Custom fields+ permissions option, email full event details

[igirisjin]

I just joined the club and was surprised to see such a recent thread about custom fields. I had PMed Geraint with some requests and questions last week. As I can post now it might be worth sharing the comments as it goes a little further than just custom fields.

Probably feature requests...

Background
We are an outdoor club running most event notifications through a mailman mailing list. Admin posts details of events on the calendar (minus contact details and meeting place and time - as it has public access).
It would be better if members posted events themselves directly to the calendar with an option to hide custom fields from public users.

"Can admin set custom fields so that they appear on the event submission page every time for registered users?"

Examples:
Meeting Time and Place
Organiser Contact Details (phone and email.. mobile email)

It would also be useful if custom fields could have a permissions setting for access by user roles; Public, Registered etc. If personal details they could be hidden until users logged in.

So there are two things there... could Admin set fields with permissions for other users to use, or just let every user submitting an event make custom fields and set the permissions. ... or both! I guess leaving it to users is a lot easier.

Event details email sent on submission, or edit
When an event is submitted could it be emailed to an address with full details rather than just a notification? Not just admin.
I dont know if Joomlas internal mailing system would cope with the large numbers on typical mailing lists but if a copy could be sent out (from a predetermined address and , ideally with the senders email included), it could go to our mailman mailing list (set not to receive recursive copies). Bi-directional mailing list is still very useful for discussion and people dont want to (and at work often cant) log in to see event details - they want it in their usual mailbox.
One problem might be many edits being sent out if automatic.

Andy

[Geraint]

Visibility permissions for custom fields is fairly straightforward to implement - I've made a note of this for the next release.

At the moment it is only possible to have one set of custom fields - the goal is to offer a managed selection so you could have a different template for different sporting event types. I've started some of the backend code for this but its a little way from being ready.

The event notifications could be accomodated via the "attendance, invites and reminders" gold member addon - I'll add this as a feature for the next release. This way after an event has been created/published the author can then send a notification to all registered users. It needs to be under the control of the author otherwise the message could be sent before the event has been finalised/proof read etc.

How does that sound?

Geraint

[igirisjin]

Sounds good, but would the notification include the original event details? That would save people having to visit the site to get the details... (like PHPBB PM notifications). Some people register with only mobile phone emails and do not have browser access tot he site.

[Geraint]

An email notification could include the basic details but would not be compatible with managed locations, event registration and other addons since these would only work in a browser context.

[igirisjin]

Basic text and hopefully html details in a notification would be enough - Perfect. People would see the basic details and if interested they can email the organiser or go to the calendar and register.

[Geraint]

I moved this to the feature requests board so I can keep track of the request