Note: The ability to create/add sessions in a Conferences i/o app will require that you have our "multi-session" app. If your app doesn't have administration choices for Manage Sessions or Manage Presenters, this means that you have our more affordable "single-session" app, which only supports use for one meeting or session at a time. If you are interested in upgrading, please contact us at hello@conferences.io
Note: we also have a video tutorial on how to Create Sessions.
To create Sessions, start by clicking on 'Manage Sessions' from your Admin dashboard.
Next, click 'Create a New Session' and enter the Session details. Please note that only the "Name of Session" is required. All other data is optional. However, if you will be using session evaluations along with the option for automatic unlocking of session evaluations (e.g., 10 minutes before the session ends), it's important to specify a date, start time and end time when creating your sessions.
Metadata
There are other optional (metadata) parameters that you can specify when creating sessions, which includes:
- Session ID: this is typically left blank but if you have internal code names for each session, you can populate that here. Please note that this value will NOT appear on the home screen (agenda) of the app. It will appear in reporting. And if you have our feature called "Search for a Session" activated, this field will be searched (e.g., users can search for sessions by their code name).
- Session Type: this is typically left blank but if specified, it will be included in reporting.
- Session Topic: this is typically left blank but if specified, it will be included in reporting.
NOTE: As of the date of this article, you can bulk-import the Session ID but Session Type and Session Topic are not currently available for bulk import.
Advanced
There are several advanced settings that you can optionally specify:
- Session Moderator Password: if you want a unique moderator password for this session, specify that here. Otherwise, your moderator will need to know and use the global moderator password, which is setup under Shared Passwords, under the Admin dashboard.
- Attendee Password: if you want to block or protect a session from being accessed by some (or all) attendees, you can assign an Attendee Password to the session. This can be a great way to list a session on the home (agenda) screen but set it so that only authorized users can access it, if they are told the attendee password.
- Session Ordering Rank: if you want to override the sort order of sessions as they appear on your app's home page, you can specify a numeric value here to control that. For example, if you have several sessions that start at 9:00 AM but you want to ensure that the "Keynote" session is listed first, enter a numeric value for that session that is higher than the numeric value that you specify for the other sessions that start at 9:00 AM.
- Hide this session from attendees: when creating (or after creating) a session, you can hide it from appearing on your app's home page by selecting this check box. When you're ready for it to appear again to users, edit the session and remove this checkbox setting. Note: even though a session is hidden with this option, you can still access it if you have the session's direct URL.
Q&A Panel, Agenda-Only and Presenter Assignment
- Q&A Panel: If you have assigned two or more presenter names to the session, you can optionally enable the Q&A Panel feature. To learn more about the Q&A Panel feature, click here.
- Agenda-Only: If you would like to list things like coffee breaks or meals in your agenda, you can mark those sessions as "agenda-only" which prevents users from clicking into the session when there are no plans to have live content or participation for those sessions. To learn more about Agenda-Only sessions, click here.
- Presenters: if you need to manually assign a presenter name to the session, use the drop-down list to choose their name and then click Add to assign them to the session. Repeat that process as needed. If the presenter's name isn't listed in the drop-down, you'll need to create them via the 'Manage Presenters' option first. If you have many presenter names to add, we recommend using the Bulk Import or Bulk Update option to do so.
The sessions that you create will appear on the home / schedule page of your app*.
