Add new seminars

• Open the events dashboard.
• Click on 'New Draft' under the event Speaker's name goes here […]. Do not click on Speaker's name goes here […] itself, or you will modify the template for everybody!
  
• Fill the minimum required details: date, speaker, affiliation. Use 'TBA' for the title if you do not have it yet.
• Remove the rows Notes and Slides if you are not using them.
• Tick the relevant seminar series in the Event Categories box.
• Use Save Draft to save your work, and click Publish once you are ready to make the event visible on the site.

• Changes may take up to 10 minutes to become visible to every user. If you make a time sensitive change (such as a last minute room change), please visit the page in incognito to check if the update is already available.
• Time can be specified in multiple ways, for instance as '9:00', '9am'. You can also use time ranges like '09:00-11:00' or '9am–11am'. Invalid times will be removed.
• Title and abstract can use $\mathrm{\LaTeX}$: just go with the usual delimiters (dollars, backslash parentheses, etc). The content will be rendered by MathJax 4.
• You can upload slides and other attachments, as long as you follow some rules:
  • attachments must be named exactly as the URL of the event (so YYYY-MM-DD-speaker-name-affiliation.PDF); please be strict about it or it will become absolutely unmanageable;
  • attachments should be added to the 'Key Facts' as 'Slides / PDF / link';
  • check that all images are properly licensed (e.g. for CC-BY-SA images, the attribution is written); please remove images for which you are not certain;
  • request and store privately the LaTeX sources if possible, to make sure we are able to act on requests for accessible formats.

  See Andrew DeLapo's talk for an example, and do not hesitate to ask Vincenzo for clarifications.

• Multispeaker talks are not supported. If you have multiple speakers, you can:
  • create separate entries for each talk;
  • create a single event whose title is 'Speaker 1 (Affiliation 1), Speaker 2 (Affiliation 2)', remove the 'Speaker', 'Affiliation' key facts, and use the main text to write titles and abstracts;
  • for workshops and conferences, set the title to the name of the event, remove the 'Speaker', 'Affiliation' key facts, and use the main text to give details about the event.

How to become editor

If you need editing permissions, please submit a General request to IT asking to be made editor of this website, and send an email to Vincenzo to warn him, as he will need to approve the request.

Seminars will appear in the Maths EVENTS Outlook calendar, and updates on this website will also modify the calendar. If you wish to create the calendar events in advance, for instance to create a single recurring event at the start of term, they must be at the correct dates and times and have title starting with '[Series]', such as '[Algebra]', '[CMIM]' (read below for more details). The lag between creating or updating a seminar and the updates appearing in Maths EVENTS is typically up to 40-45 minutes.

Definitions. Below, seminar means an entry on this website, and event, occurrence refer to entries in the Maths EVENTS calendar. An event/occurrence is linked to a seminar when it contains a 'Generated from [...]' line with a matching HTML link.

• For regular (e.g. weekly) seminars: it's best if you create a recurring event in the calendar with title '[Series]', for instance '[Algebra]' or '[CMIM]', so that participants can add the entire run to their calendar. You can make the recurring event a Teams meeting as well. The automation will recognise the existing occurrences and act accordingly (matching rules below).
  Warnings:
  • Outlook recurring events are a little fragile. For instance, deleting one occurrence is almost irreversible. Do not delete an occurrence until you are completely sure you will not need it. Do not make recurrences too long (e.g. stop them at the end of term); rather, extend them later as needed (but note that each change may generate emails).
  • If you create a new seminar at an unusual time, please move the corresponding occurrence first, otherwise the automation will not match the two and you'll end up with an extra event. On the other hand, once occurrence and seminar are linked, moving the seminar will also move the occurrence.
  • If you need to modify the recurring event, it is best to only edit 'this and all future occurrences'.
• To add a Teams meeting: open the event, enable the Teams meeting, and click 'Save' or 'Send'.
• To add a Zoom meeting (to the event only; private): open the event, add the Zoom link at the bottom of the event, and click 'Save' or 'Send' (if the event has the text 'Generated from [...]', the Zoom link must be added below the horizontal line).
• To add a Teams/Zoom/etc meeting (to the seminar; public): add the link to the Teams/Zoom/etc link to the 'Event location URL' of the seminar, and make sure that the 'Event location' line is not empty. The link will be added to the event below the abstract.
• How does the automation match seminars to events? The automation match a seminar to an event when:
  • either (A) the event and the seminar are linked, i.e. the event contains the 'Generated from [...]' line with the correct link,
  • or (B) the event is not linked yet to any seminar (i.e. it has no 'Generated from [...]' line), it has the same time and date as the seminar, and one of the following applies:
    • the event title starts with the correct '[Series]', for instance '[Algebra]', '[CMIM]' (series with a moniker, like 'Leeds Applied Nonlinear Dynamics (LAND)', must use '[LAND]');
    • the event title coincides with the generated title of the seminar; this can be useful for one-off occasions, like miniworkshops, that are not attached to a series (it is much easier to just create those as seminars and let the automation pick them up, though).

  If no event satisfying the criteria is found, it will be created. The automation always adds the 'Generated from [...]' line, so that future updates will go through (A), which means e.g. that changes to the date or time of the seminar will propagate correctly.

  The automation is self healing: if something goes irreparably wrong, you can delete the event and trigger a refresh by making a vacuous edit on the seminar (but feel free to speak with Vincenzo if unsure).

  Updates are only applied to events in the future, and only if the event has not been modified after the last update to the seminar (so if you create or modify the event yourself, you should do that before creating/updating the seminar).

  The automation cannot delete events. If you delete a seminar, please delete the corresponding event manually (for occurrences, you may prefer to clear title and body instead, given how hard it is to recreate deleted occurrences).

• What gets updated when you edit a seminar? The title, the time, the location, and all the text before the line 'Generated from [...]'. Other content will remain in place, and attendees will not be modified (but note that attendees will receive a calendar update via email).