NorthBay Hikes - Advanced FAQ

For basic information, see the basic faq.
What is the advanced FAQ?
How do partner events work?
How do I use special questions when defining an event?
How to encourage and help people self organize carpools?
How can I limit the total number of people at an event?
Where to go for more questions

What is the advanced FAQ?

An FAQ is a Frequently Answered Questions list. Our basic faq covers topics of interest to new members, such as what is this site, where do we go, etc. This advanced FAQ covers more complex topics, such as how to organize an event, security policies, and detailed information on how to use the web site.

How do partner events work?

Partner organizations are other hiking and event groups and clubs. Sometimes we'll help them out by advertising their upcoming events, organize carpools for our members to one of their events, or co-lead an event. This is not a huge list - we don't want to overwhelm our members with information, and some groups wish to stay private and separate. This section covers how partners works.

First we need to define basic information about the partner, so it doesn't have to be typed in each time:

id - a short word to identify the partner - example: laguna
name - full name as it should appear in emails - example: Laguna Foundation
web - url address of their primary web site - example: http://lagunafoundation.org
pic - url address of their logo
info - a brief paragraph describing the organization
contact - name of person who gave us permission to link to their information, the date, etc.
This currently has to be defined by the admin in Hike_Globals.pm.

Once a partner is defined, we can select it when creating a new event. Here are the event settings:

partner - same as the id above
partner_type - how is the event being run? partner only? helping carpool? joint event?
partner_reply - does the partner require a response from anyone in our group that is going?
partner_event_web - url address of where our members can go for more information on the partner web site.

We make use of this information in the following ways:

Main Welcome Page - Short Event List
- Note partner in caps in front of name, and $ cost at end. Example: LAGUNA: hike through swamp ($100 opt)
All Events List - We have more room for the title here
- Note partner in front of name, and longer $ cost at end. Example: LAGUNA: hike through swamp ($100 optional)
- Partner now shows up as it's own column, and can be sorted on.
- TODO: make partner links go to either a new partner page showing our info for them, or directly to their site.
Event Page
- Key info box - a fair number of new warnings, based on fee, partner_type, partner_reply.
- At bottom of page - there is a new partner box with the logo, partner info, and text paragraph of type/reply/etc.
- If type = partner only, we replace the contact box with the partner box. Don't bug us.
Respond to Event
- TODO: Note again if user must respond to partner as well.
Email invitation:
- Subject line gets partner in front of name, and $ cost at end.
- Email contents otherwise same as event page.
- If user has email filtering turned on, they might not get an invite as they can opt out of partner led events.

TODO: Re-do event email contents to make it much smaller and direct people to our web site. If a partner led event, let them respond directly to the partner from the email.

User Settings Page
- User has "allow partner" setting to opt out of email initiations for all partner events of type = "partner led", "help carpool", but show "joint event". This also requires the user to set "email filtering" to all.

How do I use questions when defining an event?

Sometimes an event will have several options, and you'll need to ask people what they want to do or can bring. Examples:

Perhaps you'll have dinner at a restaurant afterwards, or lunch before hand and want to know how many people are coming so you can make reservations and/or plan out carpools.
Perhaps you are carpooling a long distance and want to know if people are willing to drive and if so, how many can fit in their vehicle.
Perhaps this is a pet friendly event, and you want to know how many pets the person wishes to bring.
Perhaps your hike has a long and/or short option, and you want to know who plans on each one.

Here is a copy of our "edit event" section for questions. You can define up to 4 of them, mark them as required (or optional), then list the question along with a list of valid responses. By default you can just enter a question, and if it is yes/no, you're done. For more complex questions, save the event, look at the response, then edit the event again until you have what you need.

If the answer list is completely blank, we'll give the person a text field where they can type anything. If you want a number, we suggest you enter the numbers, such as "1,2,3,4,5,6". If you mark an item as required, then when the person responds, they'll see a dropdown list with the word "required" selected by default, and they'll get an error if they don't change it. If an answer is not required to your question, then the person will get a default of the first selection in the answer list.

We make use of this information in the following ways:

Main Event Page
- Responses Column: If the person answers yes, then the id in parenthesis will be added to the displayed users response. For example, if the id is "dinner", then you'll see their response followed by (dinner). A brief glance will let you know who's coming. If you have several questions, they'll be separated by commas. Please keep the id's small so they don't take up too much room.
- TODO: May want to add these questions to the Event Details list on the main part of the page.
- TODO: Summarize responses (if simple) at top of Responses column. (example: dinner: 3-5 yes, 2 no) Needs to look at maybe responses.
View Responses Only Page
- Each person's full text reply will contain full details on how they answered each question.
  - Example: "Yes, I'll make it to your hike! (Additional Questions: dinner: yes; long hike: no; car seats: 5)
- TODO: Bottom of responses page should have a table per required question, with full list of responses. Free text should be handled differently from select lists. It would be nice if we could select a response value and generate an email to all those with that response. (eg: sorry, dinner has been cancelled)
Edit Event Page
- Contains section noted above.
- TODO: may want to specify maximum limits to each response in the answer list. This could be done with another checkbox a number at the end of each answer, before the comma.
- TODO: as a separate function, allow us to define the maximum number of people who can join this event.
Respond to event page
- Questions will either show up in the required or optional sections.
- TODO: show on this page how people have already responded with each response to each question. If there is a maximum value, show how many choices are left for each question, plus note which ones are "finished" in text to the right of the question. Figure out how to handle questions where the maximum value for all responses has been obtained. (resulting in an error where the person can't select anything) Also, showing results, even without names, will be quite busy - find some way to avoid making the page too complicated. Perhaps an icon one can hover over?

How to encourage and help self-organizing carpools?

Most of our events use a predefined carpool spot or two. Usually this is in Santa Rosa and/or Rohnert Park. The predefined carpool spots need to be easy for the event organizer and often are along the line of travel to the event. Anything past this is a chore for the organizer - don't ask them for too much, or they'll stop wanting to organize anything for us.

So the question now becomes, how can I as person who wants to join this event, organize my own carpool with people from my general area? How can we do this without bothering the organizer or people from other areas?

This is a difficult question, and it's not fully implemented yet. For now, please note that you'd like to organize an alternate carpool with other people and the city you're in. Come back and look at the "View Responses Only" page a day or two before the event starts and look for others coming from that general area. Select their names to send them an email, and propose a carpool.

The rest of this section discusses how we plan to implement this a little better.

Self-organizing carpools have fields on the following screens:

Define cities and regions
- Done: pre-defined in Hike_Globals.pm. It has entries that look like "@city_region{"west soco"} = ["Bodega Bay" ...]".
- TODO: It would be nicer if we could specify it via the web on an admin screen.
Account Preferences Page
- Done: specify preferred primary carpool - Santa Rosa, or Rohnert Park - for default carpool setting.
- Done: specify nearest city to help self-organized carpools. allow option of "none" to opt out of this feature.
Main Event Page
- TODO: find way of notifying others that you wish to self-organize a carpool. (example: (sebastapol?))
Respond to Event Page
- TODO: Add optional question asking if person is also interested in self-organizing a carpool. Pre-load carpool-city with persons default value.
- TODO: Like questions, see if we can summarize counts of response from carpool-cities already. Group together by region.
View Responses Only Page:
- TODO: Create table for self organizing carpools, show counts + list of names per region, then city. This way people know who to contact. Make the names links to the email form.
- TODO: Make the region names links to an email form for all of those users.
Email Form Page:
- TODO: Note in email that this is a query to self-organize a carpool. Put it in the subject line by default.
- TODO: Remind person on this page & in the email, that if they organize a carpool, they'll need to change their default carpool response to show where they'll be meeting us.

How can I limit the total number of people at an event?

On the edit event page, you have 2 values named max_yes and max_maybe. They set the total number of people that can sign up with these responses. We use the maybe responses as a waiting list, and direct people to use it once the event is full. So ... simply set max_yes to the maximum number of people for your event.

The waiting list is manual. As time gets closer to the event, a few people may change their yes responses to maybe or no. We won't do anything automatic. It's up to each person listed as maybe to check the site occasionally and change their response to a yes when there is an opening. First come, first served!

Note: You can set max_maybe to 0 to prevent any maybe responses. The max_yes value must be at least 2 or more. Any admin or event organizer can bypass the limits and force a response to yes.

There is some complexity in this system:

Displaying information: there are many places where the limits are shown.
- Home page: the event will have [FULL] or [5 spots left] displayed after the event name if it is limited. This is omitted for past events.
- Event listing: you can query for max_yes and max_maybe if you wish across all events. We don't indicate if it is full.
- Main Event Page: the "Key Information" section will get a new label called LIMITED and it will display one of many values:
  - We have room for 5 more people.
  - The event is full, but you can join the waiting list.
  - The event is full, and there are 5 spots left on the waiting list.
  - The event and waiting list are full, sorry!
  - You are on the yes list, but the event is full for others.
  - You are on the waiting list, and the event is full.
  - You are on the waiting list, and there are now openings for 5 people.
  - The event title will also have the words [FULL] appended if the event is full.
  - Once the event is over, we simplify all this, and simply write "The event was limited to 20 people and filled up", or "The event was limited to 20 people, and 19 signed up".
- Event Response Page: several changes occur here.
  - The top of the page specifies the limits and current situation for the event in red, similar to the event page, but with more information. We ask people to update their response from yes to something else if their plans change so someone else can join. This is not shown for past events.
  - We remove yes as an option if the event is full and the person is not already accepted on the yes list. We remove maybe as an option if max_maybe is 0 or the waiting list is full and the person is not already on the waiting list.
  - Next to the "how many people" selection, we spell out how many people you can bring, or emphasize that the event is full and you can't bring any more.
- Email Invites: Like the main event page, it will say "we have room for 12 more people". The organizer should sign up before sending the email invite to make sure they get a spot.
Changing a response: If anyone is on the yes or maybe list, they can come back at any time and change their comments or reduce the number of people without an error. This is true even if the organizer lowered the max_yes value and there are too many people on the event.
Change another persons response: The event organizer or admin can always force people onto the yes list and bypass the limits.

We have some ideas on how this might be improved in the future: (these are NOT done now)

Allow sort by response date on the main event page when yes/no/maybe was last specified. Paul requested this so we could notify people on the maybe/wait list in order of initial sign up.
Allow sorting by many different values on the "responses only" page and full listing.
Implement "email me when people respond to the event", and let people on the waiting list know when an opening occurs.
Advance people automatically from the waiting list to a yes: Doing this automatically is hard - we'd have to keep track of the order people signed up in the waiting list and differentiate between a maybe and a yes/waiting list response. Many people on waiting lists often make other plans too, so this could backfire.

Where to go for more questions

Please see our contact page for general questions. Please contact the event organizer with any event specific details. We hope to see you on a future hike!

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