Virtual Events

Virtual events are events that are happening online. These events may be things like a national conference call covering campaign updates, a statewide training event, or a local planning meeting that's happening online. Either way, ControlShift allows you to support these types of events by creating virtual events. Virtual events are not their own class of event, which means that calendar, group, campaign, and standalone events can all be virtual events. 

Setting up a virtual event follows the same process as other events, but instead of entering an address for the event, the host chooses the Virtual option instead. From here, they'll be asked what type of virtual event they're creating:

• The first option, "relevant to everyone, everywhere" can be used for things like national briefing calls or virtual office hours. Once created and moderated to Good, these events will be included in everyone's search results, regardless of the location they enter on the event lookup page. 
• The second option "relevant to people in a specific area" limits the audience of the event. It's often used for events that would have otherwise been organized in a local cafe, library, or other meeting spot but are happening online instead. When moderated to Good, the event will be treated like an in-person event with regard to event searches – it will only show in search results if it's within the organization's chosen radius for events. 

If you have web conferencing information that you'd like to make available to attendees, you can enter it now. (If web conferencing information is entered later, we'll email attendees with the updated information.) Then continue with the rest of the event set up process. Once moderated, these events will become available to supporters. Please note that while virtual events will not be included on maps (because they have no physical address), but they will be included in the list portion of event lookup pages and in search results.