Note: this is for Events (announcements, festivals, closures — anything without an agenda). If you need to schedule an official meeting with an agenda and minutes, see Meetings, Agendas & Minutes instead.
From the Dashboard, go to Events and click Create Event.
Here's what each field does:
Name — the event title, shown everywhere the event appears.
Description — the details residents will read. You can format it (bold, links, lists), and you can click Help me write to have AI draft a description for you based on the title and date — you can edit anything it writes before saving.
Date & time — set a start and end. Turn on All day if the event doesn't have specific hours (this hides the time and just shows the date).
Repeats — leave this as Does not repeat for a one-time event, or choose a pattern for a recurring one. See Setting up a repeating event for how this behaves over time.
Department — optional. Assign the event to a department if it's relevant (it'll then also show on that department's page).
Location — pick an existing Venue, or type a custom address. See Choosing a location: venue or custom address for the difference.
Cover image — upload a photo, pick one from your Media Library, or click Generate with AI to get two AI-created options to choose from.
Privacy — Public, Unlisted, or Private. Public is what you want for anything meant to show up on your website. See the next section for the full explanation.
When you're done, either:
Save as Draft — saves the event but keeps it hidden everywhere, so you can finish it later.
Publish — makes it live immediately, according to whatever Privacy setting you chose.
Draft, Published, or Canceled — and Public, Unlisted, or Private
Every event has two separate settings, and both have to be right for an event to show up on your website. It's easy to assume they're the same thing — they're not.
Status: Draft, Published, or Canceled
Draft — not visible anywhere. Use this while you're still working on an event.
Published — live, and visible according to its Privacy setting.
Canceled — stays visible (so people who already knew about it see it's off), but is clearly marked as canceled. You can add a cancellation reason, which shows as a note on the event.
Privacy: Public, Unlisted, or Private
Public — shows up on your website's calendar and anywhere else events are listed.
Unlisted — only visible to someone with the direct link. Won't appear in your calendar listing.
Private — only visible to Dashboard staff. Never shown publicly.
The rule to remember: an event only appears on your public calendar when it is both Published and Public. If your event isn't showing up and you're not sure why, check both of these first — see Why isn't my event showing up on the website?
Setting up a repeating event
When creating or editing an event, the Repeats option lets you set up a series — daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly, with an optional end date or number of occurrences.
You can set an event to repeat forever, with no end date. Keep in mind that only occurrences up to about two years ahead are shown at any given time, both in the Dashboard and on your website. That's expected — you don't need to do anything to "extend" it further out, the upcoming window just keeps moving forward as time passes.
Editing an event
Editing a one-time event is simple: open it, make your changes, save.
Editing a repeating event asks you how far the change should apply:
Just this one — changes only the specific date you opened.
This and future ones — changes this date and every occurrence after it, but leaves earlier ones untouched.
The whole series — changes every occurrence, past and future.
A couple of things to keep in mind: choosing "this and future" or "the whole series" regenerates those occurrences, so it can take a moment to apply on a long series. And past occurrences are never changed retroactively — if you edit a weekly event's description today, last month's occurrences of it keep the old description.
Canceling or deleting an event
Canceling an event is a status change — anyone who can create or edit events can do it. The event stays visible but is clearly marked as canceled, and you can add a reason. This is the right choice when something isn't happening anymore but you still want people to see it was called off (rather than it just silently disappearing).
Deleting an event removes it entirely. Because this can't easily be undone, only Department Admins and Admins can delete events — if you don't see a delete option, that's why.
For a repeating event:
Deleting a single occurrence removes just that date.
Deleting the parent event (or checking the option to delete the full recurrence) removes the entire series, including past dates.
Finding and bulk-editing events
The Events list lets you search by name and filter by department, venue, date, status, and more. You can also choose which columns show (image, dates, department, venue, location, who created or last updated it, view count).
Select multiple events with the checkboxes to use bulk actions:
Set Department — assign several events to a department at once.
Change Privacy — switch several events between Public, Unlisted, and Private.
Change Status — publish or cancel several events at once (canceling lets you add one reason applied to all of them).
Delete — remove several events at once (Department Admins and Admins only).
One nuance for repeating events: bulk actions apply only to the exact occurrences you selected. If you select a few upcoming dates of a weekly event and bulk-cancel them, the rest of that series is untouched — it doesn't cancel the whole series the way canceling from the single-event page can.
Adding images to an event
A cover image makes an event's listing and detail page much easier to recognize at a glance. When creating or editing an event, you can:
Upload a photo from your computer.
Choose from your Media Library — anything already uploaded for your town.
Generate with AI — describe the image you want, and you'll get two AI-generated options to pick from.
Images you upload for events are kept in your Media Library, so you can reuse them later for other events too.
Choosing a location: venue or custom address
When setting an event's location, you have two options:
Venue — pick one of your town's existing venues (a park, a community center, a specific room). The event will show that venue's name and address, and it'll automatically stay up to date — if the venue's address is ever corrected or changed later, every event linked to it updates too. This is the quicker option: you don't have to type or re-type an address, and you get one less thing to keep accurate yourself. It also blocks that venue's availability for reservations during the event's hours, so it can't be double-booked with a room or venue reservation at the same time.
Custom address — type or search for an address directly (with map-based address search). This is fixed to what you entered — if you need to change it later, you'll need to edit the event itself.
You can only use one or the other for a given event — picking a venue disables the custom address field, since the venue already provides a location.