the entire event guest list

Setting up the Event Template

The final piece of configuring SchoolCal is determining how you’d like events to appear in your calendaring system using the Event Template. The event template determines both content of the calendar event and settings of the events. You can always change the template later and re-sync, so feel free to try out different content and multiple settings while you are in pilot mode or after.

Event Content

The event template allows you to specify the information that should appear in the title, location, and description/notes of each SchoolCal-created event created in your calendaring system by using merge fields. There are a wide variety of merge fields that you can use as part of this event content. The name of the merge field is constructed using dot notation based on the hierarchy of available fields listed at right. Each name will start with either “Section” or “SectionMeeting”, the only options in the top/left-most level of the drop-down hierarchy. That will be followed by a period and then another field name listed within class or classMeeting. For example, if you want to use the event’s room within an event location, you would use the merge field “SectionMeeting.RoomName” as the room field is listed within SectionMeeting. Some fields, such as course name, will require another period and another field name as they are listed within one more level of the drop-down hierarchy: Section.Course.Name As shown at right, examples of the field values are displayed next to the name of the field. Those example values are drawn from the class with the ID listed in the “Class ID” box, top right. In this example, values are based on the class with ID 5203 from the Veracross demo database. You can use the drop down menu to see other classes from within your database.

To use a merge field within the title, location, or description of the event, surround it in double curly brackets, such as {{Section.SchoolLevel}}. As you construct your event title, location, and description, a preview of how each should appear in your calendar event is shown below the field:

The example values are again based on the class ID listed in at the top right of the available fields. If there is no value for a field for a particular class, it will just appear blank in the event.

Optional - Advanced Template Content

*This section is a bit more technical and can be safely ignored if desired.* In some scenarios, you may want to configure your event title, location, or description using some additional logic based on whether a field is blank. You can do so using combinations of specific characters to define sections of content that should only show if a specified field is blank or that should only show if the field is non-blank.

To specify that a section of content should only show if a specific field is non-blank, use two tags to wrap the section: {{#mergeField}} before the beginning of the section, where mergeField is the name of the merge field that should determine the section’s visibility and {{/mergeField}} where mergeField is the same value as the first tag. You can put any content between these tags and the content will only show when mergeField is not blank.

Example 1: Display the block name in parenthesis, if there is one {{Section.Description}} {{#if SectionMeeting.BlockName}} ({{SectionMeeting.BlockName}}){{/if}}

But the Spanish class is not scheduled into a block so it would look like this:

Example 2: For Athletics: If there is a title for the athletic event, display it, but if there is not one, show instead the team and whether it is a game or practice: {{#if AthleticEvent.Title}}{{AthleticEvent.Title}}{{else}}{{Team.Description}} {{AthleticEvent.EventType}}{{/if}}

Event Settings

Currently, there are two event settings that are determined as part of the event template.

Event Visibility

The event visibility setting allows you to specify how visible SchoolCal-created events should be to others when looking at the attendees’ calendars. While there are three options, “public,” “default,” and “private”, what each means differs slightly based on how the attendee’s calendar is configured. See Google’s breakdown of what these options mean in different scenarios here. Remember these setting apply ONLY to the SchoolCal events and do not affect what the end user has set on their calendar. So if the end user has set all of their events to "Private" and the SchoolCal is set to "Public" we could see that they are teaching Algebra from 9 - 10 am but would only see Free or Busy for other appointments on their calendar. 

Guest List Visibility

The “Guests can see other guests” checkbox allows you additional control over whether the guest list for SchoolCal-created events should be available or not. When unchecked, no one can see the event attendees, no matter the event visibility or role of the attendee (teacher vs. student). When checked, the guest list visibility is determined by the event visibility (above). If you have "guest can see other guests checked" in order for those guests to be visible, they must be included in the flow.