Managing Public Events with Yale-Localist

Through the main university public events calendar, Yale-Localist enables you to manage and promote your public events, synchronizing those event listings automatically to your Drupal 10 YaleSites website. If your team is still on Drupal 7, contact Yale ITS (or calendar.support@yale.edu) for assistance.

This training and reference guide is designed to help you transition from the Bedework events calendar platform to Yale-Localist, learning how to effectively navigate—and leverage—the tool’s dynamic features to boost audience engagement with your team’s events programming. Although the guidance contained here addresses how you can mainly expect to use the tool at Yale, it is not comprehensive and we encourage you to visit Localist’s training guides for additional insight.

Please note that the calendar’s Editorial Best Practices & Guidelines  should serve as an important supplementary resource to these instructions. For consistency in Yale branding and appearance, the Office of Public Affairs & Communications (OPAC) will be monitoring calendar use regularly to ensure teams across campus are adhering to these conventions. 

Need assistance?

For technical questions about Yale-Localist that are not covered in this guide, reach out to the YaleSites team at calendar.support@yale.edu.

For content-related questions, contact OPAC’s calendar staff at yale.calendar@yale.edu for assistance. 

Key takeaways for calendar admins: 

Throughout this guide, areas where calendar admins must pay close attention are marked with “Important!” However, the takeaways below are considered the most important to remember when managing your events in Yale-Localist: 

  1. Multiple tagged campus groups: Do not tag another campus group if they are not an established co-host or sponsor of your event. Once the event is approved by any group tagged, that event listing will go up on every tagged group’s calendar. In addition, for any multi-group event, content updates will affect every tagged group’s calendar. 

  1. Always, always, always tag your campus group for your events: Because of the communal admin dashboard, your event is likely to get lost in the pending view if it is not appropriately tagged. Tagging your event with your group allows you to filter your search and streamline the review and approval process, avoiding colleague confusion around whose calendar the event is for. This practice also ensures events will import to your YaleSites website if allowing for integration. 

  1. Whether you’re a calendar admin or user, follow the Editorial Best Practices & Guidelines: How your event appears on the Yale public events calendar matters. This resource will guide you on editorial best practices for consistency and adherence to Yale branding and style. Remember: OPAC’s calendar team will regularly monitor the live calendar and happily assist with any style questions you may have. 
     
  2. Updating and deleting events when you have a YaleSites website: If your event needs updating, make those edits in Yale-Localist only—not on your YaleSites website. The Yale-Localist sync feed runs hourly; you can also manually sync the feed to your site if you need the update to come through sooner. But if your event needs to be deleted, delete the event from Yale-Localist first before deleting it from your site. If you only delete your event from your site, it will still appear in Yale-Localist until it’s removed from the system.

  1. Events on the Yale calendar are typically public events: Any events, meetings, or gatherings considered private or limited to a highly specific audience group should not be posted to this calendar. These include (but are not limited to) staff, student, faculty, or volunteer meetings for your campus unit or department; university classes closed to the public; and deadlines or calls for academic papers or submissions.