Places
What are "Places"?
The Places feature serves two purposes. The first is it allows offices to maintain their own operating hours, which can then be displayed on the website through the Places Info component. The second purpose is that it allows entities that are not separate offices to have contact information and hours, such as Starbucks or the Math & Science Resource Center.
Requesting New Places
New places must be set up by Web Communications. The new place request form is located on the Website Services page at www.odu.edu/webservices/cq. Once your place is set up, you will see a new Places page under the appropriate parent page and then the individual place(s) as child page(s) under the Places page.
It is important that you do not link to the Places page or any of the individual places pages. Additionally, no content should be placed on the Places page other than what was originally on there.
Using a Place Page
Navigate to your place page and open it for editing. You will see a page with a places component and a calendar:
Place Component
Your place component contains the metadata about your place, including its location, associated image, tags and standard hours of operation.
Right-click on the Place component to bring up the Place properties dialog →
Basic Tab
- Location Code - Leave this blank unless it is pre-populated.
- Short Name - If your place's name is particularly long, enter an abbreviated name here.
- Full Name - Enter the full proper name of your place here.
- Tags - Tag your place with the required tags:
- Organizational Unit - add your organizational unit tag to the place
- University Building - add the building in which your place is located as a tag
- Campus - Select the appropriate campus from the dropdown.
- Phone - Enter your place's phone # here, if applicable.
- Home Department - Enter the home department for your place here. You will want your home department entries to be consistent if a department has more than one place.
Office Hours
This is where you will enter your regular operating hours. If your place is open 8-5 Monday through Friday during the fall and spring semesters, but only open 8-3 during the summer, enter the 8-5 (08:00-17:00) here.
Each day is a multi-select, so if your office closes for lunch, you can add two entries for each day, for example:
- 08:00-12:00
- 13:00-17:00
Details
- Room - Enter the specific room number or name within the building here. Do not enter the building name here.
- Address - Only enter the street address here if it is crucial to finding your place (for example, on Monarch Way). No buildings in the core of campus require an address.
- Short Description - Add an optional quick detail about your place here (typically not used).
- Website - Enter the website for your place here. It must be in the format of a CQ link (/...).
- Details - You can enter full details about your place here. Simple text only (same rules as the Text component)
- Payment - If your place conducts transactions, you can add the payment types accepted (or you can add "Free").
Image
This tab allows you to add an image to be associated with your place that can be surfaced through the Places Info component. Find your chosen image in the Finder and drag it into the dropzone inside the dialog. Just like the Image tab in Page Properties, please crop this image to landscape for consistency.
Exceptions Calendar
After you establish your standard operating hours in the Place component, you can then populate the exceptions calendar with any exceptions.
Changing Hours
Any hours you enter on a particular day will override your standard hours. To add special hours, click on the day and the Create Event dialog will open →
- The only fields you'll edit are the From time and the To time.
- See the section on repeating events for setting recurrence.
- Do not enter any titles, description or link.
- Click Save to set the exception.
Style Guide/Best Practices Addendum
For offices, college, departments with existing directory pages, the Places Info component must be used in conjunction with the Contact Info component. It may not be used in place of the Contact Info component.
Closing on a Day that the Place is Typically Open
- Click on the day on the exceptions calendar to bring up the Create event dialog.
- Make sure "All day" is checked beside the From/To fields.
- In the Tags field, type "Closed" - Some choices will appear. Be sure to only select the Calendar: Hours / Closed tag from the choices:
- Click Save
- The place will now show as closed on that day.
Setting Up Recurring Exceptions (Hours Changes or Closings)
- Click on the first day of the recurring exception to bring up the Create event dialog.
- For closings, select "All Day." For change in hours, set the From and To hours - do not change the dates.
- Select the type of recurrence in the Repeats dropdown.
- Unlike the Calendar system (for posting events), if you have different hours Monday through Friday for a period of several weeks, you can set your recurrence to daily through the end and remove individual dates (see below)
- Set any options for ending your recurrence.
- Click Save.
Removing or Editing Part of a Recurring Exception
- Click on the green bar within the day of the exception you wish to edit/remove. You will get the Edit event dialog.
- To edit the occurrence, set the hours/closing to whatever is necessary and click Save. You will get the following:
Select "Only this instance."
- To delete the occurrence, click the Delete button at the bottom of the dialog. You will get the following:
Select "Only this instance."
- Note: Once you select "Only this instance," it becomes its own entity and will no longer be editable as part of the series.
When you are done setting up your place, be sure to Activate the page.
Surfacing Place Information (Places Info component)
The Places Info component allows you to display the contact information for a place (different from an office, department or college that already has a directory page - see inset) and/or to display the hours for any office.
The Places Info component can be found in the "Lists" subsection of the components tab in your sidekick.
There are three options for displaying place information:
- Stacked in the main content area*
- Full contact information in the sidebar*
- Show hours only
*these options not to be used for offices, departments and colleges that have full directory pages
Stacked (in the main content area)
The stacked list of places is useful for showcasing multiple places or to drive users to your place page within the main body of your webpage. Here is an example of the stacked view:
- Right-click on the blank Places Info component and choose Edit. You will see the properties for the Places Info:
- Set your Layout to "Stacked" and your style to "Location Info (Full)"
- Check the "Include Picture" checkbox
- In the Include Hours field, choose either "Week" or "Today" (see explanation under "Include Hours")
- Build your list using Fixed List. Add 1 or more items and point to the places page for your place, for example: /yourunit/places/my-place
Full Contact Information in the Sidebar
Each place should have its own separate page of information about it elsewhere on the website. On that page, you can use the Places Info component in conjunction with a section, header overlay and heading to create the contact for that page.
- Drag the Places Info component into your sidebar and right-click and choose Edit to bring up the properties.
- Set your Layout to "Sidebar" and your style to "Location Info (Full)"
- If you wish to include the picture, check "Include Picture."
- In the Include Hours field, choose either "Week" or "Today"
- Build your list using Fixed List. Add an item and enter the CQ path for your place: /yourunit/places/my-place
If you want to create the traditional page contact, you will need to build it →
- Create a section in your sidebar. Click Edit on the Section Start control bar and set the Layout to "Padded Teaser"
- Drag a Header Overlay component into your section
- Drag a Heading component between Header Start and Header End
- Right-click the Heading component and choose Edit
- Enter "Contact" in the heading field and set the Type to Extra Large (h1)
- Drag a Places Info component between Header End and Section End
- Set your Places Info component as above but do not check the Include Picture box
Hours
You can choose to show only the hours for a place. This is the only option for places that have matching full directory pages (offices, departments, colleges, etc.). Your hours will appear as:
- Drag the Places Info component onto the page where you would like to place the hours and right-click and choose Edit to bring up the properties.
- Set your Layout to "Sidebar" (regardless of location) and Style to "Hours"
- Set your Include Hours field to either "Week" or "Today"
- Build your list using Fixed List. Add an item and enter the CQ path for your place: /yourunit/places/my-place
Include Hours: Week vs. Today
You can have the Places Info component display the hours for the next seven days (Week) or just today's hours (Today). The "Today's Hours" updates dynamically, so there is no need to update the page(s) each day.
You can use multiple instances of the Places Info component to create something like the inset. The top is a Places Info with Location Info (Full) and no picture or hours. The second is a Places Info component with "Hours" style and include hours of "Week." Then another Header Overlay component and then the Place Info component with "Hours" style and include hours of "Today."