Gather interest in an event
- Emma Booth
Not sure if you should run an event? Why not gather interest from users first? This beta feature allows you to create a basic event and let your users tell you if they are interested in attending.
Why create an unscheduled event?
Unscheduled events are a great way to gather interest in an event before scheduling a date, time or location for it. It allows you to get a sense of whether learners will actually get value from the events you run, meaning you can be more efficient and spend time on initiatives that will drive the most value.
Great, how does it work?
Any user with permission to create standard events, will now also be able to create an unscheduled event. You can do this by going to the + in the top navigation bar and selecting events. Here you will see a new selection screen where you can select ‘Unscheduled’
Selecting unscheduled will take you to a deliberately slimmed down creation form that contains only the fields necessary to communicate the key details of the event.
Let us know if the fields you see here help you to achieve your goal. If they don’t, let us know via a Product Feedback form and we’ll take a look!
What is the experience like for the end user?
Once the unscheduled event is created, users will be able to find them from the All Events tab or from the new Search page (find out more about the new search page here)
After selecting an event, users will be able to choose to express interest in it.
And how do I manage and update the event once it has been created?
You can access the management functionality by selecting ‘View interested’ from the options menu.
From here there are two main functions:
Send a notification to interested users
Create a scheduled event pre-populated with those users that expressed interest.
Sending a notification to the list of interested users
To keep up engagement and interest, we have given you the ability to notify interested users of any updates. From the batch actions menu you can choose to send a message to all, or a select group, of interested users. Users will receive this message via email and an in-app notification
We strongly recommend including a reference to the unscheduled event title in your message as there is not currently a direct link back to the unscheduled event. We are looking to gather feedback on how the notification is used before developing it further, so please let us know about your use case!
Create a scheduled event
Once you have gathered enough interest, you are able to create a scheduled event that will be pre-populated with the users that expressed interest. Just click on the Actions menu and select ‘Create event.’
From here you will be taken through the event creation flow as normal.
Currently, the details of the unscheduled event (such as title, description, Q&A etc.) do not pull through onto the newly created scheduled event.
Once you reach the end of this process the ‘Enrol learners’ option will appear. When you select this option, the users who expressed interest in your unscheduled event will pre-populate into the enrolment modal. You are then able to remove any users that you do not wish to enrol.
If you are not yet ready to enrol learners, you can proceed to ‘View Event.’ From here you can access the same batch enrol modal from the options menu and you will still see the users pre-populated into the modal.