CBE Calendar Tips

CBE Calendar Tips

1.  Before you submit your event, remember to “View All” calendars when checking the availability of a date, rather than only looking at a specific departmental calendar. Viewing all calendars is the only way to see every event on any specific day, including whether or not that day is a holiday.

2.  Post Date: this field is NOT the date of your event. It is the date after which the calendar program will add your event to the calendar once it has been approved. Please leave this field on the default date.

3.  Event Title: Avoid using abbreviations or “in house” terms in naming your events. Again, this calendar is displayed publicly on our website, and our regular members won’t necessarily understand that “RS” means “Religious School” or that “Comm Mtg” means “Committee Meeting.” Using full names and easy-to-understand terms also makes our calendar more pleasing to look at, and in that vein, please properly capitalize the titles of events; for example, “Committee Meeting” looks much nicer than “Committee meeting” on a publicly displayed calendar.

4.  Event Description: Make this as complete as you can when submitting the event; remember this is a public calendar and may be the first/only place someone sees the listing. To include contact information for public use, in the event description include a link to a bethemeth.org email address if you have one (all Board members and some others do), or a personal “contact form” on the CBE Website. If you already have a contact form you can find the URL by putting your last name into the search box on the CBE site. If you do not have one, request it from .

5.  Event Contact: Contact Name and Contact Email are required and are useful for internal coordination, but be sure to check “hide” at least for the email unless it is a bethemeth.org address. Also if you include a home/cell phone number for internal coordination (optional), be sure to check “hide”.

6.  Priority: Leave the priority on “Medium.” Changing it to “High” or “Low” will cause events to appear out of sequence.

7.  Calendar (category): Events should go on the calendar of whoever is organizing the event. If you are submitting an event for Sisterhood, for example, it should go on the Sisterhood calendar, even if other groups will be invited to attend. A hypothetical Men’s Club father/daughter event may include Religious School students as participants but is not a Religious School event – it is a Men’s Club event. If an event is being organized by multiple groups, then place it on all of (but only) those groups’ calendars.

8.  Location: “CBE” should not be used as a location. It is assumed your event will take place at CBE unless “Offsite” is chosen as the location. Please specify a specific space, such as “Lobby,” “Social Hall” or “Classroom.”

9.  If your event requires use of the kitchen, remember to submit a separate event entitled “Prep for (Your Event)” with Meat or Dairy Kitchen as the location, and the times for which you’ll need to reserve the kitchen.

10.  Single Day vs Recurrence: The “Recurrence” function isn’t just for events that occur on a nice even schedule. If your event occurs on a series of random days, or takes place on several days in a row, the Recurrence menu provides a “Random” option, which allows you to manually select a specific series of dates. Recurring events are both easier to enter for you, and easier to edit for the office. BUT if your sessions are at different times of day and/or have different descriptions, you should enter them as separate events.

11.  Start and End Times:

1. The “Start Time” and “End Time” fields are meant for the times of the event itself – remember, this is the public calendar from which our membership will pull event info. Set-up and breakdown times for your event will be handled during the floorplan submission process.
2. Be careful about the starting time for your event. On Saturday nights, your event should begin after Shabbat ends. And remember, to be scheduled on a Jewish holiday or on the evening before a holiday your event must be holiday friendly. You can find Shabbat/Holiday start and end times for Herndon by going to http://bethemeth.org/jewish-calendar and clicking on “Online Jewish Calendar”.

12.  Review & Proofread: After entering the information, click “Save/View Event” at the end, be sure to proofread carefully, test any links and make any edits. Once you click “Finished”, to make changes you will need to re-submit the event (see next item). Hint: to close the review pop-up, click on the small square at top right.

13.  To Change an Event Already on the Calendar: If you need to submit a change to an event that is already on the calendar, re-submit the event with the new info/settings, and place a note in the “Description” field that says “To replace (Event Title) on (Event Date).” We will then add the updated event and delete the old one. If you are making a change to a single instance of a recurring event, you only need to resubmit a single date, to replace the instance that needs to be changed.

CBE Calendar Tips, rev 5/11/2015