Getting started

Please read this short tutorial (PDF) to learn how to use the events system.

FAQ

What is the purpose of this website?

This website provides access to talks and other events taking place at the University of Glasgow. It is intended to replace existing department- or school-specific methods for advertising events which make it difficult for staff and students to discover what relevant research may be being presented elsewhere on the campus and provide a single central location where all such event information can be accessed.

On the most basic level, you can use the site as a simple search engine. Navigating to the home page will show you a list of all events taking place during the current week and you can perform various types of searches or browse through the different groups hosting events to get an idea of what is available.

Can I use this site on my phone/tablet?

Yes, the site is built using a responsive framework which should adjust to smaller screen sizes automatically.

You can also add a convenient direct link to the site your phone's home screen (just like a normal app) using most common mobile browsers: Other browsers should offer similar functionality.

Why does the site have a "Log in" option?

To allow you to tell the system about the type of events you're interested in, you need to create a user account. This is done automatically as soon as you login using your normal University GUID and password - there is no registration process or form filling involved. After you have logged in, you will have access to the full functionality of the system. There are 4 main features to be aware of:

Subscriptions
If you find a group that hosts a lot of interesting talks, you can click the "Subscribe" button on any one of their talks (or on the group information page) to subscribe to that group. Upcoming events within the next week from the groups that you have subscribed to will automatically appear on the home page when you are logged in, and you can view all upcoming events by going to your Subscribed Events page. Unsubscribing from a group is as easy as clicking the "Unsubscribe" button.

Marked events
While subscriptions allow you to register interest in a series of events from certain groups, there may be times when you see individual interesting events from other groups. If you click the "Mark event" button on an event, it will treat that individual event similarly to one from a subscription. It will appear on your home page, and it will be highlighted in any lists of events shown on the site. The number of events you have marked is shown in the nav bar at the top of the screen while you are logged in, and the details of all your marked events can be viewed on the Marked events page. Similarly to subscriptions, just click the "Unmark event" button if you want to unmark an event.

Reminders
Another benefit of logging in is that you can set up automated event reminder emails. These are sent out roughly 24 hours before and 2 hours before upcoming events. It is an opt-in system, so by default you will not receive any emails. To enable reminders, you can go to your profile page, and click the "Reminders" tab. This will display a table showing all your subscriptions, and allow you to choose whether you would like to receive one, both or no reminders for each subscription. These settings can be modified at any time and the changes will be applied immediately. Marking an event will currently cause you to receive both the 24 hour and 2 hour reminder emails about it, although this could become optional in future.

Ical Feeds
If you prefer to receive reminders through a calendar application such as iCal, Outlook or Google Calendar, the system can provide an ical calendar feed (compatible with most common calendar apps) that will contain all the events that you have marked. To set this up, go to your profile page, and click the "Ical Feeds" tab. By default your account will have no feed associated with it. To create one, just click the button and you should see a URL appear in the text box. Copy and paste this into your calendar client as a new feed/subscription and your marked events should appear. If your calendar client can be configured to automatically refresh the feed (e.g. every 24 hours) then new events (and updates to existing events) will be reflected in your calendar events too.

How do I add an event or a group?

There is a separate administration interface that can be accessed here. If you are a staff member, you can again simply login with your GUID and password. Student access is currently restricted but can be enabled on a per-user basis for the moment. Once logged in, you should see a short menu with options to create or edit events, groups or locations (where events take place, e.g. a lecture hall or meeting room). Fill out the form on the appropriate page to create a new instance of any of these entities and it will immediately become visible to other users of the system.

Can I integrate this with T4 to show events from my group?

Yes, there is some T4-compatible functionality that will produce an event listing for one or more groups. For an example of the output, see the School of Computing Science events page. For more information, contact andrew dot ramsay at glasgow dot ac dot uk.

Are there other options for integration with non-T4/external websites?

Yes. This web interface is built on a typical RESTful API and this can be freely used by other client software. For example, it's possible to add a short snippet of Javascript code to a page to retrieve a list of events for a particular group, which can then be formatted and displayed as needed. For details of the API, please click here.

Another potentially useful option is to copy the RSS feed URL for a selected group and use it with an online feed widget generator to produce an events feed for your page.