Ongoing events are all-day events that span multiple days, such as with the art exhibit and final exam period shown below:
Terminology - see also: What's the difference between repeating, multi-day, and ongoing events?
Ongoing events (covered in this topic) are single events with an all-day duration that span multiple days.
Multi-day events are single events of any duration that occur over multiple days. In this way, "multi-day events" that have an all-day duration are also "ongoing events" (see Add multi-day events).
Repeating events can be of any duration, even spanning multiple days, and are copied in a repeating pattern over multiple occurrences (see Add repeating events).
Infographic illustrating the difference between repeating, ongoing, and multi-day events:
We recommend adding planned ongoing events to a separate test calendar first to confirm that they look as you'd expect. When confirmed, you can then move them to your live calendar.
Tips
Ongoing event setup using an all-day event, start date, and duration.
Tip
The combination of duration and repeating pattern will work as long as the duration length is shorter than the repeating pattern unit.
For example, you can set up a five-day event that repeats weekly (duration length = 5, repeating pattern unit = 7). Or, you can set up a 10-day event that meets every other week (duration length = 10, repeating pattern unit = 14).
Note When selecting the days on which the event repeats, select only the day the repeating unit starts.
The following image shows the correct setup for a five-day event that runs Monday through Friday every week for nine weeks.
Setup for a five-day event that meets weekly. Only the day the repeating unit starts is selected.
Because ongoing events are just that—ongoing rather than one-time—you might want to develop a strategy for managing and presenting them. This is particularly true if a fair number of your events are ongoing.
For some ideas, consider the following strategies that other organizations have used.
It's helpful to visitors if ongoing events are clearly labelled as events that started in the past and take place over a span of time.
When you set up ongoing events as all-day events, in Table and 3-column calendar views, a duration rather than a start time appears in Time field.
All-day events show a duration in the Time field in Table view.
In all of the list-type calendar views (such as List, Photo Events, Tile, and Detail List), you also have the option of labeling ongoing events and assigning your own custom label.
A custom ongoing events label in List view.
How do I customize main calendar views?
Tip By default, on your published calendars, an ongoing event shows up only on the date on which the event begins. If you want ongoing events to be visible on your calendars after their start dates, edit the calendar view settings. On the Edit Settings page, in the Grouping section, select Include events that started in the past.
By putting all ongoing events on a separate calendar or creating an ongoing-events-only filter view, you can publish an ongoing events calendar that is separate from the main events calendar.
This site provides a prominent link to a separate ongoing events calendar.
What is a filter view and how do I create one?
I need a refresher on creating a new calendar.
If you set up an ongoing events custom field and filter view, you can create a custom field and a filter spud that gives visitors the ability to control whether or not they see ongoing events.
This filter spud lets visitors show/hide ongoing events.
I'd like to see detailed steps for setting up an ongoing events filter.
To publicize ongoing events and keep them from cluttering up the main calendar, you can dedicate a promotion spud to them.
Promotion spud dedicated to ongoing events.
To display only ongoing events in a promotion spud, create an Ongoing Events custom field and filter view, as described in Filter ongoing events.
In the Publishing Control Panel, with the filter view selected, create an upcoming events promotion spud, and then embed that spud into the webpage where you want to publicize ongoing events.
I'd like more information about filter views.
I'd like some general information about promotion spuds.
If, in your published views, you group events by day, how you set up an ongoing event has a significant effect on how the event time span displays on the live calendar.
How do I customize calendar views?
In the following list, you see three ongoing events displayed in List view. Below each, you see the setup method that results in the time span display outlined in red.
For this display:
Use this setup:
For this display:
Use this setup:
For this display:
Use this setup:
Tip While only List view examples are shown here, the way you set up an ongoing event affects the way the time span displays in other calendar views as well.
With ongoing or multi-day events, it's usually best to set either a duration or a repeating pattern, but not both. If your event includes both a duration and a repeating pattern, the settings can sometimes overlap, causing this error:
To correct the error, you can use one of the following approaches:
Set a duration with no repeating pattern
Set a repeating pattern with a one-day duration
Set single-day start and end times with a repeating pattern
