Seminar Management

The Seminar Management tool in Redtail provides an effective means of streamlining the tasks involved with your seminars. Seminar Management is accessible from your Left Menu Bar: 

 

After selecting Seminars, you'll see your Seminar Management page, listing any active seminars currently in your database: 

 

Above your Seminars, you can see at a glance how many active seminars are in your database, which has the most Attendees and the most Guests, your next upcoming Seminar, the last Seminar added and the last one updated.

Before I take a look at working with existing Seminars, I first want to show you how to add seminars to your database.

To add a new Seminar, click the New Seminar button in the top right corner of this section. You'll then see the below: 

 

As I've done in the example above, you should provide a Seminar Name, Start and End Dates and Times and a Status for your seminar.  Then, click Add Seminar.

Your page will refresh after the Seminar has been created within your database, to display that new seminar's details page: 

 Many of the sections, of course, won't have much if any data in them at this point. You'll see your By the Numbers section at the top, as well as an Attendee Stats area and two charts (Attendee by Status and Guests by Attendee) on the right. For data to show up in those areas, you'll need to add Attendees (and Guests, if any). 

To add Attendees, click the Manage Attendees button at the bottom of the Seminar Details area (or in the Attendee Stats area). While you can add Attendees in bulk from your Advanced Search page, here we'll take a look at how you can add them individually. After clicking Manage Attendees, you'll see the below: 

 

No Attendees are displayed here, as none have yet been added. If you click Add Attendee, you'll see the below: 

In this example I've already searched for and selected my database contact within the Contact box and selected the appropriate Seminar Attendee Status for him. (Note: There are a number of Seminar Attendee Status options available in your database by default, but you can add more under Manage Your Account —> Manage Database Lists.) If I then click Add Attendee, the previous Attendees page for this seminar will look like the below: 

 

When managing Attendees, you also have the ability to indicate Guests that they have said they are bringing. If I click the Actions menu for an Attendee, I'll see the below:

You can update the Attendee name and status, delete them as an Attendee or click "Guest List," which will allow you to add their Guest's name:

 

 

In the example below, Donna Lawler was added as a Guest for Jonathan Crane: 

 

You can continue adding more Attendees and/or Guests in the manner described above as needed. 

Now let's go back to your new options after Seminar creation. Below is that screenshot again so we can orient ourselves: 

 

Use the Location field to indicate where the event will be held and the Description field to provide any necessary description that may be helpful to your database users. 

If you've created any Workflow Templates for use with Seminars, you can attach these after the seminar has been created.  If you click Add from the Linked Workflows area, you can just follow the prompts to attach your desired Workflow Template to your Seminar.

Beneath the Linked Workflows area, you'll see an Other section, where you can add and/or view Notes or Documents attached to the Seminar. You can click on the number displayed for either Notes or Documents to view any existing content for those areas or add new content yourself.

Finally, you'll see a Seminar Timeline area that displays a history of database actions in regard to the Seminar.

Once you've completed all of your desired fields, this Details page might for a Seminar might look like the below:

Now that we've taken a look at adding a new Seminar, adding attendees and guests, linking Workflows and adding Notes or Documents, let's go back to our main Seminars page, where our newly created Seminar is on display with those that were previously there: 

 

Directly above your list of Seminars, in addition to your New Seminar button you'll see several other options: 

Selecting between these first three buttons will allow you to determine whether Active, Prior or All Seminars display onscreen.

Clicking the next icon will download a PDF of your seminars, suitable for printing. 

Clicking the "export" button will download an Excel file of your seminars.

To the left of each of your Seminars here, you'll see an Actions menu that, when clicked, gives you a number of additional options for working with your Seminar: 

 

 

• Edit - Selecting this takes you to the Seminar's Details page, where you can make any necessary edits or perform the other actions we discussed above (link Workflows, etc.)
• Manage Attendees - This works in the same manner as the Manage Attendees button we discussed above.
• Send to Search - This allows you to send the group of attendees for the seminar to your Advanced Search page, opening up other options available from your Advanced Search page.
• Labels - Create labels and envelopes for the contacts listed as attendees for a seminar quickly and easily from a wide range of label templates available. 
• Mail Merge - Merge your seminar attendee contact information into a document which you've uploaded into Redtail as a mail merge template. Some handy uses of this feature include mailings, place cards, invitations, thank you cards, etc. 
• Reports - Quickly pull a Seminar Attendees or Seminar Workflow Report. Or, print out a Sign-In Sheet or Check-in List for use at your Seminar.
• Clone Seminar - Use this action to create a clone of a seminar that will be very similar to an existing one. This will save you time in that you won't have to recreate each and every detail of the new seminar.
• Timeline - View a history of Actions for your Seminar.
• Delete - Selecting this will delete the Seminar entirely. If your aim is to remove a seminar because it has been completed, it is recommended that you instead click Edit Seminar and change the Status to "Prior."

With both the Labels and the Mail Merge options above, you can filter by Attendee Status prior to running your labels or mail merge.