Event life cycle (e04)

Thursday, September 29, 2022

Team Polaris

Event life cycle explained on an example of a Rotary event.

Event passes several phases:

  1. Creation
  2. Invitation (optional)
  3. Registration (optional)
  4. Attendance capture
  5. Report
  6. Event closure

1. Creation

The timeline begins in Polaris with the creation of the event in calendar. For club events the active members, prospects and guests are inserted as potential participants into the participant list at the creation time. For district events the participant list is empty. The participant list can be extended manually with members from any club and with other people.

Newly created event is inactive in the Web and it's visibility is set to All members (own unit) by default. Consider the GDPR guide when setting the visibility. (The Polaris team strongly advises to consider making events non-public for the sake of GDPR.)

Before you make the event visible in Web consider the registration, questions and answers you want to get from the participants. Verify the functionality of the registration form. Once the people start registering, it is no longer possible to modify the questions!

2. Invitation (optional)

The organizer issues an invitation i.e. an announcement of a future event to the invited audience. Invitation is optional and can occur by e-mail or just by publishing the event on the Website in the slider or in the carousel. Events with regular schedule usually do not have an invitation. Invitation by e-mail can be created directly in the "Participants" tab of that event. The created e-mail is visible in the Menu "Club-Life > Emails"  and can be modified there before sending. The invited audience can be defined by means of predefined recipient groups and can be extended with members of the community or with any e-mail address. 

Creating invitation e-mail

3. Registration (optional)

Registration is enabled in the "Registration parameters" tab of the event. After making the event visible on the web and enabling registration, people can register to that event. Registration is a confirmation of a prospective participation or denial of participation to a future event. The registration is recorded in the event and is visible in the tab "Participants".

The visibility of the event defines who can register. If the event is public, any person can register. People who are not yet on the participant list are automatically added when they fill the registration form. For all Polaris users who logged-in, the registration form is pre-filled with their personal data. They may be duplicates when users do not login before registration or when people register twice with different names. The Polaris team strongly advises to consider making events non-public (for the sake of GDPR). An e-mail of confirmation with his/her choices is sent to the person. This makes it necessary to login first and eliminates the problem with duplicates.

Each event has a registration deadline.The users may modify or withdraw their registration by this deadline.  While the registration period is active, the organizers (can be multiple), defined in the "General" tab will receive an e-mail for each registration, de-registration or registration change, including all registration options (answers).

For club events, it is possible, before the registration deadline expires, to automatically send reminders  to members who did not register or de-register yet ("no answers").

When the maximum number of participants is reached, registered users are put on a waiting list. They are finally registered, if the current number of participants drops below the maximum. In such case they will receive the final confirmation e-mail.

After the deadline, registration is not possible from the Website. However administrators can still register people on their behalf for that event. Such participants will also receive an e-mail of confirmation.

Registration form

4. Attendance capture

An Attendance is the confirmation of the physical appearance of the participant to an event. The purpose of the attendance capture is to keep track on the effective presence of the participants and of their payments. Attendance is recorded in the event in the tab "Participants".  The capture can be easily performed manually on the form, or by scanning  the QR-code of the participants (see below).

Alternatively, the attendance list can be printed out via "Export" button, signed by the participants and manually entered by an administrator.

This action can be performed by administrators only. A special role "Attendance capture" allows non-administrators, e.g. the rotarian in charge of the welcome, or the restaurant personnel to capture the attendance, but not to perform any other function.

The recording of attendance is possible only on the day of the event or afterwards.

Attendance capture form

Attendance capture with QR-code

The attendance capture can be simplified by scanning the QR-code of the members. The one in charge opens the event on his smartphone and clicks on the "Participants" button in the event detail page. Then he invokes the camera by clicking on the "Scan QR-code" button and starts the scanning process.

The attendees present their personal QR-code either on smartphone or printed on a sticker. The individual QR-code is available on smartphones or tablets by clicking on the blue icon "little man" in the top-right corner, or by invoking the NAVIGATION symbol then MY-SETTINGS. The printed stickers with the QR-codes can be made available by the administrator or printed by the members themselves. For a members missing both his smartphone and his sticker, one can prepare a pre-printed set of all members QR-codes. (See next section)

Successful scan is confirmed by a pipes-tone, errors are signaled as quack-tone. Visual message shows the scan outcome. Duplicate scans are detected.

QR-code scanning is applicable to all members of the club, i.e. to active members + guests + prospects + other contacts, but also to any active rotarian of the same multi-district (CH/FL, resp. France, resp. Belux, etc...)

The QR-code is an encoded representation of the Rotary-ID. No other data is present in the code.

Personal QR-code

5. Report

The best way to record the club's history is to attach the minutes of events directly to the event. Modern communication of reports is done by an attractive newsletter containing links to these reports, together with the announcement of future events and news. Event reports are entered by adapting or replacing the primary text block announcing the event, and by adding photos taken at the event.

6. Event closure

The purpose of the closure is to finalize all transactions related to this event. The presence points are assigned to the attendees and fees are deducted from the financial accounts of the members.

A closed event can be re-opened to correct the attendance. Financial transactions cannot be undone for audit reasons. Compensating reverse transactions are issued in a such case.


Printed formats of the QR-codes

The QR codes can be provided on paper in two different formats.

1. Stickers

Stickers are handy small labels which the member sticks on a credit card or any other means in their wallet. The stickers are printable on any laser or ink-jet printer. A PDF file is available in administration under Utility > Member list > Export > QR Stickers

A4 pages of 13 columns by 5 stickers are printed on Avery sticker pages whose order references are:

  • Universal stickers for both printers: Avery 3666 (will be better aligned in R1.1)
  • Older stickers for laser printers: Avery L7615-15
  • Older stickers for ink-jet printers: Avery J8651-12

Various on-line providers exist:

Warning: a proper printing is obtained by setting the scale to 100%, other wise the QR-codes will not fit to the sticker layout!

2. Folder with printed QR-codes

For scanning the QR-code of a member who misses both his smartphone and his sticker, one can scan his QR-code in a pre-printed set of all members QR-codes available for being printed, in administration under 
Utility > Member list > Export > QR Overview

The printout includes all active members of the own club, but not guests and other contacts.

Universal Avery stickers for Polaris QR-codes for both printers

Avery stickers for Polaris QR-codes for laser printers

Avery stickers for Polaris QR-codes for inkjet printers