Markup Factory Documentation

Events Engine

Events Overview

The Markup Factory Events Engine is a built-in utility to help you create and manage calendars, events, attendance and more.  Using the Events Module, you can quickly and easily:

1. Maintain an online calendar of your events
   
2. Display a list of upcoming events on your website
3. Take free or paid online registrations / RSVPs for your events
4. Create a Mashup of your Google Calendar events and Local Calendar events
   

Managing Calendar Divisions

The Markup Factory Events Engine allows you to create multiple divisions in which to house your events. This feature provides a method for creating multiple virtual calendars that can be displayed in different formats and locations throughout your website. The default month view calendar can display all events together or just the events from a selected division. Divisions can also be set to pull in events from a Google Calendar or made private.

Private Divisions

Divisions can optionally be set as "private". Events contained within private divisions are hidden from public view and are only accessible through the Markup Factory administration area.  This scenario is typically used in a volunteer management situation or by an event planner when it is necessary to manually manage the attendees of each event.

Specifying Divisions in Upcoming Events

You can specify which divisions to include in your upcoming events lists. The following function will output a list of events from the Events Engine:

{{GetUpcomingEvents DivisionList="8,14" ListID="calendar_events" EventsToDisplay="5" DaysToDisplay=90}}

By including the ID(s) of your Division(s) in the "DivisionList" parameter, you can control which events are included in the list.  See the MFScript documentation for more information on using this function.

Event Registration

Events created in Markup Factory can optionally be enabled to accept registrations. See the Online Registration documentation for more information on how to do this.

Google Calendar Integration

Markup Factory supports Google Calendar integration. This feature allows you to pull in the raw events from any Google calendar and display them together with other events on your website.  This feature gives you more control over the style and format that your Google Calendar events are displayed in and also makes these events easily accessible to any visitor to your website.

Markup Factory allows you to associate a Google Calendar feed with a Markup Factory events division by pasting in the Google Calendar XML Feed URL (see instructions below). Once you set this up, events added to your Google Calendar will be displayed along with native events throughout your website. You may choose to add some events directly into Markup Factory to take registrations and others to Google Calendar for easier collaboration and sharing.

To integrate one or more of your Google Calendars:

1. Open your Google Calendar (http://calendar.google.com)
   
2. Next to your selected Google Calendar, select "calendar settings"
3. On the Google Calendar Settings page, click the "XML" button
4. Right-click on the URL provided and choose "copy link"
5. In your Markup Factory Events Administration, visit the Divisions management page
   
6. Create or edit a Calendar Division
7. Paste your Google Calendar XML Feed URL into the "Google Calendar XML Feed" field
8. Click Save

After you've completed this step, Google Calendar events will show up on your website along with other events added to that division in Markup Factory.