Welcome to the FAQ for the Virtual Fair feature. Feel free to browse this article to find answers to your questions. If you have further questions after reviewing this page, please reach out to Support. Click on any of the following questions below to jump directly to that question.
Virtual Fairs Administrator Walkthrough
Virtual Fairs Student Experience Walkthrough
Who can attend the Virtual Fair?
What do logged-in attendees see when they enter the Fair?
If a user that isn’t logged in attends the Fair, what do they see?
Who has access to manage the Fair?
As a manager of the Fair, what am I able to do?
What is the Help Desk?
When is the Fair available?
Which Organizations are able to submit to participate?
How do Organizations register?
Can I have multiple Fairs going at the same time?
Can I view all of the people who attended the Fair?
Virtual Fairs Administrator Walkthrough
*Note: As of November 13, 2020, instead of automatically inviting all Active Organizations to your Virtual Fair, hosts will now manually choose which Organizations to invite using the newly created filtering and invitation feature.
Organizations can be invited via the Manage Event page under "Manage Participants", and can be selected using Branch, Type, and Category filtering.
Virtual Fairs Student Experience Walkthrough
Who can attend the Virtual Fair?
Virtual Fairs are controlled by the same visibility settings as every other event – for instance, when you submit a Fair, you can select whether you would like the audience to be only users logged in to your Engage site, or to anyone in the world.
What do logged-in attendees see when they enter the Fair?
They will see the list of participating Organizations, along with the promotional blurb that was submitted for the Organization. Under each Org, there will be an option to request to join (if that option is available in their Org Type settings), and a link to the online meeting supplied by the Organization (if one is not provided, a “Contact” button will appear that will route to the Org Contact Form).
If a user that isn’t logged in attends the Fair, what do they see?
A Virtual Fair can have a public visibility setting. Before joining the Virtual Fair, the public user will have to submit an email address for attendance purposes. They will see the list of participating Organizations, along with the ability to use the “Contact Organization” feature. They will not see the option to join online meetings for the Organizations like logged in users will.
Who has access to manage the Fair?
Any Branch Administrator of the hosting Branch, as well as anyone with Events – Full (or All Access) at the Community level. Branch Administrators of co-hosting Branches are currently not able to manage the Fair.
As a manager of the Fair, what am I able to do?
Along with all of the regular features for managing an event, Virtual Fairs come with a few extra perks! From the Manage Event page for the Fair, you will see a few options:
- You have the option to invite Organizations that are not currently on the invite list. This means you can invite virtually any Organization in your Engage site to participate in the Fair on a one-off basis regardless of their Branch.
- You can view a list of Participating Organizations. This list will contain every Organization that has been invited – essentially, this is every organization that is eligible to participate in the fair. From this list, you are able to:
- Search and filter the list of Participating orgs to easily find an Organization's content and status for the fair.
- Edit submitted Organization information
- Remove Organizations from the Fair
- Send reminders to all organizations/singular organizations about participation.
- The ability to pin important organizations.
As a manager of the Fair, you are also able to preview the Fair ahead of time. While non-managers will not be able to see the Fair prior to the start date/time, managers can head to the Explore page for the event and pop into the Fair early. This allows you to experience what your attendees will see ahead of time.
What is the Help Desk?
Whatever URL you enter for the Online Location for your Virtual Fair when you are submitting it will be used as the link to the help/info desk. This link will display on the fair and will allow you to have someone readily available to answer questions for attendees.
When is the Fair available?
Users who do not have management access to the Fair will be able to see the event page for the Fair in the Events List but will be unable to actually view the Fair itself until the start date/time specified for the Fair. Users with management access will be able to preview the Fair as soon as the event has been approved.
Which Organizations are able to submit to participate?
All Active Organizations under the hosting Branch are able to participate. Hosts can now manually choose which Organizations to invite and they can be selected using Branch, Type, and Category filtering. Users with management access are also able to do so on a one-off basis from the Manage Event page.
How do Organizations register?
Position Holders of Eligible Organizations who have Events – Full (or All Access) in their Organization will be able to register for the Fair. These users can head to the Manage Organization landing page where they will see a list of all of the Fairs they are eligible to register for.
Once they select the Fair they want to register for, they will be asked to provide a short promotional blurb about their Organization as well as an Online Meeting URL. This URL should be used to direct participants to an online meeting via an online conferencing tool. This will allow Organizations to have current members available during the fair to answer questions and provide additional information to attendees.
Can I have multiple Fairs going at the same time?
You can run as many Virtual Fairs concurrently as you would like with as many organizations or attendees as needed.
Can I view all of the people who attended the Fair?
Attendance is recorded for every user who visits the Fair page during the time period the Fair is active. You can run a report of this just like any other attendance report.