Event Categories and Event Themes are two different ways to tag events in Engage. While they have some overlapping functionality, the two tools are not the same! Read on about the differences and optimal ways to incorporate both into your event management.
Event Themes
Event Themes are hard-coded into the system, meaning administrators cannot change, edit add, or delete them. There are 9 themes in total, selected based on overarching event types common across campuses. The event themes are Arts and Music, Athletics, Cultural, Fundraising, Group Business, Learning, Service, Social and Spirituality. Every event must be tied to one and only one event theme.
Themes have a special use on the Corq app: because Event Themes are consistent across all of our campuses, Corq allows you to search for public events taking place on other campuses using the same list of themes.
Event Categories
Unlike themes, Event Categories are customizable for each campus and can be managed by community administrators. Event categories allow you and your users to classify events in ways that are relevant to your campus community. Try to build event categories that are more specific to the types of events your campus creates, such as "Greek Life" or "Professional Development." Also unlike themes, users can tag their events with multiple categories.
Event categories also provide additional options for administrators, such as the ability to create "hidden" categories that can be used as administrative-use-only tags for events. Many campuses will use hidden event categories to support their Co-Curricular Paths, or will tag events according to report data they may want to pull at the end of the semester or the end of the year.
The only place themes and categories overlap is in the Events Directory in Explore and on the Corq app, where both can be used to filter through the event list.