Knowledge Base

Every 'Session' in your calendar will have an underlying 'Session Template'.

Typically, a session is quite an empty thing, in that it doesn't need to hold a lot of information about itself. All a session needs to know is..
a) which day it's on
b) which template it uses to get its information from
c) whether it has any differences to the template, which usually it won't.

Let's have a look at the diagram below, where we have a template on the left, and to the right we have four sessions which are using that template.

The first two sessions are completely normal, in that there are no differences to the template. They use all of the information from the template.

The third session, however, needs to start a little later than normal, so it's going to use all of the information from the template, but override the Start Time and End Time, which is why they appear orange (think "Orange equals Override").

The fourth session is a normal one - it will use all of the information from the template.

Changes to a Template

Any changes to a template will reflect on the sessions using that template (remember, sessions are pretty empty themselves).

So, in the example above, if we changed the Max. Capacity from 15 to 20 in the template, all of the sessions would then have a capacity of 20.

If we changed the Start Time from 10:00 to 10:05, all of the sessions would then have a start time of 10:05 except the third session which is overriding the template's value, and would remain at 10:15.

Read the article on editing a template for more specific information on how to make changes.

Templates Used for Sessions Within a Term

When a template has been automatically created by adding sessions to a term group, it will be fairly empty itself, as the term group contains most of the overall information (i.e. Price, Max. Capacity, Offers, Waiting List).

Advanced Understanding

A template might not need to hold information for a field. For example, if every session has a different Venue each week (i.e. orienteering or bike riding), the Venue field in the template could remain blank, and so when adding each session in the calendar you would choose the specific Venue for that Session. In this scenario, as you are not technically overriding a value in the template (because it was blank), the field would not be shown as an override (it wouldn't appear orange).