Primarysite: How to create calendar events

Welcome to our step by step guide for being able to create a calendar event within your Primarysite Website.

In this guide we will cover:

This document will help you achieve these things in an easy step by step process. If you have any questions, please get in touch.

Getting started

Firstly, you will need to log into your website. This may be done by either clicking a padlock icon or it could be that the words ‘log in’ are situated on the homepage, either in a corner or at the bottom of the page.

A log in screen will then appear, for your details,

As default only, either a super user or anyone under the office role type will have the permission to edit the calendar page. We can however amend the permissions for other role types if required. Please give us a call to do this.

To Add an Event to your Calendar

To be able to add a new calendar event, you need to firstly click on the navigation menu, where your calendar sits, typically this is under News and Events or maybe under the Parent’s menu.

Once you have clicked the calendar page within the menu, your calendar will then appear on the screen.

You will then need to click the edit calendar button, which can be located in the top left corner of the page on the white bar.

Once you have clicked the edit calendar button, you will then see the below screen. To add a new event, you will need to click the yellow ‘new event’ button on the right-hand side.

A new screen will then appear for you to populate your information for your calendar.

You could use this for holiday dates, school trips, after school clubs, class assemblies etc.

Please keep in mind, that when using the time section for the calendar event you are creating, it is our recommendation that if you have a school club or an event that is time specific that you pop this on. If this is left at ‘no time’, the event won’t display as time specific to parents/teacher when they click on the event.

When a parent/carer selects the event itself in the calendar grid details box will appear showing the start/end time of the event as per the below.

The ability to colour code/categorise an event is also possible. An example might be, if there is a club on each week or if a new term starts, it may be that this is done in one colour, so that when viewing, you can easily recognise this.

The screen print below, shows an example of tennis club. This has been associated to the green category and happens each week on a Thursday from 5 – 6pm.

To create a new calendar event that is associated to a category, you will need to click on the ‘manage categories’ button which is located underneath the ‘time & date’ fields. Next select ‘add new categories’, the colour box will then appear for you to select your associated colour and give your category a name.

Click the ‘save’ button and then click the ‘done’ button. The categories are great to use for school holidays and splitting down into year groups for different events.

If using the colour categories for your calendar events, you will see that a key will appear above the calendar itself showing this.

The Calendar can also do a reoccurring event, should you need to use this. This is the button which says ‘repeat’

When clicking this drop down, you can either choose ‘never’ or ‘weekly’. When pressing ‘weekly’ some further buttons appear, which you can also use to exclude certain dates from being part of the reoccurrence.

Please note you will not be able to set events to repeat if the start and end dates at the top of the page are different. If the event is one that repeats, the start and end date at the top should be for the first occurrence and then the event can be updated for the repeat until you specify a date in the ‘repeat until’ field.

Editing your Existing Calendar Events

There is the ability to edit any event that has been created.

To do this, you will need to select the ‘edit calendar’ button as you would do to create an event. You will then see the list of existing events, each of these will have a yellow pencil icon next to them. You will need to click this button, which will take you to that event, and from here you can edit as you need to.

You will also see a red button with a ‘x’ in it next to the pencil button in the edit calendar area, this allows you to delete an event. A prompt box will appear when this is selected to make sure you are happy to delete.

How to Change your Calendar View

Your website can display your calendar as either a list of events or as a grid format.

The list view will instantly display the description if there is one attached, whereas the grid view option will only show as a monthly view. You will however see any associated colour categories attached to the event; you can see the associated colour categories in the grid view only. There is also the ability to see the description on the grid view. Rather than this instantly display the parent/carer would need to select the event in question for this information to appear.

Parents viewing your school website will be able to see the calendar in either view.

List view:

Grid view:

Grid view with description:

How to Sync the Website Calendar to your Own (for parents)

Parents can sync the school’s website calendar to their own personal calendars on either their computers, tablet or phones so that they never miss a school event.

Please note it may take up to 24hrs before parents/carers start to see the events appear in their personal calendars upon syncing this. Once this first sync has happened, all other events going forwards will appear upon the next update of the parents/carers own personal calendar.

To sync a personal calendar, the parent/carer will need to go to the calendar itself in the website and click the ‘link the calendar events to your personal calendar’ link which appears on the left-hand side.

A list of options will then be presented as per the below screen print.

Parents/Carers will then need to click the most suitable option for them. To sync the calendar to their inbuilt mobile/tablet calendars they will need to select the first option. A pop-up message will then appear for them to open this with an app.

Should they have a personal google calendar they will need to select the second option. A pop-up message will then appear to say, ‘add calendar’.

A second message will then appear to sync this with Google

If the Parent/Carer use any other form of personal calendar such as office 365 they would need to use the URL provided in the third option to sync their calendar, this can be found in the drop down menu as ‘another calendar’.

Please be aware that only events added to the Primarysite website calendar will sync with a personal calendar. Any personal calendar events will not then sync with the Primarysite website calendar.

Integration of a Google or Office 365 Calendar

Schools can choose to synchronise a calendar to the school website. We can incorporate the use of Google or Office 365.

You will need to send your ics or iCal link from Outlook or Google to support.ps@junipereducation.org for us to integrate with you Primarysite calendar

Please ensure you send the correct link for the correct calendar and ensure the calendar is publicly available.

If the calendar on the website is connected to an external calendar, when the logged in user clicks the edit calendar button, they will not see the events from that external calendar appear. We would therefore add a message to advise the user that to edit or delete events that originate in the external calendar, they will need to update them in the external calendar itself. You can see this below.