Get Started Lesson 1: Create and publish calendars
Time to complete: approximately 20 minutes
Welcome to your first lesson in how to use Trumba® Connect to publish and promote your events online and connect with your customers.
Tip You can print a printer-friendly version of this lesson by choosing Print from your browser's File menu. If you prefer to work with the lesson on-screen, it's probably easiest to have two browser windows open, one for the lesson content and the other for Trumba Connect.
In this lesson, you'll get started by learning how to:
Create new calendars
The first time you sign in to Trumba Connect, you see a calendar already created for your account. The calendar appears in the Current Calendar list. This calendar stores system information related to your account so its best not to add your events to it.
By default, the name of the system information calendar reflects the name you used when you signed up for your account. To change the name, click Settings above the calendar. For Calendar name, type the name you want. In this case, we chose the name Organization calendar.
In Trumba Connect, you organize your events on calendars. As a best practice, we recommend devoting a calendar to each category of events that your organization offers. For example, you might divide events into categories by location or event type. This approach gives you the flexibility to mix calendars together and publish different combinations of events on your website.
You can create as many calendars as you want. You can also indicate relationships among calendars by making some calendars children of parent calendars. We call the children subcalendars and the parents top-level calendars.
For example, suppose your organization offers product seminars. You might create a top-level calendar for a specific product and subcalendars for each seminar you offer related to that product. The list where you manage your calendars would look something like this:
Create one top-level and two subcalendars
Each new calendar you create is automatically assigned a color. You can change the color and take other actions by clicking the arrow to the right of the calendar name.
- Go to the Trumba Connect home page. Click Sign in to sign in to your Trumba account.
- To the left of your calendar, under Calendar Tasks, click Create a new calendar.
- On the Create a new calendar page, for Calendar name, type a name for the new calendar.
You can name the calendar to fit with the product seminar example described above or you can use names that are relevant to your own situation.
- Under Relationship to Other Calendars, for Top-level calendar, make sure Yesis selected. At the bottom of the
page, click OK.
The new calendar becomes active and appears in the Current Calendar list.
- Click the down arrow to the right of the top-level calendar's name. Click Create sub-calendar.
- In the Settings form, for Calendar name, type a name for the new subcalendar. For example, you might type "Product B-Level 1."
- Under Relationship to Other Calendars, for Sub-calendar of, choose the top-level calendar you just created. Click OK.
The new subcalendar appears in the Current Calendar list, indented under the top-level calendar.
- Repeat steps 5 through 7 to create a second subcalendar.
Add events
In this section, you'll learn how to manually add new events to the subcalendars that you just created.
Note If you decide to subscribe to Trumba Connect, and you currently store your event information in another calendar program or database, you don't have to re-enter the information manually into Trumba Connect. You can import event information in a number of common file formats.
Add events to subcalendars
Notice that you're going to add events to the subcalendars and not the top-level calendar. In general, this is a best practice that we'll explain in more detail in the next section of this lesson.
- If you haven't already created a top-level calendar and two subcalendars, see Create new calendars above.
- In the Current Calendar list, click the name of the first subcalendar that you just created to display that subcalendar.
In the Current Calendar list, the name of the displayed calendar is bold and a black check mark appears to the left of its name.
- Find a date on the calendar that is a couple of weeks in the future.
Click the arrow at the top left edge of the calendar if you want to create an event in a different month.
- Click the +Add link in the top right corner of the date.
- On the Event Information page, type an event description and choose a time. Click Save and Add Another.
- Repeat step 5 until you've added 3 or 4 events on different days to the first subcalendar. Click OK.
- Click the name of the second subcalendar that you just created to display it.
- Repeat steps 3 to 5 above to add 3 or 4 events to the second subcalendar.
- Click the name of the top-level calendar to display it.
- Select the check box beside each subcalendar's name to mix the subcalendars' events into the top-level calendar.
All of the events that you created on the subcalendars are now visible on the top-level calendar. The event colors match the calendar colors in the Current Calendar list.
Tip If you don't see all the events, you may need to move to a different month.
- Clear the check box beside each subcalendar's name to hide the subcalendars' events.
Publish your calendars to the Web
Now that you have events on your calendars, you're ready to publish the calendars to the Web. Publishing is the first step toward integrating the calendar into your own website, which you'll learn how to do in the next lesson in this series.
In the process of publishing your calendar, you make choices, such as:
- What combination of events you want the published calendar to contain.
- How you want to display your events.
- How public you want the calendar to be.
Note You also make other choices during the publication process that we'll talk about in subsequent lessons.
Publish your calendars
Even though your top-level calendar contains no events of its own, that's the calendar you're going to publish. During the publishing process, you'll have the opportunity to mix in the subcalendars that actually contain the events. Publishing an empty calendar gives you the most flexbility when it comes to combining and customizing events.
- If you haven't already created a top-level calendar and two subcalendars, see Create new calendars above.
- In the Current Calendar list, make sure the top-level calendar is displayed.
The name of the displayed calendar is bold and has a black check mark to the left of its name.
- Click Publish above the calendar.
- On the Publish Settings page, under Default Calendar View, leave the Classic Table view selected.
Tip At this point, you don't have to worry too much about the view you choose. You can preview the view later in the process and change it if you want.
- Calendar name is already filled in with the name you gave your calendar when you created it. For Unique web name,
type a web name for your calendar.
It makes sense to choose a name that is easy to remember. This name becomes part of the code that you copy and paste to integrate your calendar into your website. To see if the name is already taken, click Check availability.
- Under Mix-In Events from These Calendars, select both of the subcalendars that you created earlier.
Selecting these calendars means that their events will show up in your website calendar.
- For now, we'll ignore the other settings. Click OK at the bottom of the page to publish your calendar.
- On the Publishing Control Panel page, on the Calendar Spuds tab in the Main Calendar Spud section, at the bottom
of the Main Calendar Spud box, click Preview.
You see a preview of how your events will display in your published calendar.
- On the right side of the Main Calendar Spud title bar, click Add a Calendar View. Select 3 Columns, and then click OK. On the Edit Settings for 3 Columns page, notice the options you have for controlling event display. For now, click OK to accept the default values.
- At the bottom of the Main Calendar Spud box, click Preview again.
In the preview window, switch between Classic Table and 3 Columns view to see which you prefer.
- Close the preview window.
- There are lots of other settings on the Publishing Control Panel page but we'll deal with those in future lessons. For now, at the bottom of the page, click Done.
- Back in the editing environment, at the top of the calendar to the right of the calendar name, you'll see Published at and a link to your published
calendar on a page hosted by Trumba Connect. Click the link to see the calendar.
Also, because you published the product seminars calendar, it's now described as a publication rather than a calendar. When you display it, it appears in the Current Publication list, along with the two subcalendars you mixed in during the publication process.
