MusiCal Calendar Help Instrucitons

EVENTS CALENDAR: MusiCal Help

AGO Online Calendar

The AGO Calendar lists many musical events including organ recitals, choral programs, chamber music and other concerts, festival services, workshops, even silent films with organ accompaniment, in New England areas. Most of these events are open to the public, and many are free of charge. Events sponsored or co-sponsored by the American Guild of Organists or its chapters are marked [AGO].

Guidelines for Calendar Listings

Calendar items should be entered online using the SUBMIT EVENT page. For the calendar published with the AGO newsletter (where this is still occurring, or for shut-ins), listings are accepted up to the publication deadline.

Listings will be included at the editor's discretion, and may be edited for style and space requirements. Please include (in the appropriate form fields):

Date and time
Performer, or group and conductor
Event title, or major works or composers
Venue, street address, city
Telephone number and/or website "for more information"
Admission policy (one of the following):
    Ticket price or
    Suggested donation amount, or
    Freewill offering, or
    Free
"Thumbnail" image (see notation "O" in the diagrams below) - Image related to the event (performer headshot, instrument/venue, poster). The image displayed will be resized to fit-within 200x200px. This image must already be uploaded somewhere on the web (typically the venue's website or the performer's own calendar listings or media page). If an image is (already) pre-sized to fit-within 200x200, the quality will be better (and display more quickly because the viewer does not have to wait on a large file download nor the browser to re-compute the resizing).
You could, for instance, upload the image to a web site or blog, and then find the URL (web address) of the image and paste that into the calendar entry field THUMBNAIL IMAGE URL. The URL must begin with http:// (or https://). To find the URL of an image, using a browser such as FireFox or Chrome or Safari, right-click on the image to display the context menu, and choose COPY IMAGE URL(location), then paste that URL. Unfortunately IE makes you go through "Show Picture" and then you can copy the URL from the browser's address "bar" at the top of the browser window.

Remember to notify us of any changes for events previously submitted.

On most guild websites, calendar listings are cached (snapshotted and saved) every 12 or 24 hours to offer faster downloading. If you have made an emergency edit that you need updated (such as a cancellation that is just prior to the event, please contact your dean, calendar administrator in order to force an update to the website's cache).
(If needed, you can check the latest listing contents at www.musi-cal.us or use ADVANCED SEARCH - these are always live (instant) from the database contents.) However, for the emailed subscription listings, those events would have contained the event's data as of the time of the mailing (as determined by the recipient's choice in their subscription), which are often the first of the month or Mondays or Fridays-- this email subscription script is usually run at 1:00AM each day)

The AGO Calendar is a proprietary production of the American Guild of Organists and is listings are available to participating AGO chapters.

What is Musi-Cal™?
The MusiCal Online Calendar is a web-based tool to allow: musicians and promoters to post concert events directly (without having to mail requests to Calendar Editors); and concert-goers and enthusiasts to view upcoming concerts in a number of ways. It is regional in nature and displayed (subsetted) thru many websites, thus a one-time concert submission can appear in many calendar portals. It also gives great flexibility for filtering (selecting) the categories of concerts the viewer wants to display, and the option to receive reminders via email.
An added feature is to optionally display a thumbnail image (performer headshot, poster, venue) to attract viewer attention.

How does it work?
Musicians/promoters submit (post) their event by filling out the Event Submission web form (SUBMIT ENTRY) with the date, title, venue location, and other information. This information is stored in a database that can be accessed/displayed in a number of ways.

Viewers can see up-to-the-minute calendar listings in a number of formats and a number of contexts:

Formats: List Style shows a chronological listing of the concerts (either in summary or fully expanded with details), and Graphic-Calendar style shows a monthly calendar grid noting which days have events scheduled (then click to view the details). In the future, a geographical map format will show concert locations (then click on a location to see the details). In all of these formats, you can customize which concert types, dates, locations you want shown. For the list format, a printable listing suitable for newsletters is available by using certain parameters.
Viewing Contexts: The event calendar (usually in concert list format) can be displayed within the context of another web site (e.g., a local AGO chapter’s calendar page), with an option Advanced Search query available to allow filtering of which concerts to display. Additionally there is a free notification subscription service where the viewer creates one or more profiles of types of concerts s/he wants to receive emailed either weekly or monthly.

Event Submission Details
The person who is entering data for a concert will want to have as much information as possible for the concert in order to allow the best chance of people searching for it to find the concert. For instance, entering the names of performers and composers represented in the concert will allow matches to be made when viewers are searching for their favorite musicians. Adding a graphic thumbnail URL will increase the attractiveness of the calendar entry display. Including links to musician bios, organ specs, etc. will enhance the appeal.

See the diagram below depicting the journey of information entered to being stored in the database to being displayed by the viewer (in various formats). Below is the GRAPHIC format (shown with details popups) and the LIST format (database fields are lettered A thru O to show correspondence with the SUBMIT ENTRY field).

The above calendar display formats result from an event submitted using the following fields. Note that the entry form may appear slightly differently when you enter your concert information.
(the large gold letters associate where each field is placed for the data entered below on the entry form):

(Contact your dean for bulk upload spreadsheet option)

Advanced Search Details
The Advanced Search feature allows the viewer to narrow down (filter) the calendar listings for their desired context. If nothing in the search form is entered, then the entire calendar is shown. Each concert characteristic (content filter) will narrow down and show only the events that satisfy/match the specified search. Note that the search matches are based on what the concert submitter originally entered - if their information is incomplete or misspelled, then likely your search won't be what you desire.

Subscription Profile Details
By entering an email notofication Subscription Profile, you are signing up to receive weekly or monthly emails containing concert listings that match your filter constraints. This is very similar to the interactive (live) Advanced Search. For example, if you want to receive a weekly listing of upcoming Organ Concerts, you would check the Concert Type: ORGAN (and weekly). You could have a second profile that sent you monthly listings for CHORAL concerts. The emails are created soon after midnight of the day specified and the calendar contents are snapshotted at that moment. There is a link in the resulting email so the recipient can browse back to the live calendar listings if desired.

Advanced Information: Database Field Definitions