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Understanding Ongoing and Recurring Events

Q: What is the difference between an Ongoing and a Recurring Event?

Ongoing and Recurring events are very different. You assign them when you add a new event (Events). This also works in SignUp.

Ongoing Events aren't really events in the normal way that we typically conceive of them. They are more like 'official designations'.

Ongoing Events: Are Library wide

Last all day
Have no actual meeting


An Ongoing Event can be a specific day (The Library's 100th Anniversary), a week (Librarian Appreciation Week), or a month (Black History Month). While the library may plan specific activities during an ongoing event, each one of those activities is actually classified differently.

For example, July might be Shakespeare month at the library. Shakespeare Month is the Ongoing Event. Having a poetry reading of Shakespeare's sonnets would be a separate event scheduled concurrent with the Ongoing Event.

Ongoing Events don't show up on the Events Calendar unless specifically enabled by the patron.

Recurring Events are completely different.

A recurring event is any event that meets in multiple sessions. Events can reoccur at regular intervals (daily, weekly, monthly) or irregular intervals (Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday, Tuesday, for example).  Recurring events make it possible to avoid entering each specific meeting or session individually.

Recurring Events can be registered for and tracked individually (each session) or as a whole (all sessions combined).

For information on deleting a single occurrence of a recurring event, read this article (EVENTS!).  

To delete a single occurrence of a recurring event in SignUp, just delete it from 'Find Event'. 

A three day lecture series on William Faulkner that meets each night at 8 PM would be a Recurring Event.

A three day designation celebrating William Faulkner's birthday would be an Ongoing Event.
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  • Summary: Defining the difference between ongoing and recurring events
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Comments (10) Comments
Comment by Evanced Support on Fri, Sep 20th, 2013 at 9:13 AM
To change one session in a recurring event:1.On the Add/Edit/Archive page, find the search box on the left.2.Uncheck
Comment by Gabi Sahlberg on Fri, Sep 20th, 2013 at 1:13 AM
we have created a recurring event on Monday. If there is a public holiday on one of the Mondays we do not want anyone to book in on that day. How do we show a public holiday on the calendar and stop booking the event for that day.
Comment by Evanced Support on Thu, Sep 12th, 2013 at 2:36 PM
To create a recurring event with multiple locations take the following steps.1.Create the event normally with a shared attendance sheet and save.2.On the add/edit/archive page, find the search box on the left. 3.Uncheck the box for
Comment by Kitty Smock on Thu, Sep 12th, 2013 at 2:23 PM
This is a "recurring" problem. We have a 5-week yoga series and want patrons to click on the first event to register for the entire series. The difficulty is, the class cannot always meet in the same room, and we need the calendar to show this. How can we create a recurring series in different rooms?
Comment by Nate on Wed, May 29th, 2013 at 2:11 PM
No, there isn‘t any way to display ongoing events by default.That‘s a feature we‘ve added to SignUp.
Comment by Tony on Tue, May 28th, 2013 at 7:19 PM
Is there a way to make the Ongoing Events pane be open by default? I don‘t know if patrons will think to open it and see if there‘s anything there
Comment by Nate Dunlevy on Mon, Apr 22nd, 2013 at 12:37 PM
This is controlled under System Configuration and Settings, System Settings. It‘s called Maximum Recurring Occurrences.
Comment by Sarah on Wed, Apr 17th, 2013 at 10:06 AM
Is there a maximum number of times an event can recur?
Comment by Nate Dunlevy on Mon, Dec 19th, 2011 at 8:05 AM
No, Flo. Registration information can‘t be copied from event to event.You can use attendee lookup to quickly register patrons for the new event, however.
Comment by Flo Trujillo on Thu, Dec 15th, 2011 at 4:18 PM
Can I copy a recurring event with registration attendees and make a new recurring program (different dates) with the same registrations without having to register the attendees again?
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