Once you have created an Event Type, you can create a form that is associated with it.
Creating a New Event Form
PATH: Events > Settings > Event Types
Step 1: Click “Form”.
Step 2: Select“Create a New Form”.
Step 3:
Enter a name for your form and select a workflow.
For documentation on how to create a workflow, click here.
You may also choose to define a workflow at a later stage and proceed with creating the new form without one for now.
Step 4:After clicking “Add”, you will be routed to the form editor (shown below) where you can begin to build your form, including:
Title
You can name/re-name your form by typing into the text next to the “T” at the top of the screen (“All-Reception” in the below screenshot).
Form Description
Type into the “Description” field to add a description of this form, but note the description is only visible when editing the form – it will not appear to end users requesting this event type.
To show a description to a user requesting an event, add a Card or a Field with a description and ensure the “Editable” configuration is not checked.
Adding Cards
Click the “+” icon to add a new card above the current one, if needed.
You can re-order cards via the “Card Order” option located on each card. You can either:
Click the up or down arrow. OR
Manually input a specific order number (cards will move to the specified order after you input the number and click out of the “Card Order” box).
Adding Fields
Drag fields from the Question Bank on the left sidebar and drop them onto the relevant card.
The Question Bank includes two sets of options: Custom Questions and Pre-Built Questions (details below).
Form Setup
Overview
Coursedog's form builder comes pre-delivered with Meetings & Locations and Contacts questions but allows users to customize the questions to suit their institutional needs.
Meetings and Locations Card
Overview
The Meetings & Locations card includes the following nested fields: Start and End Date, Start & End Time, All Day, Repeat, Location, Room Layout, and Setup and Tear Down Times.
To modify the settings for any of these fields, click “Nested Field Settings” and then the field you’d like to modify.
Required Meetings
To indicate whether or not requests that use this form should require at least one meeting, click the pencil icon on the main Meetings & Locations card and check “Require at least one meeting”.
If “Require at least one meeting” is checked and a meeting is not added to an Event, a validation error message will appear to the end user.
Nested Field Details
Resources (“Allowed Resources”)
Click the “Resources” field to define the resources that are allowed to be used for this form.
The default setting here is “All”; this allows ALL available resources to be requested for this event type.
To limit the resources available for this event type, click into the field under “Allowed Resources” to open the “Select resources” modal; select the resources you wish to make available for this event type; and then click “Close”.
If you wish to only exclude certain resources, you can do that by clicking into the field to open the “Select resources” modal; select the resources you wish to exclude for this event type; click the “exclude selected resources” box; and then click “Close”.
Location (“Allowed Rooms”)
Click “Location” to define the rooms that are allowed to be used for this form.
When you add a room to the “Allowed Rooms” field, that means those rooms – and only those rooms – can be booked for this event type.
To add a room, simply click into the “Allowed Rooms” field to open the “Select rooms” modal; select the rooms you wish to make available for this event type; and then click “Save”. You can learn more about this here.
Adding more than 300 Allowed Rooms will break this functionality (and is not a suggested practice anyway, as it indicates a problem with the way event types have been split up).
Room Layout
When this field is not hidden from the form, requestors will be able to select a room layout for each meeting instance.
Note that the available select options are not dynamic based on location.
Field Settings
Is Required
If you’d like to require end users to fill out a particular field, click into it and check the “Is required” box under Question Settings.
Note that “Start Date” and “End Date” will always be required and cannot be changed to “not required”, as doing so would create an incomplete meeting that cannot be displayed on the calendar.
Hiding Fields
Most of these nested fields give you the ability to hide the field from certain audiences.\
The most common use case for hiding fields from requesters is to allow them to be completed by reviewers or admins. For example, you might not want the requester to choose the resources or setup time for an event, so you can hide those fields from them.
If you check the “Field hidden from requestors” box, that field will not be shown to users who are using the form to request an event.
If you check “Field hidden from everyone”, the field will be hidden in all views.
If you check “Field hidden from public site”, internal requestors can see the field, but those requesting via the public site cannot.
Additional Note
The Meetings & Locations card will display in text all custom settings that have been defined on that card.
Contacts
The fields in the Contacts card are not customizable.
You can, however, determine which fields are required; whether or not email notifications are sent to contacts; and whether or not at least one contact should be required.
If the “Require at least one contact” box is checked but someone attempts to submit the form without a contact, a validation error message appears to indicate to the user an action must be taken.
The contact’s information (name, email, phone, and address) will be included in event invoice PDFs.
Require at Least One Contact Checked – In Settings
Require at Least One Contact Checked – Validation Error
Contact Information – On Form
Contact Information – Event Invoice
Question Bank
Overview
Admins have the option to add and customize Coursedog-delivered questions (“pre-built questions”) or to create new questions (“custom questions”).
Adding Custom Questions
Coursedog allows you to create many different styles of questions based on the format in which the response should be: Text, Textarea, Yes/No, Select, Date, Number, Organization Select, User Select, Link, Upload File.
Learn about the difference between Text and Textarea fields here.
Functionality for the "Link" type includes html property of type=url, which can be recognized by screen readers. However, for most end users, there is currently no difference that would be noticed in the UI between Link and Text types for example. The Link type does not provide a "clickable" URL. Coursedog also provides the ability to guide users to links or upload images.
How to Do It
Step 1: If you wish to add a new card for the question to belong to in the form, click on the + symbol on the right side of your screen.
Step 2:
Once your desired cards are created, you may add questions to them.
To add a customized question, click on “Custom Questions” on the left side of your screen.
Step 3: Select your type and drag and drop your Question Type to the space marked “Drag a Question Here”.
Step 4: Click into the field to enter your Question Title and Question Description.
Step 5:
Clicking into the card also opens additional question settings on the left.
You may determine whether the question should be required, as well as any default values and other attributes.
Available settings will vary depending on the question type.
Step 6:
Determine who can edit, view, and configure the field.
On all event forms, for each question, you can specify what roles are allowed to edit a specific field, and what roles are allowed to view a specific field.
These restrictions also apply to the public form. If a field is editable for only a specific set of roles, that means the field will be locked on the public form.
The “configurable” setting impacts who can modify and/or remove this field on the form itself. Learn more about how this works here.
Step 7 (Optional):
Add actions as needed, when available.
Most but not all Events fields support actions — nearly all pre-built and custom questions support Actions, including the time, location, and Resource fields on the Meetings & Locations card.
Actions are composed of conditional statements that can be used to update the value or configuration of the selected field based on the response to another question
Example use cases:
Fields can be configured to be hidden if the user selects “No” in response to a Yes/No question.
The value of Question B can be automatically updated based on the response to Question A in the request.
A specific Room might always require specific Resources. Below is an example action that states IF the selected location is the Auditorium, THEN update the Resource field to include a Police Officer and Wooden Podium. These values can be edited by the requester depending on the Question Settings assigned to the field.
Use the IF portion of the Action’s conditions to determine the source field whose value will impact the value or configuration of the currently selected field.
If you add a custom “select” field to a template or form, checking the “Allow Multiple Select” box is required if you wish to give end users the ability to select multiple values saved within a field.
If this is checked and multiple options are selected – but then you deselect “Allow multiple select” – only the first option will be displayed when viewing the field.
You can drag and drop select options by using the drag handle next to each select option. In order to save the changes, you must save the entire template or form.
Adding Pre-Built Questions
Overview
You can also choose from several pre-built questions.
To add a pre-built question, select “pre-built questions” on the left side of your screen, and then follow the directions outlined above.
Custom "Select" Fields
If you add a custom "select" field to a template or form, checking the "Allow Multiple Select" box is required if you wish to give end users the ability to select multiple values saved within a field.
If this box is checked and multiple options are selected -- but you deselect "Allow Multiple Select" -- only the first option will be displayed when viewing the field.
You can drag and drop select options by using the drag handle next to each select option. In order to save the changes, you must save the entire template or form.
Event Owners
Event Owners on the Form Template
“Event Owners” is one of many available pre-built questions.
To allow event authors to add additional event owners to an event, admins must add the “Event Owners” question to the form.
Event Owners on the Public Form
Once the “Event Owners” field is on your form template, end users will be able to add Event Owners when completing the form.
To add event owners, they may select users from the drop-down menu when completing the “Event Owners” field of your Event Request Form.
The field is pre-populated with your name, but you may select more than one additional event owner.
Setting Role-Specific Owner Permissions
To set role-specific event owner permissions, administrators must:
Navigate to Events > Settings > Roles.
Select the role you want to configure user permissions for, such as “Staff”.
Select “Events”.
Configure “Edit Events” and “Request Event Changes” based on your desired permissions (note that the default permissions vary based on role).
Attendance Tracking
Additionally, the following pre-built fields can be used in the event form template for tracking attendance: Expected Head Count, Registered Head Count, and Actual Head Count.
These fields must be user entered and won't dynamically populate from a third party system. They will also be included in all event CSV reports.
Event Discounts
“Discount” is another available pre-built question. This can be used to reduce the total cost of an event.
If a discount is added, the discount will be displayed when a user downloads the invoice. The discount applies to the cost of the entire event:
Flat Discount Rate
Overview
There is a "flat discount rate" field on all event forms. This field can be used to specify a specific dollar discount for each event.
If there is both a percentage discount and a flat discount, the flat discount will be applied after the percentage discount.
How It’s Applied
The flat discount will be applied in the "Event Invoice" that can be downloaded as a PDF.
Invoice Details
The “Invoice Details” field allows you to:
Edit the price of an Event by using the “Invoiced Event Price” field.
Generate a Stripe invoice by using the “Stripe Invoice” field (if configured).
Add payment instructions to an invoice.
Customize Room and Resource prices for individual events.
There are two pre-built questions relating to Administrative Fees: “Administrative fee (%)” and “Administrative fee ($)”. These two fields allow end users in events to add an administrative fee to the total cost of any event.
Add this field to a form to make it possible for hyperlinks to be shared on the public events site.
This field can be populated in three ways:
Admins can add a hyperlink as a default value for this Form if the same hyperlink needs to appear on all events of this Event Type.
Admins can edit an event request or event record and add a hyperlink to a request or confirmed event.
Depending on field settings, an end user could potentially complete this field on a request from the public events site.
Add “https://” as part of your link to ensure it works.
Adding a Required Acknowledgement Agreement
If your event requires an acknowledgement before a request is submitted, you can do so by adding a Yes/No custom question to the form, and then using the “Question Extended Description” to attach or link to the policy.
It is recommended that a form creator preview a form before making it available for use by requestors.
When you have completed your form, you can preview your Event form by clicking “Preview” in the top right.
Certain functionality, such as displaying “Defaults” for a field, will not be displayed when using the “Preview” functionality (however, these should be displayed when navigating to Request an Event and filling out the appropriate form).
Editing a Form
Institutional needs change and may dictate that an event form be modified or deleted.
If you need to edit a card or question on your form, you can do so by clicking on the blue pencil (edit).
Deleting a Form
You may delete your entire form by clicking “Delete”.
Determining if Events are Public or Private
Overview
The “Public Event” pre-built question allows users to designate on an event-by-event basis whether this event should be displayed in the Public Site. The field defaults to YES.
Each Event Type’s “Public Form” field allows you to determine whether or not the public can request a certain event type.
To learn more about Private Events, refer to this article. Private events enable users to host events without having their event details accessible to users lacking permission, or having the event advertised on the public-facing event website.
Ensuring Events are Public
If you are not seeing an event in the public site and would like to, confirm Private Event = NO and Public Event = YES. If these fields are not visible in the UI, you can add them to the Form (via “pre-built questions”) momentarily to validate this.
Preventing Individual Events from Displaying on the Public Site
In order to prevent individual events from displaying on the public site, the event(s) in question need to have the public event field set to “NO”. This can be set en masse by providing Coursedog with a CSV.
If Private Event = YES, then the event will NOT be shown on the public site, regardless of what Public Event is set to.
Preventing the Public from Requesting a Certain Event Type
PATH: Events > Settings > Event Types > Event Type > (Scroll Down to View “Public Form” field)
In order to prevent the public from requesting a certain event type through the public site, make sure the Public Form for the Event Type is set to “No.”
Viewing Event Forms in the Public Site
Unavailable Fields
If the Event Type is public, users will be able to request events of this type through the public site using the configured form.
The form on the public site closely mirrors the form in the internal Coursedog UI. However, certain event form fields are available within the Coursedog UI but not on the Events Public Site, in most cases due to ADA compliance considerations.
The following fields are not available in the public site: Repeat, Setup Times, Teardown Times, and Department.
Upload Images
For the Upload Image Question Type, after users upload an image in the public site, they may choose to remove it by clicking “Remove”.
Cropping capabilities are currently not supported.
“File” Question Type
If the File field is present in an Event Form for a public Event Type, then it will also be supported in the Public Site. Users in the Public Site will be able to add files by clicking “Add Files”.
There is a 20MB size limit to file uploads. Once the files have been uploaded, users can delete files (“x” icon) and/or download them (cloud icon).
