Contributors > Schedule Element

We have found that the schedule/personalize element feature has three key practical uses:

1. Scheduling. You can schedule content to start and end at any given date and time. This is useful for information to be posted when you are away, need a midnight posting, or information to change at a deadline.
   
   
2. Hide an element. You can hide content instead of deleting and reposting it later. You make it readable only to your group, such as an administrative internal note. As a site administrator, you will still see the content when you are logged into the authoring server, but other users won’t.
   
   
3. Navigation bar. The schedule element is useful in managing navigation bars on subsites.
   

Step 1 – Name Your Element(s)

Before you enable scheduling … it is a good idea to name your elements.  Click on each element and then choose the ‘Name’ option listed under ‘more.’ Enter a unique name without spaces or special characters (letter of the alphabet or numerals only).

Step 2 – Enable

Scheduling is managed within a container. From the container square icon, select ‘Layout’ and check the box to permit scheduling and personalization of contained elements “Enable scheduling for elements”

Now everything within the container can be scheduled. By default all elements within the container will display until you alter the criteria.

Step 3 – Schedule

In the container, select ‘Criteria’ ... the ‘Edit Rendering Criteria’ box will appear (see example at the right). 

Click on the pencil icon and select “Edit scheduling properties.” A “Schedule/Personalize Element” box will appear:

The Scheduled element, allows for the dynamic rendering of content to be scheduled or personalized. Here are a few examples of how elements can be scheduled.

• Date Range/Schedule – Allows you to choose specific dates and times. You must choose an end date and time.
  
  
• Groups – You might want to hide an element temporarily from general users or post a reminder message to only display to your group membership when they are in the authoring mode.
  
  
• SubSites – Useful, for example, for a second level navigational bar specific to departments or subsites. The top-level tool bar is consistent across all sites while the secondary tool bar is displayed based on the subsite.
  

Several other schedule criteria, such as Page Categories, SubSite Levels, Weekdays, Specific times, Browsers and other targets, and Variable Comparison, will hardly ever be of use to most site administrators.

Step 4 –  Review

In the container, select ‘Set Visibility’ to see any particular elements that are not scheduled to show in the read mode. You usually can edit the element once it is visible in the edit mode.

Step 5 –  Adding, Moving or Deleting Elements

In order to add, move, or delete scheduled elements,
you will need to select ‘Criteria’ in the container.

To add an element, click the gray ghost text "Click here to add new schedule entry." Sometimes you also can insert  a new element in the container directly, but note that the you will still have to go into the Criteria function to finish the scheduling process.

For moving or deleting elements you must be in the Criteria function.
Similar to scheduling the element, click on the pencil icon and select move or delete. This function also allows you to insert an element in the middle of many elements and do not want to repeatedly click the move button for up or down.