Questions
Better way to auto populate venues in BLOX calendar tool?
Giving the BLOX calendar tool a try on our website. Disappointed to see there's no good way to help auto-populate a venue from biz listings in an event asset outside from the 10-15 I'm told we could store in the venue library. What can we do to find a better workflow for this? We're talking about several hundred event listings per week in print pulling from thousands of biz listing entries.
Answer
Hey Kyle!
The Business Directory can be used as a "business hub" without using it on the front end. This way, you can associate Calendar events with venues, and businesses with banner ads, and so forth. Personally though, I would look into the Calendar upsell functionality - it's a great reason to get the full directory.
The venue library in Calendar is meant to be a "quick list" of your most commonly used businesses. You can have more than 10 - 15... there is not a physical limit it's just more that at some point it becomes unwieldy. It does put listings in alphabetical order and allows for type-ahead. But it isn't meant to be a database of listings.
But in general, I would use the Business Directory for most listings, and then the venue library for the ones you're using like every day to save you a few clicks. The venue library is useful for when you're entering things in manually.
Hope this helps!
Thanks, Christine. I think the problem is that in a given week we use 200-300 venues for listing input. So the 15 or so items stores in the venue library isn't much of a help. Can the venue library be expanded to hold more venues?
Forgot to add, Christine, yes we just bought biz directory, the full version. So we're using that to house all these venues but need a more robust tool to help auto complete and ease entering several hundred calendar entries a week.
Kyle -- we've been considering type-ahead functionality in the business directory search panel. This would still require opening business directory from the calendar admin but it's meant to help query a business quickly. Would that solve this issue?
thanks, Phil. As a back-end user the most ideal workflow IMO is to never leave the calendar admin to enter a venue. Whether that means the venue field is tied to an expanded venue library or tied directly to biz directory, both seem achievable in my tiny brain. Eliminating one or two steps when we're entering hundreds of events each week is huge when you add it all up.
Hi Kyle -- we're still evaluating this and working through some possibilities. Thanks for your patience!
Customer support service by UserEcho
Hey Kyle!
The Business Directory can be used as a "business hub" without using it on the front end. This way, you can associate Calendar events with venues, and businesses with banner ads, and so forth. Personally though, I would look into the Calendar upsell functionality - it's a great reason to get the full directory.
The venue library in Calendar is meant to be a "quick list" of your most commonly used businesses. You can have more than 10 - 15... there is not a physical limit it's just more that at some point it becomes unwieldy. It does put listings in alphabetical order and allows for type-ahead. But it isn't meant to be a database of listings.
But in general, I would use the Business Directory for most listings, and then the venue library for the ones you're using like every day to save you a few clicks. The venue library is useful for when you're entering things in manually.
Hope this helps!