If you looking for instructions on how to setup your local event on Sessionize to integrate your schedule with the Global Azure agenda available at https://globalazure.net you are in the right place. The objective is to promote through a single point your local community speakers and content, showing what is happening around the world during the #GlobalAzure event. We also want to allow each local organizer to manage its own event and its own premises. Your event, your rules. We asked some communities, we asked the folks at Sessionize, and after some whiteboard sessions, we implemented what somebody called "Sessionize event federation". Sounds funny right?

First, thanks to Sessionize to support community events for free around the world. Without their support this would be harder to manage and probably impossible to implement with community resources. If you haven't tried it yet I would recommend taking a look and give it a try. Managing all the details related to the event planning, call for speakers, communications and agenda is super easy and experience based. And what makes it super-powerful is the API/Embed feature, allowing you to embed the agenda in your website or allowing us to integrate your local event in our global schedule.

Second, for 2023 we have done some minor changes on how local event organizers integrate their events into the Global Azure website. We will be using a GitHub repository with all the community information, allowing not only to integrate the agenda, but also supporting the addition of a community webpage with all the information. This year there is a new field on the template called "SessionizeEventName" where you can put the address of your CfP or just the event name (check the README.md in the repo for more info).

How? Let's go into the details.

The diagram above shows what we will be integrating on this Global Azure 2023 edition. We will be supporting local communities around the world by promoting their local events on the Global Agenda. This includes all the accepted session details on each local event, the speaker information, the schedule plus other information such as the community name, logo and URL, that will be shown on the Global website in the session details and in the community area.

We also understand that there are people not affiliated to any local community at this moment, and we wanted to continue supporting them by creating new connections with local nearby communities. Please check the Communities page to find a nearby location and check for the open Call for Speakers.

I am a local organizer. How should I setup my Sessionize event?

Let's go to the details. If you are a local organizer, please ensure you follow these steps when setting up Sessionize.

Session Fields

To propagate the session information, we will require at least three mandatory fields:

• "SessionURL": this will be session URL where the visitors going to the global website will be redirected to. Can be a link to a Live Stream, a recorded session on YouTube, a link to a Teams Meeting, a Twitch channel, or whatever working URL. We encourage you to use the direct link to the media avoiding visitors to going to a website first to find more info about the session. Remember we will promote your website with the Community Logo and URLs together with the session details. We also understand that this URL could not be setup yet (i.e. because you need to upload the recording first to YouTube to obtain the link) so in that case, we will be using your community URL instead until that field appears filled. Please, remember to update the SessionURL field before the event date.
• "Language": this is a global event with people talking in a lot of different languages, and we need to allow the visitors to filter the sessions by a language they can understand. Again, remember that "Internal Fields" are your friends in the case you didn't add this field to your C4P.
• "Track": we need to allow visitors to filter sessions by theme, so please include a track field. Otherwise, the session will appear under "Others" category on the global website session catalog. We'll keep an eye on what is coming on this field from your side to map with the values we setup on the global website (tip: you can see our proposals on the global C4P)

NOTE: we will use case insensitive matching when parsing these field names.

The example blow illustrates the setup of these fields:

API endpoint

Once you have setup the fields, we need an API endpoint to pull the data from your local event. To create an API endpoint, follow these steps:

1. On Sessionize website select your local event and click on the "API / Embed" menu on the left
2. Under the "Available API Endpoints" click on the "Create new endpoint" button
3. Give it a name (i.e. "Global Azure Federation") and select the "JSON (advanced)" format
4. In the "Include sessions" dropdown, choose which sessions you want to allow appearing on the global website (i.e. "Accepted and Informed")
5. On the Advanced Options, on the "Unscheduled sessions" dropdown, choose "Do not include unscheduled sessions (default)". We need the sessions to be scheduled on the Sessionize scheduler between April 15^th and April 17^th so they can be listed on the global website
6. On the options to the right, make sure the "Use UTC timezone for scheduled" is checked. This will help us on translating the session start time on the global website to the local time
7. On the "Sessions" fields, ensure the following fields are checked:
   1. Session title
   2. Session description
   3. Session speakers
   4. Track
   5. Language
   6. SessionURL
8. On the "Speaker" fields, ensure the following fields are checked:
   1. Speaker name
   2. Speaker photo
   3. Speaker tagline
   4. Speaker biography
   5. Speaker's sessions
   6. Social networks (check the ones you want to push to the global website)

The screenshots below show an example of all the required API endpoint setup:

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Once setup, you will get your API ID on the API endpoints page, is 8-character length string. Write down that API ID because you will be using it later.

Testing your API endpoint

Once you setup your API endpoint, you can go to the API / Embed section of your Sessionize event and test what is shown.

NOTE: We will be pulling the data from the "Sessions List" and "Speakers List" API endpoint URLs, so based on the configuration above, you need first to include the sessions in a schedule using the Schedule Builder section on Sessionize.

• Sessions List URL: test the results by browsing https://sessionize.com/api/v2/<YOUR-API-ID-HERE>/view/Sessions
• Speakers List URL: test the results by browsing https://sessionize.com/api/v2/<YOUR-API-ID-HERE>/view/Speakers

When browsing the Sessions List URL:

• ensure the result is in JSON format (if not, review the settings mentioned in the previous section)
• ensure the "startsAt" and "endsAt" are populated with date values between May 11^th and May 13^th

Integrating your API ID in the Global Azure website

To sync your schedule with the global agenda, we have dome some changes to support not only your local event agenda integration, but also allowing you to tell the world more details about your community by doing a pull request on our GitHub Community repository. Basically you need to fork the repo, include your community details including your Sessionize API Id and do a pull request so we can include it in our Global Azure website. 

Please, follow the instructions indicated on the README.md

After doing this, we will process your pull request and verify that your event is in correctly setup and include it in the automatic sync process. This will take one or two days, and we will send you a confirmation with a message on the pull request once we have added it to the global website. This manual check will be done only once, but will periodically revisit the agenda to verify that the content complies with the Global Azure Code of Conduct.

We hope this effort increases the visibility of your local community and allow your speakers to reach a worldwide audience. If you have any feedback or find any trouble, please send us an e-mail to global@globalazure.net

 

Made with love,

Your Global Azure Admin team

 

FAQs

Q: The session field names are case sensitive?

A: No. You can, for example, specify "SessionURL" or "SessionUrl" as field name. We will use case insensitive matching when parsing the json returned by the Sessionize API.

Q: I had already setup my Sessionize event and some session fields such as the Language, Track, Level or SessionURL were not included or included with other field name. Do I need to change the field names?

A: No, but send an e-mail to global@globalazure.net so we can treat your session field names as synonyms allowing us to parse your Sessionize event data. Also note that you can create additional fields and as organizer, fill up the values on already submitted sessions. Also choosing Internal Fields (not visible to speakers) can help you on managing your event under your premises.

Q: But I'm not using Sessionize to manage my event. Is there any other way to push my sessions to the global website?

A: No on this edition. This time we are supporting Sessionize integration because allows you to change the global agenda details immediately. Even if you are using other platform for managing your event, you can create a copy of your final schedule on a Sessionize event making this integration simple. I hope you understand the effort we are doing and how difficult is to manage more than 300 locations over the world.