How to Change or Vary Your Meeting Schedule

Created OnSeptember 24, 2023

byDavid F. Carr

Here is how you can change your meeting schedule for an individual date or for a whole series of dates associated with the same template. In addition, I this article and the video cover more complex scenarios like the club that holds some meetings at night and others during the workday — in which case I recommend establishing a second template for the alternate schedule.

Demo: changing the schedule

Changing the schedule for a single event

When viewing any individual meeting on the website, you can open the date and time settings by choosing Edit RSVP Event or RSVP / Event Options from the black menu bar at the top of the screen.

Both options will open the event document in the WordPress editor. The difference is that if you follow the Edit RSVP Event link, the focus will be on the event content (such as text and placeholders for the meeting roles), with the options to change the date and time in a sidebar on the right hand side of the screen.

A meeting agenda viewed in the editor

Note the Settings sidebar can be either shown or hidden, so if you don’t see it you may have to click a button in the upper right corner to get it to display. Also, within the sidebar are two tabs that allow you to display either the settings for the entire document or the settings for an individual content block (like the font size of a paragraph or a heading). You will need to select RSVP Event to see the document settings, including the date and time.

Click the RSVP / Event options button to see additional settings, like the option to display time zone conversions for those who visit your website from other parts of the world. The popup dialog box displayed when you click that button also includes tabs for settings related to the RSVP Form and Confirmation / Reminder messages.

The other way to get that popup to display is to select RSVP / Event Options rather than Edit RSVP Event from the black menu bar on the front end of the site or the events listing on the dashboard. This is simply a shortcut, allowing you to skip the step of clicking that sidebar button.

Updating a series of meetings from a common template

If what you want to do is update not just one event but all upcoming events based on a common template, then click either the Edit Template or Template Options items on the menu. Template Options will take you directly to the options popup, with options for setting a template schedule rather than an individual meeting date displayed.

If you change a parameter such as the meeting start time, and click Update, you will be prompted to update all the individual events based on that template to match.

Creating an additional template for an alternate schedule

Suppose you are trying to set up a schedule that includes weekday evening meetings but also a noon meeting or a weekend meeting. In that case, you may need to establish a few different meeting templates where many of the details of the meeting structure may be the same, but the day and time are different.

The easiest way to do that is to clone an existing event or event template, creating a new one for which the schedule can be different. A Copy to New Template appears if you hover your mouse over any of the listings under RSVP Events or Event Templates on the dashboard.

Alternatively, when viewing an event or template on the front end of the site, you can go to New -> RSVP Templates -> Copy to New Template from the black admin bar.

Using either of these methods will copy the body content and settings into a new event template. Set the event schedule and the title. Then make any adjustments you may need to make to the agenda (either from within the editor or using the Organize tool on the front end).

Then use the Create / Update function to create meeting events for multiple upcoming dates, based on the template.

In the scenario covered in the video, I show how a club that used to meet every Wednesday night could create an alternate template for meetings held at noon on the second Wednesday of the month. In addition to creating a new second Wednesday template, I show how the club could update the original template to cover the first, third, fourth and last Wednesday of the month (with “last” being necessary to cover months with five Wednesdays).

Because some second Wednesday evening events had previously been created that were associated with the old template, I also went through the process of deleting those events. The WordPress user interface uses the label “Move to Trash” rather than delete, allowing for the possibility of restoring items accidentally moved to the trash. There’s an Empty Trash option for deleting them permanently. But Move to Trash removes events from your active calendar of events.

You can delete events one at a time by clicking Trash on the links that appear when you hover your mouse over an event title. Or you can check off multiple events you want to remove, select Move to Trash from the drop down menu, and click Apply to delete events as a batch.

Not what you need?

These options should allow you to model a wide variety of meeting schedules. However, if you have a situation not addressed in these instructions, write to david@wp4toastmasters.com to ask for help.