(GS-9) Defining Activities

(Click here to watch a video of this lesson)

So now we know how to add and manage the attendees at your activities, let's look in more detail at how an activity is defined.

The Elements of an Activity

An complete activity definition has many parts:

  • Activity itself - where all the details and options are defined for the entire activity. Examples are the title of the activity, the start date, and whether attendees are allowed to pay a deposit.

  • Location - as you will probably hold many activities at the same location, then a location's details are stored separately and re-used.

  • Prices - an activity can have many different prices defined. Some may be available to your clients all the time, some may be restricted by a date range or numbers booked, and some may be for additional items that can be paid for alongside the main entry price.

  • Messages - Each activity starts with eleven pre-defined messages types, many of which we have already seen for managing payment reminders and attendee information. Each message can be customised for each activity so you have complete control of what is communicated to your attendees.

  • Questions - the questions you have seen being asked on the booking form can all be defined with a wide range of options for how they appear on the booking form.

  • Prices and Questions to Copy - you will find there are standard prices and questions which you use again and again in your activities. You can define these once, and then copy them as needed to the different activities you define.

  • Default Messages - an area where you can define the default content of each message when a new activity is first created.

There is also the concept of what are called Resources. You can read about these in more detail in Chapter 2.

Exploring the Activities World

As you would expect, we work with Activities in the Activities area!

Here you can see a submenu which contains many of the elements we discussed above. As Prices, Messages and Questions are part of an individual Activity, then we will see the options to look at those in a moment, as we explore the details of a single Activity.

Here you can see the familiar format of a search area for Activities on the left, and an area to the right where you will be able to see the details of what you have selected.

Here we have a similar layout as for Activities, but for working with Locations. A discussion of how those details are used is to be found in Chapter 2.

Diving into an Activity

So let's take a dive into how we can work with the fine details that constitute a specific Activity!

At this point you should see at least the Yoga Retreat activity listed. You will probably see the Couples Weekend and Taster Evening too. If no Activities are listed then this will be because you first signed up to Workshop Angel quite a while ago. In this case, select the "Show deleted and past activities" checkbox to make them appear.

This will bring up the "Basics" screen - the first of several screens which allow you to define the overall properties of the Activity itself. As we found with Contacts, you can move through these screens using the icons in the local menu on the right, or on the row where the activity is listed on the left.

We won't be looking at the details of what all these options do in the Getting Started chapter here - you can find detailed descriptions of these in Chapter 2 - Defining Activities.

Looking Around an Activity's Elements

This takes you into the magical world of being "inside" the Activity!

Use the directions below to move around all the elements of the Yoga Retreat and get a feel for what is there...

Creating a New Activity

So now you have a good idea of how to move around an Activity, let's create one of our own!

We are going to create an activity called "Yoga for Beginners". Choose a start date about 3 months in the future. The activity will have two titles - one we will use within the app which also makes reference to the date, so something like "Yoga for Beginners - Apr 2022", and one for our clients which may just be "Yoga for Beginners".

You are taken to the Basics screen where you can fill in the Location, "External" title that your clients will see, and some words that best describe when the activity is.

You can see that a new Activity has a single price with an initial value of £100.00, what are the standard eleven messages, and no questions.

The recommended way of working from here would be to add the details that you need in terms of Prices and Questions, and then to try adding a few Test Mode Attendees to see if the Booking form contains all the details that you require.

If you would like to, take some time to modify a few aspects of your new Activity and see how it changes the way the booking form works.

Lesson Complete!

Congratulations - you now have a good overview of what constitutes an Activity - it has its own details which effect the behaviour of the whole Activity, and then a collection of element details which define different prices you can charge, messages that are sent, and questions you can ask you clients... and you have made your own first Activity too!

The next lesson will look in some more detail at working with Contacts, before finishing off the Getting Started section with looking at some of the Settings options, and how you set things up to go live with your real clients!

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