Trumba Connect Frequently Asked Questions

Trumba Support frequently receives the following questions. If you have a question that isn't answered here, try the See Also links on the left.

Event setup

I sent reminder messages to people I invited to my event. Why didn't their messages include Register buttons?
Why am I getting a Web Link [email] doesn't look like a web link [email address] error message?
What's the difference between repeating, multi-day, and ongoing events?
Can I use non-English languages in my events and fields?
Can I attach files, such as PDFs and Microsoft® Office Word documents, to my events?

Spuds and publishing

I made changes to my events and/or spuds. Why don't I see the changes on my website?
How do I reorder calendar views in the View Chooser?
How do I make my calendar look good on mobile devices?
Can I present my events as digital signage?

Calendar and event email

Some people on my distribution list are not receving my calendar or event emails. Why?
In my distribution list, I see red email addresses with two exclamation points. Why?

Event actions and event details

Why are future events not showing up in calendar feeds?
How do I add events to my Facebook business page?
Can I provide direct links to event action/registration pages?
Can I provide direct links to event detail views?
When visitors add my events to Google calendars, the notes get truncated. How can I prevent that?

Accounts and permissions

I sent reminder messages to people I invited to my event. Why didn't their messages include Register buttons?

When it comes to sending event reminders, you have two options. The option you choose determines whether or not the reminder message includes a Register button.

While, for many events, you'll end up using one option or the other, it doesn't have to be either/or. There are cases where you might want to take advantage of both reminder options for the same event.

The important thing is to be aware that you have two options and what the differences are between them.

You set up both reminder options in the editing environment using tabs on the Add/Edit Event form that you open by clicking Add Event or the description of an event you already created.

Option 1: Event Registration tab reminders If you set up event registration and invite people to register for an event, you can send a reminder from this tab that reaches only the invitees who have not yet responded to your invitation. This reminder message includes a Register button.
Tip You can also create custom reminder messages from the Event Registration tab and send them only to selected registrants. Learn more.

I'd like details for how to set up event registration reminders.
Option 2: Event Email tab reminders On this tab, you can set up general event announcements and reminders. These messages have no connection to event registration. This gives you the opportunity to announce and remind people about events for which they do not necessarily have to register.
Reminders you set up on this tab are sent to everyone on the event distribution list. These messages do not include Registration buttons.

Tip You can include the equivalent of registration buttons in general announcements and reminders by providing direct links to event action/registration pages. Learn more.

I'd like details about how to send announcements and reminders from the Event Email tab.

To help you see how you might use one or both of the reminder options, three event descriptions follow.

Event Registration tab option only: An event for which you invite targeted audience members to register; no open registration

Set up an event distribution list with the invitees' email addresses.
Send invitations to the distribution list.
After five days, follow up with the invitees who have not responded by sending an Event Registration tab reminder.
Three days before the event, remind all invitees who have registered about the event by sending a custom message from the Event Registration tab.

Event Email tab option only An event aimed at a target audience for which no registration is required

Set up an event distribution list with the target audience members' email addresses.
To inform the audience about the event, send an Event Email tab announcement to the distribution list.
To encourage attendance, schedule two Event Email tab reminders that are sent automatically to the distribution list three days before and one day before the event.

Both options An event for which anyone can register using open registration; a target audience whose attendance you want to encourage.

Set up an event distribution list with the target audience members' email addresses.
To inform the target audience and encourage registration, send an Event Email tab announcement to the distribution list that includes direct links to the event actions/registration page.
To remind the target audience that the registration deadline is approaching, send an Event Email tab reminder to the distribution list five days before the event that includes a direct link to the event actions/registration page.
Three days before the event, thank selected high-profile registrants for registering provide them with additional event information by sending them a custom message from the Event Registration tab.

Why am I getting a Web Link [email] doesn't look like a web link [email address] error message?

Sometimes after you type or paste a URL or email address into a Web link or email field in the Add/Edit Event or other form, you see an error message that looks similar to this:

Web link error message

If the URL or email address looks perfectly valid and you still see the error message, the problem is almost always an extra space at the end.

Click in far right of the Web link or email field, and then press Backspace. Click outside the field. The error disappears.

What's the difference between repeating, multi-day, and ongoing events?

One person's repeating event is another person's ongoing event. If a multi-day event takes place over the course of several days, doesn't it repeat? Isn't it ongoing?

These terms for describing event types are fuzzy at best and they can mean different things to different people.

When it comes to creating events that work the way you expect them to, however, it doesn't matter what those event type terms mean to you personally. What does matter is for you to understand how Trumba defines repeating, multi-day, and ongoing. That's what you learn here.

Repeating events

Repeating events are events, such as classes, meetings, and lap swimming hours, that occur a limited number of times according to a repeating pattern.
Note that epeating patterns don't have to be regular and predictable. For example, events can repeat on different days each week or not every day, week, or month. They can even start and end more than once on the same day. Learn more.

Multi-day events

Multi-day events are events, such as conferences and workshops, that take place over the course of a few days.
A multi-day event can have one start and end time, the same start and end time each day, or different start and end times each day. Learn more.

Ongoing events

Ongoing events are events, such as art exhibits or final examination periods, that take place over a (sometimes extended) period of time.
Typically, an ongoing event's start time isn't what matters. For example, an art exhibit takes place in a museum that has standard opening and closing times for different days of the week. During the final exam period, students have several exams at different times. What does matter is the time period during which you have the opportunity to attend. Learn more about ongoing event setup.

Can I use non-English languages in my events and fields?

Support for UTF-8 character encoding is built in to Trumba Connect. In all of the fields where you provide text, you can type non-English characters, including double-byte characters typical of many Asian languages.

This means that you have a lot of leeway in tailoring your calendar visitors' experiences to reflect the languages they speak.

Note While you can use non-English characters in text you provide, there are many Trumba Connect user interface elements that will always be in English.

I'd like to see examples of non-English languages in use and some tips on using them myself.

Can I attach files, such as PDFs and Microsoft® Office Word documents to my events?

The only files you can upload to your Trumba account and attach to events are images.

However, if you store files, such as PDFs and Word documents, on a public server, you can include links to those files in your events.

For example, you might include a link like this in an event Notes field:

http://www.yourpublicsite.com/seminars/Best_Practices_Handbook.pdf

How do I add hyperlinks in Notes and other event text fields?

I made changes to events and/or spuds. Why don't I see the changes on my website?

If you make and save changes to events and/or spuds and you see those changes when you preview in Trumba Connect, the changes will appear on your live site. You don't have to re-embed the spud code.

If you're not seeing the changes on your live site, try this:

Wait ten or so minutes (sometimes a little longer if you're testing spuds on a staging site) and refresh the webpage.
Be patient. There is a short delay between when you save changes in Trumba Connect and when they go live.

To manually refresh the page, you can:
- Click the previous and next page navigation buttons.
- Change views using the View Chooser.
  
  Vertical Chooser
  
  Tabbed Chooser
- Click a different date or month using the Date Finder.
- Switch to a different month using the Month List.
If refreshing doesn't work, clear your browser history (sometimes called the cache) or try viewing the changes using a different browser.
Spuds sometimes get cached. That is, a version of the webpage containing the spuds gets stored on your local computer so the browser can open it more quickly than it could by returning to the original webpage.

By clearing the cache, you get rid of the outdated versions of the pages that contain your spuds.

Not sure how to clear a browser's cache? Each browser handles this a little differently. Check Help for the browser you're using.

How do I reorder calendar views in the View Chooser?

The order in which calendar views appear in the View Chooser control spud is determined by the order in which the views are listed on the Calendar Spuds tab in the Publishing Control Panel.

To change the order of the views:

In the Publishing Control Panel, click the Calendar Spuds tab. Under Available Calendar Views, find the view you want to move. Click the up or down arrow until the view is in the order you want.

I'd like more information about the View Chooser spud.

How do I make my calendar look good on mobile devices?

If you have a mobile website designed for tablets and phones, you can easily provide a version of your events calendar optimized for that site without creating a separate mobile calendar or publication.

The Calendar Spuds tab in the Publishing Control Panel automatically includes a Mobile Table view for each calendar you publish. The mobile view's design reflects best practices from existing mobile-optimized Trumba calendars.

Mobile Table view is similar to the Classic Table main calendar view except that the mobile view's default settings focus on keeping the calendar width small. For example, by default, Mobile Table view shows only each event's start time, start date, and description, hides some event and calendar actions, and uses the small versions of navigation buttons. Just as with other calendar views, you can customize the mobile view's default settings to meet your specific needs.

I'd like to know how to preview and customize the mobile view.

Can I present my events as digital signage?

You can promote your current day's or week's events in your lobby or other high-traffic location by customizing promotion spuds to create effective digital signage displays.

To provide event-driven digital signage, all you need is a computer monitor or other device that displays HTML-formatted content and a promotion spud customized to make event information visible at a reasonable distance.

I'd like to know which promotion spuds to use and how to customize them.

Tip If you have a digital signage system that does not display HTML-formatted content, you can generate a display from one of the data feeds that Trumba automatically generates for every calendar you publish. To provide a developer with the feed URL, follow the instructions described in Publish your events in a mobile app.

Some people on my distribution list are not receving my calendar or event emails. Why?

The first thing to do is confirm that you have the people's email addresses entered correctly in your distribution list(s).

If the email addresses are correct, it's likely that the recipients' Internet Service Providers are treating Trumba email messages as spam.

You can provide recipients with information about how to get Trumba added to the ISPs' whitelists.

In my distribution list, I see red email addresses with two exclamation points. Why?

A red email address with two exclamation points is an address to which Trumba tried to deliver email and failed.

This could mean the address is invalid or that email from Trumba is being treated as spam.

How do I remove invalid addresses from my distribution lists?.

Can I increase the likelihood that my calendar and event emails will not be treated as spam?.

If you know that a flagged email address is valid, you can provide the address owner with information about how to get their Internet Service Provider to stop treating Trumba email messages as spam. And, you can contact Support to get the red flag removed from the valid addresses.

Why are future events not showing up in calendar feeds?

By default, a calendar's RSS, Atom (XML), and Icalendar (ICS) feeds show five weeks of event information starting from the current week. If your future events are more than five weeks away, they won't show up in the feeds.

You can change the default setting by changing the start and end dates for events that you want your feeds to include.

Setting feed start and end dates

Changing the default start and end dates for events in a feed.

To change feed settings, in the Publishing Control Panel, click the Feeds tab. For the feed type you want to customize, click Edit Settings & Styles.

I'd like more details about customizing feed settings.

How do I add events to my Facebook business page?

Using Add to My Calendar, you can add events to your personal Facebook Events page. You can't use this approach to add events directly to a Facebook business page.

However, you can use the RSS or Atom (XML) feed, which is generated when you publish your calendar, and a third party application, such as RSS Graffiti, dlvr.it, and Twitterfeed, to automatically post events to your Facebook business page. You have control over the date range and number of events that calendar feeds include.

Tell me more about feeds and customizing their settings.

Can I provide direct links to event actions/registration pages?

You can encourage a targeted audience to register for and/or attend an event by providing a direct link to the event's Event Actions page.

Event Actions page

To encourage attendance, you can provide direct links to event actions pages like this one.

For any existing event on a published calendar, you can find an event actions link by opening the event in the editing environment and scrolling to the bottom of the edit event form.

Event Actions page link in edit event form

You find the event actions link URL toward the bottom of the edit event form.

Tip Be sure to test the event actions link. The URL is based on the current publication selected in the editing environment. That publication's settings determine the appearance of and the fields and actions included in the event actions page. If the page doesn't look the way you expect, you probably need to switch the current publication.

I'd like detailed steps for finding and copying the event actions URL.

Can I provide direct links to event detail views?

As the followng image indicates, you can provide direct links to event detail views in two ways:

Permalink and QR code image in event detail view

Copying the Permalink.
When you click Permalink, the event detail URL appears in the browser address bar. Copy this URL and paste it into a webpage or email message

The link you paste into a webpage will look something like this:

<a href="http://www.spl.org/calendar-of-events?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D103730535">Don't miss this event!</a>
Downloading a QR code image file for use online or in print materials.

Clicking the icon opens the QR Code window where you can copy a link to the event detail view (Address) and/or download a QR code image file.

Tip Event detail links remain valid until you delete the event from or unpublish your calendar.

Do other views have permalinks?

Can I create my own URLs to filtered views, search results, and more?

When visitors add my events to Google calendars, the notes get truncated. How can I prevent that?

Notes get truncated because of a limit that Google™ places on the overall size of URLs used to add events to calendars. A URLs size is determined by all of its parts, including the domain, page, field names, field content, and more. If a particular URL exceeds the size limit, the Notes field content is what gets truncated.

Testing has shown that, if you keep the combined size of an event's fields to about 500 characters, all of the content you add in Trumba should show up in the Google Calendar event.

Tip If an added event includes custom fields, in Google Calendar, this custom information is added at the top of the Notes field. This means that Trumba Notes field content will be truncated before custom field content.

What can Publisher account holders do that Editor account holders can't?

Action	Publisher	Editor
Add, edit, and delete events	Yes	Yes
Mark events as private	Yes Publishers can mark events as private only on calendars they own. Learn more.	No
Approve submitted events	Yes	Yes
Set up event registration and manage attendees	Yes	Yes
Send event emails	Yes	Yes
Manage address book emails and groups	Yes	Yes
Create calendars	Yes	No By default, editors cannot create calendars in their accounts. Learn more. Tip Editors with accounts created before April 10, 2013 can create calendars in their accounts. To disable calendar creation in these accounts, contact Trumba Support.
Share calendars	Yes	No
Publish calendars	Yes	No
Customize published calendar settings, calendar views, and control and promotion spuds	Yes	No
Define custom fields, event templates, and custom objects	Yes Note Publishers can share fields, templates, and objects for use by Editors.	No
Create custom registration forms	Yes Note Publishers can share custom forms for use by Editors.	No
Set up and customize calendar emails	Yes	No
Customize event emails	Yes	No
Monitor calendar activity in the Publisher Dashboard	Yes	No
View and manage account, billing, and performance data	Yes Only Publisher accounts with Primary and/or Administrator status Learn more	No