How to upload multiple Events at the same time

Manually adding in Events to Widgety is great, but it can be time consuming if you have several that you need to add. The Bulk Uploader is a time-saving tool that allows you to upload as many Events as you like in one go, rather than having to add them all individually, which can be painstaking and time-consuming. This is done by providing the information through a spreadsheet.

Pre-requisite: You need to have a Place already created on the system to be able to add Events. Please see our How to add/edit a Place on Widgety article if you do not yet have a Place on Widgety.

Pre-requisite: Widgety users don’t automatically have rights to use the Bulk Uploader, so if you would like to use it, please get in touch and we can grant you access. Once granted, it will appear in the navigation bar on the left hand side of your Widgety dashboard.

This article discusses:

1. Accessing the spreadsheet
2. Populating the spreadsheet
3. Uploading your spreadsheet

Accessing the spreadsheet

The spreadsheet is available via the DOWNLOAD SAMPLE FILE button on the Bulk Uploader page. Alternatively, you can download it at the bottom this article. It will give you the required fields for the upload. 

Populating the spreadsheet

To start with, you will see that some of the fields have a * next to them. This is to indicate that these are required fields, and that you will not be able to upload your spreadsheet if these are not filled in. The more information you have, the better. So it's highly recommended that you do not leave any of the fields empty, even if they aren't required.

• The times and dates:
  • These fields fields will only accept certain formats (you can see the full list here) but it is best to use DD/MM/YYYY and a 12 hour clock with AM or PM.
  • The Publish date and time fields are for when you want the Event to go live on the system.
  • The times on our system go in half-hour intervals. This means that if your Event starts at 1:10pm, you will need to put 1pm in the spreadsheet. This applies to all time fields.
• The Event Title, Description, and Ticket Information fields can be typed in as normal text. You can also copy and paste in whatever information you have in those fields.

• Ticketing URL is the web address where you can purchase tickets. If tickets are only available by contacting by phone or email, put that information in the Ticket Information field.
• For the social media fields, it is important that you only include the slug (handle) of your Facebook or Twitter page. In this example the Facebook slug is winchestersciencecentre, and not https://www.facebook.com/winchestersciencecentre/. Don’t include any other punctuation or spaces, it has to be exact otherwise the upload will fail.

Duplicating Events

In the instance below, we have added the same event that occurs every day for two weeks. Once the information is complete once, all of the fields can be duplicated apart from the start and end dates. One event can become two, fourteen or a hundred in a matter of seconds.

Once you have filled out all the information, save the file as a .csv and then either send it to us to double check and upload, or have a go at uploading it yourself. If you're looking to do this yourself, carry on reading below.

Uploading your spreadsheet

We'll now get through the steps of the uploading process.

1) Upload file

On the Bulk Uploader page, select the Place you want those Events to be uploaded for, then select your spreadsheet in the Choose file field, and click on UPLOAD & PREVIEW.

2) Verify fields

This page will provide a table with 3 columns:

• COLUMN - This is the list of the fields in the spreadsheet you just uploaded
• ASSIGNED FIELD - This is the list of fields available on the system. 
• SAMPLE VALUES - This is the first row of data available for each of the fields in your spreadsheet

What you need to do is select the field in the ASSIGNED FIELD which matches the field in your file. If you have used the Sample file, then the fields should be using the same names as on that dropdown list, and will be easy to find. 

Once you have matched all the fields, click on CONTINUE.

3) Processing

This is the actual uploading process, where all your fields are added to create an Event on the system. If you are uploading a lot of Events, then this step might take a while.

This is also where any critical errors preventing the file from being uploaded might pop up. You will be provided with a CSV file with information on the error(s). Some errors will automatically notify one of us in the office. This is mostly due to encoding errors, which is easier for us to fix than you.

4) Preview import

Here you will see all the information that you provided. Some errors will show up here, mostly to do with the content itself, which you can manually fix.

5) Images

Now that the upload is completed, you can select images to apply to each of your events.

Download or have to hand any images you want to be the main image of your Events, and name them so that you’ll be able to find them again in the future. Use a ‘Business Attraction Name  Event Name’ format if you’re unsure (this one was Winchester Science Centre We Are Aliens).

By default, the images will have the main image of the Place they are attached to selected. This is to avoid leaving the field empty. You can replace that image with a new one by uploading it and selecting it instead.