Tutorial: Creating a Standard Opening Event

Events are crucial to the operation of your venue. They are the backbone of your venue's schedule and are the primary way that you will manage your staff's shifts.

In this tutorial, we will learn how to create a standard opening night in the application so that your employees can sign up for shifts, and you can manage your staff's schedule.

For more general information on the events module, check out the Events documentation.

What We'll Be Making

This guide will walk you through creating a standard opening night event. This event will be a templated event that you can use as a base for all of your future events.

Preparation

To begin, ensure that you have FroggeBot installed in your server.

Next, ensure that you have created your venue's positions. If you have not done this yet, please refer to the Creating Positions tutorial.

Finally, you'll want to be sure that you've hired your staff members. Check out the Hiring Staff tutorial if you still need to do this.

Setting Up the Events Module

Before we can create an event, we need to ensure that the Events module is configured properly in your server.

If your schedule lockout and default scheduling channel are already set up, you can skip down to Creating an Event.

Default Schedule Channel

The first thing we'll want to set is the default scheduling channel. To do this, we'll use the /admin events command and click the Default Schedule Channel button.

Upon clicking the button, you'll be prompted to input a channel. Respond with a mention of the channel that you'd like to use as the channel for all scheduling-related messages.

Channel Types

The channel you select may be a plain text channel OR a forum channel. If you select a forum channel, the bot will automatically create a new thread for each event post. This is useful for keeping the scheduling channel clean and organized.

Once submitted it should update the Events Module Menu to show the new channel.

Schedule Lockout

The other setting we'll want to configure is the schedule lockout. This setting determines how far in advance employees can sign up for and remove themselves from shifts. It's not mandatory to set this, but it can be helpful to prevent employees from removing themselves from shifts at the last minute.

Upon clicking the Set Schedule Lockout button, you'll be prompted to input a number of minutes. This number will be the number of minutes before an event that employees can no longer sign up for or remove themselves from shifts.

For our purposes, we don't want employees to remove themselves from shifts at the last minute, so we'll set this to 120 minutes. Once submitted, the Events Module Menu should update to show the new lockout.

Creating an Event

Now that the setup is out of the way, we can finally create our event. To do this, we'll use the /admin events command and click the Add Event button. This will create a new event in the system with null values and display the menu for editing the event.

Now we can fill in the details for our event, for which we'll want to set the following fields:

Event Name

The name of the event. This should be something descriptive that will help your employees know what the event is.

For the event we're creating, let's set this to Tuesday Night Opening.

Start Time

Let's set the time that the event will start. This is a date and time field localized to your server's configured timezone. It must be in the format MM/DD/YY HH:MM AM/PM.

For our event, let's set the start time to 10/30/24 8:00 PM.

Once submitted, the event menu will update to show the new start time. This will be displayed in your local timezone through the magic of Discord timestamps.

Timezone Note

Note in the screenshot above that the event time is 5:00 PM. This is because the event time is displayed in the local time of the individual user, not the configured server timezone. Our server is set to Eastern Time, however, the user in this screenshot is in Pacific Time.

End Time

Moving on, we can now set the end time for the event. This is another date and time field localized to your server's configured timezone. It must be in the format MM/DD/YY HH:MM AM/PM.

For our event, let's set the end time to 10/31/24 1:00 AM.

Again, after submitting the end time, the event menu will update to show the new end time.

Timezone Note

Note in the screenshot above that the event time is 10:00 PM. This is because the event time is displayed in the local time of the individual user, not the configured server timezone. Our server is set to Eastern Time, however, the user in this screenshot is in Pacific Time.

Set Image

Next, we can set an image for the event. This is optional, but it can be helpful to provide a visual representation of the event for your employees or even to just add a bit of flair/color to the event post.

Seeing as our venue is a classy bar for frogs, let's set the image to a picture representative of our demographic. (Since we'll be making this into a template event, go ahead and choose an image that you think will be good for all of your events.)

Shift Brackets

Now we can configure the shift brackets for this event. Shift brackets are the time ranges that employees can sign up for shifts within. For our event, we'll set two shift brackets with the following ranges:

• 8:00 PM - 10:30 PM
• 10:30 PM - 1:00 AM

Click Edit Shift Brackets and you'll be presented with the shift bracket menu.

Click the Add Shift button to add a new shift bracket. You'll be prompted to input the start and end times for the shift bracket. For the first shift bracket, select 8:00 PM from the first selector and 10:30 PM for the end time from the second selector.

Once submitted, the shift bracket menu will update to show the new shift bracket.

Go ahead and add one more shift bracket for the second half of the event. Set the start time to 10:30 PM and the end time to 1:00 AM.

Event Positions

Finally, we can set the positions that are available for this event. Click the Edit Positions button to open the positions menu.

Our event is going to be relatively small. We'll only need five positions for this opening:

• Host x1
• Bartender x2
• Photographer x2
• Bard x1
• Greeter x1

Let's add these positions to the event. Click the Add Position button, and you'll be prompted to select the positions you want to add. Select the positions from the dropdown, and you'll be presented with a pop-up to input the quantity of positions you want to add.

Since we're adding multiple positions, we'll need to repeat this process for each position/quantity combo we want to add. Let's start with the positions we only need one of: Host, Bard, and Greeter.

Once we've added the positions that you only need one of, we can add the positions that you need multiple of: Bartender and Photographer.

Great! Now we have all the positions added to the event.

Event Elements

Our event is looking good! We have almost all the details filled in, but there's one more thing we need to do before we're done. Our event is decidedly lacking in Event Elements.

Click the Add/Modify Event Elements button to add some informational elements to the event.

For our event, we'll want to add a few elements to provide some information to our employees. Let's add the following:

• Address
• Theme
• PF Message x2
• Shout Run

Click the Add Element button, and you'll be prompted to select the type of element you want to add. Select the element type from the dropdown, and you'll be redirected to the element menu, where you can input the details for the element.

For the first element, Address, we'll select the Address element type from the selector. (We want to provide the address of our event so no one gets lost). Go ahead and click the Set Value button to input the address.

You also have the option of editing the element title if you want to provide a more descriptive name for the element, but this is optional.

Let's repeat this process for the other elements we want to add to the event.

For the Theme element, we'll set the value to Froggy Night.

For the PF Message elements, we'll set the value to <#TODO: Add PF Message.>

And finally, for the Shout Run element, we'll set the value to <#TODO: Add Shout Run Message.>

Now if we look back at our elements menu, we can see that we have all of our elements added to the event.

Exiting back to the main event menu, we can see that our event now has 5 elements attached to it. These will be displayed with the event post when it is created.

Templating the Event

Now that we have all the details filled in for our event, we can save it as a template event. This will allow us to reuse this event as a base for all of our future events.

Click the Toggle Template button to save the event as a template. You'll see the status change at the top of the event menu to indicate the change.

Posting the Event

Finally, we can post the event to the scheduling channel. Click the Post Event button to create the event post in the scheduling channel we configured earlier.

And that's it! Our event is now posted in the scheduling channel, and our employees can sign up for shifts.

Next Steps

Now that you've created your first event, you can start creating more events for your venue. You can use this event as a template for all of your future events, making it easy to create new events quickly.

Your staff will be able to sign up for event shifts using the buttons in the event post, and you can manage their shifts using the Admin Console button.