Event Management

The Event Management tool available in Connect Pro allows you to set up invitations, registration, and reminders, for a live Connect Pro meeting or “web conference”. This tool is helpful when you are planning a live, online session that you want to push out to large audience. With a built-in registration process, you can collect data from your invited guests beforehand on who is interested in your event and what they are hoping to learn by attending. In addition, you can set up your event to require your approval before guests are given access. This feature is helpful if you need to cap the number of attendees or want to make sure the individuals who are attending are a good match for any event-related skills, technical requirements, or topics. This document provides the main steps for scheduling your event, setting up the registration form, and customizing automatic emails that are generated once you have set up all the event information.

1. Log into Connect Pro at http://connect.rit.edu. From the home page, select the Events Management toolbar option. Then, click on the New Event button.
   
2. Fill in each of the fields on the Enter Event Information page. Then, click on the Next button at the bottom of the page.
   
   On the Select Content page, you will be asked to choose which meeting room you want to use for the event. If you do not have one set up already, you can exit out of Event Management and create a meeting room by choosing the Meeting toolbar option from the Connect home page.
   
3. The Create Registration page will prompt you to select the fields that you want to appear on the registration form that your invited guests are sent via email. Connect will store this information and allow you to generate reports. By default, E-mail Address, Password, Retype Password, and Name are required fields. When you are done, click on the Next button to continue.
   
4. On the Customize Registration page, you can create additional registration questions. Question types include Multiple Choice, Short Answer, and Yes/No (Figure 5). The Shift Up and Shift Down buttons are provided so you can re-order your questions.
   
5. From the Participant Management area, you can preload the names and emails of individuals to which you want to send the Event invitation There are several options for doing this.

   Participant Management is where you go to “accept” or “decline” invited guests when you have the Attendance Approval option selected.

   
6. You will be given the option to select a number of automatic email alerts for your invited guests such as the first invitation, reminders, and confirmation of attendance approval. You can also customize the content of each email announcement. Each email has special “Run-Time Fields” that will automatically pull the Event Details you have set up into the email message. It’s important to leave these fields in the announcement.
   
7. Finally, the Event Information summary page will appear. After completing each step of the Event Management process, you will still need to ‘Publish’ the event when you are ready for the emails to be sent.