Creating and using custom lists

You can create custom (or sublists or groups), of speakers, sponsors, or sessions within your workspace, based on the information (metadata) in their profiles (or pages for sessions).

For example, in the event you may wish to create a custom list that groups together only sessions that share a specific criteria or topic, or only sponsors that are of the same sponsor level.

You can use any type of metadata you want in order to identify specific sponsors, speakers, or sessions, and include them in a list. This includes all the default fields, levels for sponsors, and the custom criteria (metadata) that you can create using the Metadata manager.

Tip: Whenever possible, we do not recommend creating custom lists. Instead, we recommend for example applying targeting to sessions, or encouraging app users to use the existing filtering options available in the app (session tags or sponsor levels).

Notes:
For a list of common use cases for custom lists, please refer to the Examples of how to use custom lists article.
If you are looking for information that is specific to creating custom user (participant) lists, please efer to the How to create custom participant lists article.

Creating custom lists

Custom lists are created using conditions. This means that you will create conditions that sponsors, speakers or sessions need to meet in order to be part of the custom list.

To use the custom list builders in Backstage:

1. Navigate to the relevant module (Sessions, Speakers, Sponsors).
   
   
2. Go to Preferences.
   
   
3. Click on + next to Custom lists.
   
   
4. Enter the name of the list and optionally configure an icon (it will be used when participants open the list from a link in a page).
   
   
5. Configure the conditions for building the list:
   - Select a metadata field from the dropdown by which you wish to build the list.
   - From the second dropdown, select how the system will verify whether an item should be in the list or not, for example:
   Equals: value in the metadata field will have to match the specified value.
   Contains: value in the metadata field must contain the specified value (for text this means a part of the string must be contained, while for lists it appliers to all selected items).
   Is defined: a value in the metadata field must be defined, i.e. the field must not be empty (if the field contains no text or no item is selected in a dropdown list, this is considered not defined).
   
   
6. On the right, select or type the desired value to apply the condition to.
   
   
   Example: All participants who match activated person's value of this field will be listed. For example, if an organization is chosen and activated person's country is SpotMe, then all participants from the SpotMe organization will be listed.

Multiple conditions can be used together to create more specific custom lists

Once you have created a custom list, it can be made accessible to app users via the app menu or the home feed quick links, or any link on a page. You can then configure who will be able to see the actual link to the custom list, by applying targeting.

More information on using targeting to create custom lists is available in the Targeting article.