Event calendar

Help from Community
1

Hi,
I need to build an event calendar but when searching for calendar there isn’t really any hits. Any suggestions on hwo to achieve this, has anyone done this with Intuiface.

Ideally I just want a page showing a full month that pulls in events from an excel spreadsheet so its easy to keep up to date.

Thanks

2

Honestly, the easiest way may not be to use an excel spreadsheet.

You can set up all your events into a Google calendar, which gives you options for a link to it. Then use the web browser asset in Intuiface to show the calendar. You can even change sizing/text sizes in the Google calendar settings to make it show up. Then, the web browser can be set to reload/refresh itself which will show any new updates. I’ve done this with success many times.

Or you could also generate an RSS feed from a calendar and easily put that link into Intuifaces RSS asset.

Just a couple of other options for ya, good luck.

3

HI @AlexB

Thanks for the suggestion, i was originally looking into doing something similar but one other thing i forgot to mention is the kiosk needs to work offline. It will be connected to the net on occasion but its not permanent hence why i was looking at some kind of alternative.

Will keep this in mind if i can’t find an alternative.
Thanks

4

Hi @rod,

Could you maybe post a mock-up or screenshot of the design you’d like to reach with your calendar?

I don’t know if you’ve watched our webinar about using IntuiFace & Excel , but it could help you to design the proper Excel file.

Seb

5

Hi Seb,

Yes watched the webinar last night which was very helpful. I don’t really have a mock up of design. I literally want a 30 day ( full month ) calendar to show on screen just as it woudl if i had a google calendar but if possible i want to populate the calendar with data from Excel.

The Excel connection isn’t a problem, its how to i build and display a calendar. I was hoping there was one within the built in assets but unfortunately not :frowning:
Thanks

6

[UPDATE March 26 2020]: download link below with updated experience April 2020 month example.

You can download here a quick sample I made using an Excel file.
You can use a vertical asset grid with 7 columns to easily present a calendar view. I just hide the 5 first elements (for October 2016) so that the first visible element, 10/01/2016 appears in the Saturday column.

IntuiFace Composer - CUsersSeb MeunierDocumentsIntuiFaceCalendar-SampleCalendar-Sample.ifx.jpg1936×1056 225 KB

I’ll let you add the columns you need to describe the events and make the modifications in the Day Template group to present this info.

Seb

7

Cool @Seb!

8

Or I suppose if it doesn’t need to be dynamic - you could just create a PNG or JPEG month-calendar and open that? Then use hot-spots if you wanted more info to appear. The hotspots would be easy to pull from excel, and it wouldn’t be hard to re-make a JPEG calendar and update the Excel if you wanted to do some updates.

It’s a very straight-forward way to do it…but it’s simple, and you can control how things show up.

9

@Seb Thank you so much Seb, thats just what i needed and works really well. Nice and easy to manage too :slight_smile:
I have already replicated a years worth of months and formatted the layout to fit my scenes.

2 Likes
10

Sorry to drag this back up again @Seb, @AlexB but it worked so well i wanted to use it further which makes it more complicated than originally thought.

What i would like to do is show multiple events on any single day. This is because some events are longer than just one day and sometimes there is just more than one thing going on. In the day “box” I would like the user to be able to tap the event which then loads another box over the calendar with the following information

  • List item, Location, Description and an Image

This may be stretching it a bit but what i was also thinking of is, if a single day contains more than x events and they don’t all fit in the box woudl the text be replaced with something like “Multiple Events, tap for info”

@AlexB has touched on this by suggesting to use a Jpeg for the calendar and then use hotspots. I have no idea how to do this and have looked for some examples but not really sure where to start.

I don’t suppose i could ask either of you for any ideas on where to start or if there is a way to expand on what @Seb has already done to be able to list multiple events on a single day.

Many Thanks… Rod

11

Hey @rod,
This is completely do-able, but you’re right…it’s going to get a bit more complex. With what you describe, in my opinion, using Excel will be the most practical way.

I think it would take too long to explain it in a post here - but I think you have two options. Both involve using @Seb 's idea for the asset grid above. There should be a button in every day of the month that will be used to open a ‘nested’ collection.

Here’s a couple ideas for the nested collection that appears.

  1. Option 1 - List it all in Excel. Each row will be a day, and each column will be Event 1, 2, 3 etc. You’d need to make one collection of data templates (for example single group in IF that has Date, Event 1 info, then another group that says Date, Event 2 info, etc). Bind the info for those event groups to the excel info. Create a collection from that as a carousel or another asset grid. Then you need to add the Excel list into your XP, and Drop your Event collection onto the excel feed so it pulls all the data from Excel.
  2. Option 2 - The same as Option 1, but to simplify, you could make 31 powerpoint slides with each days’ info. Upload them to the cloud and put those picture links into the Excel doc - one for each row. Then when someone touches Seb’s asset grid, it will jump to the powerpoint slide picture with those days’ events.

Hopefully that’s enough to connect the dots. It would be a little tough to write out a step by step. But the nested collection would be needed. The parent collection would be 31 items for each day, and within each 31 items, there is another collection of events. Using Excel filtering by day, you would be left with the collection of events to scroll through for that day. That’s it in a nutshell.

Good luck Rod!

12

Thanks @AlexB for your propositions, they sound good.

Here is another one:

  • Keep the current Excel sheet with 1 row = 1 day. If you have multiple events for a day, say “Multiple Events” and add a “see more button”. You could bind its visibility on a new columns “has multiple events” with true/false values
  • Add a second sheet where 1 row = 1 event. This sheet would have a column “date”.
  • When you click on a “multiple events” button, show a pop-up that’s fed by the 2nd sheet. Add a filter on the date which was clicked to only see the events of that particular date.

Thoughts ?

Seb

13

Thanks for the pointers guys,

@AlexB, you suggestion sounded great but i think was a little beyond my skill set at the moment… although i woudl lie to think i’m getting there :slight_smile:

@Seb, i kind of went with your idea.

Capture.JPG511×763 58.2 KB

It turns out thats there not actually a huge number of events through a month but they do overlap somewhat, especially in summer months so i went with a single column displaying a summary and a “more info” button. I have enabled the scroll feature so if there are more events than a single page can handle it will allow the user to scroll through them all… Simple but it was something i could manage.

The next thing i need to work out… struggling a little is the “more info” button. I presume there is a way to make it intuitive like the listing of events. What i need to do is If the “more info” button is tapped from event 1 ( which is line 1 in Excel ) display a pop up with info taken from line 1 in excel. I can create the pop up etc but not sure how to only show info from a specific line based on what even was chosen.

Can i ask once again for any pointers… Just for Info i haven’t got Enterprise Composer so can’t write any custom code via Convertor option.

Many Thanks… Rod

14

Hey @rod,
You’ll actually have another collection that pulls the event data from your excel file. This collection will be hidden from view, and shown when someone presses the More Info button. Your More Info button can do one of two things: It will ‘filter’ the excel file containing your events to ONLY that one day. (For example in your Event Excel file, you’ll have your event info listed in rows. But create another column called Index. That index simply puts a unique number in each row (1, 2, 3, 4, etc). Your More Info button will filter the excel on the column of Index, by whatever number corresponds to the day’s events you’d like to show.

The other alternative is to tell your More Info button to show the events collection, and Scroll-To the index corresponding to the day you’d like to show. If the day you want to show is the 5th item, you’d make your more info button scroll to the 5th item in that file.

15

Hi @AlexB, apologies for the delay in letting you know how it went, lots on at the moment.

I went with the Scroll to option as i just thought it looked cooler when it opens. So its all done and working really well.

Just wanted to say thanks to you and @Seb for all your help and pointers.

Thank… Rod

2 Likes
16

Any time @rod!