Module 3 of 13 · Platform Walkthrough

Event Plan Automation — Deadlines & Checklists

Once forms and attendee types exist, the Event Plan stitches them into a time-aware playbook: ordered steps with due dates, visibility windows, optional reminder announcements, and per-attendee-type page-level scoping — so every participant knows what to do, when, and only sees the parts that apply to them.

Audience: Event Administrators, Project Managers Surface: Event Plan section (expostudio.net/admin/event/{id}/steps) Prerequisite: Forms & attendee types defined (Module 2)

1. Why an Event Plan? 00:00 – 00:54

A plan is the contract between you and your attendees: who needs to do what, by when.

Narrator · 00:00 – 00:20 As soon as you define the forms and your different attendee types, you can proceed to setting up the event plan — the event automation for your event.
Narrator · 00:20 – 00:54 The point is that you create all the steps and important dates for your event so you have a suitable game plan: what each participant needs to do, and the order they need to do it in, for a successful event.

The Event Plan is the orchestration layer of the platform. Modules 1 and 2 set up the building blocks (an event, attendee types, forms). This module sets the schedule and scope that turn those blocks into a sequenced experience for each participant — automatically opening sections, due-dating actions, and (optionally) sending reminder announcements.

2. The Hosted-Buyer Sequence 00:54 – 01:43

A premium hosted-buyer event has a specific sequence — delegates first, then sponsors, then matchmaking.

Narrator · 00:54 – 01:26 For example, in our case — a premium hosted-buyer type of event — you want a date when the delegates go in and put their important details: what they want to see, what they want to attend, and their main business objectives.
Narrator · 01:26 – 01:43 Then, after that date, you put your sponsors in. Based on the data the delegates provided, sponsors do their submission and their preferences. Once that is finished, you have the data and preferences gathered to actually move on to scheduling and delivering the meetings at the event.
1
Delegates
Submit profile, business objectives, what they want to see & attend.
2
Sponsors / Partners
After delegate deadline, sponsors review delegate data and submit their preferences.
3
Platform
All required data + preferences are now in — meetings can be scheduled.
4
On-site
Meetings are delivered at the event itself.
Why the order matters
The sequencing isn't cosmetic. Sponsors can only do meaningful matchmaking after delegates have declared what they want — so the platform's deadlines are designed to gate the sponsor flow on the delegate deadline. The Event Plan is where you encode that gating.

3. The Event Plan Page 01:43 – 02:00

Every step of the event lives here, with its action label, due date and visibility window.

Narrator · 01:43 – 02:00 In this example you can see the plan: complete your profile, then access the onsite app, then complete your survey, then complete your company information — and you can see that everything is attached with dates.

Open Event Plan in the left rail. You get a chronological table of every step in the event with three columns — Action, Due Date, Date (the visibility window) — and three filters at the top.

Event Plan list page with action items and due dates
Event Plan list. Top filters: Attendee Type, Visible From, Visible To. Then the + Add Step button. The demo plan contains: Complete Your Profile, Access to the Onsite App, Complete Your Survey, Complete Your Company Information, Make Your Delegate Selections, Tailor Your Agenda, Confirm Collateral, Submit Onsite Attendee Profiles, Submit Your Presentation Text for Approval, Submit Your Final Slide Decks.

Reading the table:

Top filters — narrow the table to show steps that apply to a specific attendee type, or steps inside a given visibility window. Useful for sanity-checking the plan from the perspective of "what does a Delegate actually see?".

4. Editing a Step 02:00 – 02:44

Click any row to open the Edit Step modal — the heart of the plan.

Narrator · 02:00 – 02:22 If you go on a particular one you can see what it looks like. So one would be completion of the profile, then access to the onsite app. There is the possibility to put explanations — as you'll see afterwards when we log in as an attendee to that event.
Edit Step modal for COMPLETE YOUR PROFILE with action label, explanation editor, dates, reminder toggle and attendee type toggles
Edit Step modal. Editing "COMPLETE YOUR PROFILE". Visible: Action label, rich-text Explanation editor, Visible From / Visible To / Due Date pickers, Reminder/Announcement toggle, and a row of Attendee Type toggles (Cancelled, Delegate, Delegate / Speaker, Guest, Partner, Partner / Speaker, Spartners, Speaker, Staff, Ticket Delegate).
FieldWhat it controls
ActionThe label the attendee sees in their client panel checklist (e.g., "COMPLETE YOUR PROFILE").
ExplanationRich-text body shown to the attendee inside the step. Has Design / HTML / Preview tabs.
Visible From / Visible ToDate + time window during which this step appears in the attendee's checklist.
Due DateThe deadline shown to the attendee and used for sorting / nudging.
Set Reminder/Announcement"I want attendees to receive announcement before the due date" toggle. Optional — turn on to nudge.
Attendee Type10 toggles — one per attendee type. Determines whose plan this step belongs to.
Select active pages for this stepPer-attendee-type checklist of which client-panel pages should be enabled for this step (covered in §6).

5. Step Explanation Shown to Attendees 02:22 – 02:44

The Explanation field becomes the in-panel description the attendee reads before they act.

Narrator · 02:22 – 02:44 And there is a description which is given to the client panel when they log in — "this is the first and crucial step of the matchmaking." Then you set when it is visible from, what is the due date and time, and to which attendees this applies — like Delegate, Delegate Speakers, and Partners.
Edit Step modal for COMPLETE YOUR SURVEY with the Explanation field populated with copy about onsite matchmaking
Explanation populated. For the "COMPLETE YOUR SURVEY" step, the Explanation reads: "This is crucial for onsite matchmaking and making sure you have the most relevant and successful experience possible. This also helps us match you to Agenda sessions, 1-1 appointments and networking. Submitting your Survey ensures you get maximum ROI from the Summit and helps us understand your needs."

For this step the dates are: Visible From 11/Sep/2016, Visible To 04/Nov/2016, Due Date 22/Sep/2016. The attendee-type toggles enable Delegate, Delegate / Speaker, and Spartners — i.e., this particular step is owned by those three groups; everyone else won't see it in their plan.

Tip
Use the Explanation to tell attendees why a step matters, not just what it is. The narrator's example does exactly that: framing the survey as the lever that drives matchmaking quality and ROI.

6. Per-Attendee-Type Page Scoping 02:44 – 03:13

A single step can show different client-panel pages to different attendee types.

Narrator · 02:44 – 03:13 From here you can select which sections are enabled — the rest, which are unticked, are unavailable to that participant type. So the partners can see the Survey and People, while the delegates cannot see the People section, and delegates can see Summit Info which is not available to the partners.

The bottom of the Edit Step modal contains the Select active pages for this step table. It lists every (Participant Type → Page) combination as a checkbox. Tick the pages that should be available to that participant type during this step; leave the rest unticked to hide them.

Scrolled view of Edit Step modal showing per-attendee-type page selection with different pages enabled per participant type
Per-attendee-type page selection. For the Survey step, the Delegate row shows Survey and Summit Info ticked, while My Profile, People, Tailor my Agenda, Itinerary, Program Submission are unticked. The Delegate / Speaker row below repeats the same control surface for that participant type.

How to read this table:

The asymmetry is the point
The narrator's example shows partners seeing the People page (so they can browse delegates), while delegates can't see People (no need to browse other delegates) — but delegates do get Summit Info (logistics) which partners don't. This kind of asymmetry is what makes the per-step / per-attendee-type / per-page scoping useful: every participant gets exactly the surface they need at the right moment, and nothing else.

7. Why This Matters 03:13 – 03:39

A well-built Event Plan turns a chaotic event into an automated, on-time pipeline.

Narrator · 03:13 – 03:39 By having all these steps you secure a good flow of information and you make sure all attendees are doing what they should be doing at a given time, in order for you to organize and deliver on the promises given for that event.

The Event Plan ties together everything from the previous modules:

Net effect: each participant sees a personalized, time-driven checklist. The platform takes care of opening the right pages, hiding the rest, and (optionally) chasing the participant before each due date.

8. Essence & Takeaways

The one-paragraph version

The Event Plan is a sequenced list of steps that every event runs through, anchored to dates. Each step has an action label, a rich-text Explanation shown to the attendee, a Visible From / Visible To window, a Due Date, an optional reminder announcement, and three layers of scoping: it applies to specific attendee types (10 toggles — Delegate, Partner, Speaker, Spartners, Staff, etc.), and within each attendee type it enables specific client-panel pages (My Profile, Survey, People, Tailor my Agenda, Itinerary, Summit Info, Program Submission, …). For a hosted-buyer event the canonical sequence is: delegates first declare needs and objectives → sponsors review and submit their preferences → matchmaking and meeting scheduling → on-site delivery. The Event Plan is what makes that sequence happen automatically rather than depending on the operations team chasing attendees by email.

Use this page as the basis for…
  • A standard Event Plan template you reuse across hosted-buyer events.
  • Onboarding for whoever sets up the timeline of a new event.
  • A reference for client conversations: "this is how we make sure your delegates and sponsors do what they need to, when they need to."
  • A QA checklist when cloning an event (Module 1) — every step's dates, attendee toggles and page-scoping must be re-validated for the new dates.

9. Full Transcript

Verbatim narration provided alongside the video, segmented by timestamp.

Show / hide transcript
00:00 – 00:20
As soon as you define the forms and as soon as you define your different attendee types, you are able to proceed to setting up the event plan or event automation for your event.
00:20 – 00:54
And the point there is that you would like to create all the steps and dates—important dates—for your event in order to have a suitable gameplay when some kind of participant would need to join in and what steps they need to do in order for a successful event.
00:54 – 01:26
So for example, if you are having—like in our case—a premium hosted buyer type of an event, you want to have a date when the delegates go in and they put their important details on what they want to see, what they want to attend, and their main business objectives.
01:26 – 01:43
Then after the given date when everything is completed, then you put your sponsors in and then based on the data provided they go on and do their submission, they do their preferences which, after that is finished, gives you a possibility with the data and all the preferences gathered to actually move on to the level of scheduling the meetings and delivering the meetings at the event.
01:43 – 02:00
So like in this example you can see the plan saying that the first one would be complete your profile, then access the onsite app, then complete your survey, then complete your company information and you can see that everything is attached with dates.
02:00 – 02:22
And if you go on a particular one you can see what that looks like. So one would be completion of the profile then access to the onsite app. There is the possibility to put explanations as you will see that afterwards when we log in as a attendee to that event. So you can see it says "complete your survey."
02:22 – 02:44
And there is a description which is given to the client panel when they log in—like this is the first and crucial step of the matchmaking. Then you set up when it is visible from that date, what is the due date and time, and then you can see to which attendees this applies to—like delegate, delegate speakers, and partners.
02:44 – 03:13
And from here you can select which sections are enabled, so the rest ones which are unticked are actually unavailable to that participant type. So you can see the partners can see the survey and people, while the delegates cannot see the people type and delegates can see summit info which is not available to the partners.
03:13 – 03:39
So by having all these steps you secure a good flow of information and also you make sure that all the attendees are doing what they should be doing at a given time in order for you to organize and deliver on the promises given for that event.