When you organize an event, creating sessions and ensuring that participants have access to all the necessary information about them is one of the primary responsibilities of an event organizer.
Once you've created a session, you have the option to either publish it or keep it unpublished.
What is the difference between an unpublished and a published session?
If a session is published, it means that it will be displayed on the event website's agenda, which the participants can see. This allows participants to plan their schedules and decide which sessions they want to attend.
Tip: As an organizer, it's essential to ensure that all the relevant information is included in the session before publishing it. This includes details such as the session title, description, date, time, and location.
On the other hand, an unpublished session won’t be visible to the participants. While you as the organizer can see the session in the Organizer's tool, it won't appear on the agenda until it's published.
Tip: Unpublished status is useful when information is incomplete or pending, like unconfirmed speakers or unfinalized session details. You should publish a session only after all the information is available to prevent last-minute changes or confusion for the participants.
How to publish a session?
First, click on Agenda on the left sidebar. Next, from the sessions list, find the unpublished session you want to publish.
Click on Edit button next to the session you want to publish.
Session in unpublished status will be marked as Not published on the Agenda in the Organizer's tool.
To publish a session, you need to tick the checkbox Published and save changes.
Use cases
The organizers can use this functionality in the cases below.
- When organizers want to test a virtual session
In cases when the session is a virtual one and the organizers want to test it beforehand. However, this option will not offer the participants' perspective. - When the agenda has numerous sessions
In events with numerous sessions, which happen throughout a wider period of time, there can be hundreds of workshops, for example. This can be confusing for participants, therefore hiding the sessions that already happened can be handy for the organizer. - When sessions need to be prepared in advance
Sometimes organizers want to prepare sessions beforehand or release the agenda at a later stage, so creating sessions without publishing them helps this purpose.