CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Is it possible to have an event, but not have a date for it...

I have used CiviEvent to gather expressions of interest for courses, so I can establish which courses to run next, as in they have more people interested in them, but in the signup they have a date (which I don't seem to be able to get rid of / hide) and a number of people have emailed me saying that they can't do that date, even though I have said in the text 'ignor the dates, this is an expression of interest'
- Failing this, is there a better way of doing this in Civi?

Thanks in advance

Handy

You can potentially use the CiviCampaign's "Petitions" feature to collect this type of feedback in a self-service form. Steps (roughly) -
* enable CiviCampaign component
* create set of custom field(s) Used For = Activity -> Petitions
* add a "checkbox" custom field for folks to mark events (you can just enter event choices directly as multiple choice options - r w/ a small amount of code use the Custom Field Options hook to grab existing event titles from the event table or from some other source - http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC40/CiviCRM+hook+specification#CiviCRMhookspecification-hookcivicrmcustomFieldOptions). Make the field "Searchable" so it shows up in reports etc.
* create a profile and add your custom petition field to that profile
* create a "New Petition" (Campaign menu) and use your Activity profile as well as some profile to collect (or verify) contact info (you can use one of the pre-configured profiles like "Supporter Profile")  - it MUST have an email address as one of the fields
* click "Sign" from the "more" link on your petition to see the form that folks will fill out (and you can grab the URL to post on your website / email out / etc.)
* When folks fill out the form, a Petition activity is created. Use Find Activities or Activity Report to view the info you collect.

If this works out for you, would be great if you could write up a quick blog post about it!!