Summary

In addition to the information provided in Adding sessions to the workspace, this article will provide a more advanced presentation of the Sessions module.

The Sessions module is where all sessions included in the workspace are created and managed, in order to build the event agenda.

As such, it contains all the sessions that may take place during an event, as well as the information pertaining to the individual sessions, such as their start and end time, name, description, associated speakers or content, tags, etc.

There are four tabs available in the Sessions module that you can navigate to:

• Sessions
• Tags
• Preferences
• Default display template

Below we'll provide some information on each of these tabs.

Sessions

The Sessions tab is the first one that appears when you go to the Sessions module. Here you can:

• See the full list of sessions in the workspace, and perform certain individual or bulk actions on sessions.
• Find and access a specific session's information.
• Add new sessions to the workspace individually or via a bulk import.
• Export a list of all the sessions present in the workspace.

Below we'll take a closer look at each of these uses.

Sessions list 

The sessions list is presented as a list of the sessions that exist in the workspace. Below we'll take a closer look at the information the list contains:

Here you can see that there are 5 existing sessions in this workspace. For each session you can see, from left to right, the session name including the start and end date and time, the number of available seats for the session, the registration status (open or closed), and any speaker(s) that are associated to the session.

Clicking on a session name in this list will open the session information page. More information on the default information that can be associated for each session is available in the Adding sessions to the workspace article.

Session tab actions

As seen in the above screenshot, you can perform a number of actions from the Sessions tab, via the following buttons:

New session
Click on this button to add a new individual session manually to the workspace.

Export XLS
Click this button to export a full list of the sessions present in the workspace, in Excel format.

Import XLS
Click this button to import a list of sessions into the workspace, in Excel format.

More detailed information on adding, exporting or importing sessions to the workspace is available in the Adding sessions to the workspace

In the Sessions tab, you can also select individual or multiple sessions, using the checkboxes to the left of the sessions in the list, in order to perform a number of actions that appear onscreen:

Delete
Use this button to permanently delete the selected session(s) from the workspace. Deleted sessions will no longer show in Backstage or in the event.

Duplicate
Use this button to create a duplicate of the selected session(s).

Bulk edit
Select multiple (or all) items in the list and then click on this button to access a screen where you can make any type of changes, to all the selected items, in a single stroke.
More information is available in the Bulk editing article.

Time shift

Select multiple (or all) sessions and then click this button to access a screen where you can move the start and end times of the selected sessions sooner or later, using minutes, hours, or days.
A summary of the time shift changes appears at the bottom of the screen.

Tags

The Tags tab is the second tab in the sessions module, and is used to create and manage the tags that can be associated to sessions.

Tags are used to characterize sessions, and can be used for filtering or grouping sessions based on a theme or topic. They are used by participants to easily find the sessions they are interested in via their agenda, and are particularly helpful when a user's agenda contains many sessions.

Tags can also be targeted, in order to decide exactly which participants will be able to see and use them in the event.

Tags list

Any existing tags in the workspace are listed, like in the below example:

In the tag list, you can see the tag name, how it will look (the tag's background color and text color), as well as the ID associated to the tag in Backstage.

Clicking on an existing tag in the list will open the tag information page. More information on the tag information is available in the Creating or editing a tag section below.

From the tag list, you can also create a new tag, using the New tag button, or export or import tags via a spreadsheet using the Export XLS or Import XLS buttons

Creating or editing a tag

To create a new session tag, click on the New tag button. You can also edit an existing tag by selecting it in the tags list. The below tag information can be added or edited:

ID
This is the ID in Backstage for the tag. You can choose your own ID, like in the example above, or let Backstage create an ID automatically.

Name
This is the name of the tag, and the text that will be displayed in the tag when seen in the app.

Background color
This is the tag background color that will be used.

Text color
This is the tag text color. In this example, it is the color that the text "Topic 🤖" will be displayed with.

Targeting
Tags can be targeted to allow you to decide which participants will be able to see the tag in the app. More information on using targeting is available in the Targeting article.

Preferences

The Preferences tab in the Sessions module allows you to perform the following tasks.

In Settings:

• Configure the Agenda discover screen.
• Change the Agenda calendar date range settings.
• Change the settings for any video calls associated with the session so that they autolaunch or not.
• Configure the sessions' default settings.

In Content editors:

• Configure how the sessions look in the agenda, via the Session list setting.
• Configure how the link to the Agenda will look, via Link appearance.

In Custom lists:

Here you can create custom session lists. More information on this is available in the Creating and using custom lists article.

Default registration mode

Select the default setting for managing the session registration and capacity. This is the default setting and can be changed in each session:

• Unlimited capacity: There will be no limit to the number of users who can register for the session.
• No constraints: This means that the participants can sign up to this session as well as multiple other sessions that take place at the same date and time.
• Managed capacity: Select this and enter a number in the Capacity when managed field to configure the maximum number of users who can join the session.

Note: Registration handler URL and Registration mode states are default settings that can't be modified.

How sessions look in the agenda

You can configure how the sessions look in the agenda list, via the Session list setting:

Master and track sessions

Master sessions can contain one or more track sessions. The settings here allow you to decide how these master and track session will look in the agenda's list of sessions.

Track sessions to display

Use the below options to determine whether you want the master session and any track sessions to appear directly in the session list in then agenda.

All: When expanding a master session, all track sessions will be displayed in order no matter whether they were targeted to the current user, or they signed up for any of the sessions. This is the default setting.

Targeted or registered only: Master session + only targeted and registered track sessions will be displayed (using an "expand master session" button).

None: Default setting. Only the master session will appear. Track sessions will only display when the participants open the master session.

Automatically expand master sessions: By default this option is not selected, and users will need to use an "expand master session" button associated to the master session in order to see the track sessions in the agenda session list.
If you select this option, the track sessions will be fully displayed in the agenda session list by default (i.e. without the participants needing to use the expand master session button.

Tips:
If you have multiple breakout sessions and participants need to sign up for one session per breakout, use Targeted or registered only with Automatically expand track sessions.
If you want to highlight the topic or the speakers of your breakouts, use None. This will first display the session page and then the track sessions below.

Display

Use the checkboxes here to display or not the items listed below for your sessions:

• Registration checkmarks appear in the session when user's have registered.
• Tags can be made visible or not in the session.
• Speaker photos can be displayed or not in the sessions.
• End time can be displayed or not for sessions.

Tips:
If all sessions in your agenda are personalised (targeted), we recommend that you uncheck the Registration checkmarks option.
If you have two or less tags, consider not displaying them at all by unchecking the Tags option.
To change text of the second line displayed below the session name, go to Setup > Metadata Manager > Session > Expand representations > 2nd line. You can map this to any other metadata field.

Session filtering

Use the checkboxes here to enable or disable the corresponding options that participants will have to filter through sessions.

• Enable in app filtering.
• Filter by registration status.
• Filter by tags.
• Filter by bookmarks.
• Filter by metadata field:
  • Appearance (default appearance).
  • Appearance when targeted or registered.

How the link to the agenda will look

You can configure how the link to the agenda will look in the event, when seen in a page or quick link.

To do so, go the the Link appearance option:

Here you can configure the following:

Icon
This is the icon associated to the agenda link. You can upload your own or select one from the list.

Title
This is the main title of the link. You can select a label from the list or create you own (along with any corresponding translations).

Subtitle
This is the subtitle of the link (same approach as for the title).

Default display template

The default display template tab allows you view and modify the default layout of the page for your sessions in the event.

Globally, this page works in the same way as any page added to the workspace, with components and behaviors that you can add, remove, move around, and sometimes edit.

It also has four model-specific components that can be used, but have default configurations that can't be modified.

Session bust: This is the main session information, with the name of the session, date, time, and any tags.

Session registration: This is the registration component for the session, that says "This session is available for registration - Register here" in the event.

Live session with presenters: This is the component for displaying the speakers of the current session.

Video calls: Adds a button to allow participants to join a video breakout associated to a session.

Important: Any changes you make to this display template, once saved, will affect the way your sessions will look in the event.