Second calendar for external events

[ballaschk]

After talking to Alex, we'd like to have an additional calendar for interesting external events that Patricia, me and the secretaries would add on a regular basis.

• External events should be labeled as "external" but in the same calendar view
• In the calendar view, they should have a different color (e.g., grey) and there should be a toggle to turn them on or off.
• The subscription should be a separate feed

Which means, either a different "type" of event in the same calendar or a second calendar, only presented in the same view.

Do you think this doable with the current system?

Cheers,
Martin

[donald]

The variant with single calendar and different event types can be previewed on https://intranet2.molgen.mpg.de/ . There is a new "external" field. Along that line? Suggestions. ics export (subscriptions) for external events only not yet implemented.

[ballaschk]

Cool, looks good 👍

Suggestions (tbd):

• make the color of the external events grey
• include a toggle to switch the display on or off (see attached mockup)
• have only one subscribe button to avoid visual clutter, but provide two options in the subscription form
• include only internal events in the list on the home page

Thank you!

[donald]

So the basic would be, that Events are either "external" or "internal", but not both. I imagined the "external" attribute as being "externally visible" so that all Events would be visible internally. Please acknowledge, that I change that.

[ballaschk]

Sorry that I was not clear enough. Indeed "external events" are events that could be interesting for a majority of our staff (scientific talk in Berlin / digital conference somewhere else) – stuff that we usually get by "friends" like BBAW, MDC, MPIIB or BIMSB and would get pinned to the blackboard. I.e., these events are "by others".

Events can only be either internal or external, yes. So a single switch-button in the calender view for "external events" would be enough.

Does it make sense to remove/hide the location field for external events, otherwise it will get parsed be your room number interpretation script (?)

[donald]

Ok. Let me see...

[donald]

Which means, either a different "type" of event in the same calendar or a second calendar, only presented in the same view.

Yes, this needs to be decided. Due to my misunderstanding ("external" events are just to be published public) it seemed clear, that this would be an attribute of the event. But now it is no longer and both options would work. So what is more natural?

Some background: Currently, in the cms events are pages. Also, a Calendar is a CMS page. A Calendar page is kind of an index view for all events below it. So multiple disconnected Calendars were the original model. For some reason I can't see, that was later disabled, so that there can only be a single Calender page in the wiki. But this could be re-enabled (after which, me maybe rediscover the reason it was disabled :-) ) So we can easily have multiple calendars as separate locations in the cms tree.

However, for a Calendar page to display data from multiple locations (whether combined or switchable) we'd need to rather heavily extend its functionality (or create a new Page type) to be able to subscribe to other event locations.

Probably its less work to continue with a selectable "event type" as prototyped. However, its a more limited model.

Extending the current calendar view to be able to switch between showing different sets of events is not as trivial as I hoped for. Well, probably it is, but I need to dig deep into the functionality of FullCalendar, which is used here, just a lot of reading and experimentation.

[ballaschk]

I see the advantages of multiple calendars on different sites on the intranet, e.g. the PDA, IMPRS or the service groups could maintain their own calendars with courses and offers etc. which then just get aggregated into a single view on the Calendar page. It seems like the more "complete" way of doing this …

But more realistically, this is probably too much complexity and little to gain from. Only the secretaries, Patricia and me are maintaining the calendar anyway, so just having added properties in the existing events would also be easier (to use). Especially since we have only two event types for now and I don't see why this would change in the future.

BTW, looking at Fullcalendar.io, I really want the button back that switches to the list view on the Calendar page! (The background-events also looks interesting, maybe for holidays or Betriebsferien etc)

I don't think we really need the switching between calendars, hiding the external events from the view (and unhiding them again, of course) would be enough. Hiding an event type can maybe be done like this https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43130004/show-hide-events-on-fullcalendar-using-javascript ? I imagine making two different feeds for the two "calendars" is more complicated.

[donald]

I've made an example with the two buttons you originally suggested. See https://intranet2.molgen.mpg.de/ . No German translations yet.

I'm not sure, everybody will find and understand the buttons. Of course, it would be trivial to make this into one button, to toggle external events on and off. Maybe the buttons need some feedback so you see whether they are activated or not?

Whatever nice ideas you got from the FullCalendar docs, maybe better make separate issues for concrete wishes and mark what is more important and less important. By the way: Why not put a label to the single issue you regard the most important?

[donald]

@ballaschk : Can you have a look at the calendar at https://intranet2.molgen.mpg.de/ ? Is that okay or should something be changed?

[ballaschk]

Sorry for the long wait.

I asked Patricia for final thoughts on this today, hence the edit …

We think the solution looks pretty good and we would like to ask for these changes (deviating from my original request):

• both calendars should be "on" and visible per default
• the internal events should be "always on" and hence always visible
• the external events are an "optional" view (i.e. only a single grey "external events" button switches the view off)
• as suggested, maybe the "pressed" button could assume a slightly darker or lighter colour once it gets pressed? – the other calendar buttons have a hovering effect, I think this would be enough to indicate that this is an active part that can be clicked.

Thank you!

[ballaschk]

Hi there. I edited my comment above to reflect Patricia's and my final thoughts on this.

[donald]

I've made the requested changes (see https://intranet2.molgen.mpg.de/de/events/ ) . I've added a hover effect. I don't change the buttons background to indicate the state, because I think it is not obvious, what color would be "switched on" and what "switched off". Also I think it make some sense to use the same color as the related events in the calendar. I change the button label instead to give feedback on the modified state. Maybe you have a better idea?

Still missing: Translation, Subscription....

[ballaschk]

Looks perfect, thank you! I'm already looking forward to the parties!
I'd suggest to translate it as "Externe Events zeigen / Externe Events verbergen" (or can you think of something shorter?)

Do you think you can push the changes to the production server at some time in the next two weeks? Then I could add some events for the next issue of the newsletter. I think it would be ok to add external events to the subscription calendar later.

[donald]

Subscription still missing

[donald]

It's active on the main site.

[ballaschk]

Can we split the feed – one for external and one for internal events? Or alternatively, filter the external events out from the standard feed?

Background: I'd like to show upcoming events on our screen in the lobby, but right now external events are shown as well …

(Furthermore, I guess that the additional events are a nice-to-have in the web calendar, but are cluttering people's individual calendars. So, for now it would be great if we could take them out of the "general" feed. But add separate subscription later, while I'm not sure how this would look like.)

[donald]

Did I get it right? Although two subscribable ics feeds might be better, for now it would be enough (or at least be better) to export internal events only? Please confirm, then I'd merge the PR.

[ballaschk]

Confirmed, this is exactly what I meant!

Thank you! :)

[donald]

Active on main site. :-)