Spotlight: How FileStack Powers Smooth Event Planning with Entry Blocks 

For event organizers, presentation management can be a logistical nightmare. Files get sent at the last minute, attachments get lost in email chains, and version tracking may or may not exist at all.

Joel Armsden, an expert on Gravity-Forms-powered event tools, was building an event management website for a client when he questioned how this workflow could be improved with Gravity Forms. 

What if event organizers could upload, update, and manage their materials seamlessly, without the chaos?

With a bit of tinkering and a bit of magic, Joel strikes gold in his own integrated solution; something he calls FileStack. Through clever use of Populate Anything and Entry Blocks, event organizers can go straight from their own agenda to upload presentation files, view other presentations part of their agenda, collaborate with teammates, and more.

Let’s explore!

How it Works

FileStack keeps everyone in the loop while keeping everything in WordPress.

“We decided to build an independent presentation management system to tie in with the agendas we were already building as part of an event platform.”

When someone clicks a FileStack link from their event agenda (something Joel’s also built for them in WordPress), they’re taken to a pre-populated upload form, courtesy of GP Populate Anything, with their session details already filled in. If the session already exists, they can either update the existing entry or create a duplicate.

The client clicks a link from the agenda page on the event site I built for them, which links to FileStack with the session title populated on the presentation upload form. If the session already exists (detected via Populate Anything) the user’s given the choice of creating a duplicate or updating the existing entry.

From here, the user begins uploading files. The file upload experience is streamlined through a few perks:

• Once uploaded, presentations are automatically renamed with GP File Renamer for surgical naming conventions. 
• They’re automatically stored in the event company’s WordPress Media Library via GP Media Library.
• GP File Upload Pro is sprinkled in for a criminally smooth file uploading experience. 

And now, for some icing on this cake.

View & Edit Presentations with Entry Blocks

So far, what we’ve described is an integrated presentation uploading system that works with an event organizer’s website. But what gets us really excited is how Entry Blocks is used here.

Joel needed a dedicated page for event organizers/presenters to see all of their uploaded presentations in one easy to manage view and allow to users to make changes as needed.

He accomplished this with a GP Entry Blocks table. It displays all entries associated with the organizer’s login (which are essentially all uploaded presentations), giving them the ability to have their own “dashboard” and quickly make changes to any presentation file.

In addition, multiple contributors can manage files within the same project. In each case their name will auto populate with any file additions along with a date/time stamp (shout out GP Populate Anything).

Why is this useful? On the one hand, presenters and organizers have a seamless user-experience. They can upload presentations directly from their event agenda and make changes as needed. On the other hand, event organizers can access all updated presentation materials directly through the event website without stressing over version control. 

“When my client explained the problem they were trying to fix, I was initially thinking along the lines of creating and updating a custom post type for each session. I then explored Entry Blocks for the first time and quickly realised there was no need to create anything in addition to the form entry itself. It then became a remarkably quick solution to put in place with Entry Blocks’ out of the box options.”

Like many other scaled Gravity Forms solutions we feature here, this started as a bespoke solution Joel built before he realized it could be standardized into a reusable tool. Neat stuff!

Thank you to Joel Armsden for always building the most sorcerous things. Be sure to check out the work he’s doing over at JMA.Events. 

Have a question? Let us know in the comments!