Automated Date Placments
Using the new Date Placements Feature

What it does:

The Date Placement feature allows you to automate all your date sponsorships or special mentions such as yartzeit, birthday, anniversary; classes; local holidays & special local events.

The system can automatically translate the date into the corresponding Hebrew date & choose the correct placement, taking care not to overwrite existing information such as halachic times and other calendar notations.  

Preparing your excel file list:

You can enter your dates into our system one by one; But if you have a large list, it's best if you upload the entire list together in a Microsfot Excel file.   To prepare an Excel file:

• Make sure to put the information in the first Sheet in the document.  
• Use the first row to enter column names, and give them names you will understand and remember
• Each row should have the following columns:
• Date: The secular date of the event, including the original year.  
• Type: The type of event this is.  This should be one of the following “Local Holiday”; “Event”; “Sponsosrhip”; “Yartzeit”; “Birthday”; “Anniversary”;  “Class”.
• Sponsorship text: The words you actually want printed on the calendar (usually the name of the person).
• Translate to Hebrew: This column should contain either “True” or “False” (do NOT leave anything empty).   “True” means that you’re asking the system to translate the date into the proper Hebrew Calendar date for the upcoming year.
• The sponsorship text column cannot be more than 50 characters long.  Try to keep it below 25-28 characters if possible.  It should NOT contain descriptions such as “birthday of “ or “in loving memory”.
• If you don’t know the exact year in which an secular-date event occurred, you can choose any year, as it won’t matter. 
• If you don’t know the exact Jewish year in which a Hebrew-date event occurred, you can choose any year to translate into the corresponding secular date.  The exception to this rule are any Adar based events, for which you must choose a similar type year (peshutah or meuberes).
• CMS users: Just run an occasion report and export to Excel. You are well on your way already -- just folllow the detailed instructions above for completing the preparation of your file.

Uploading your Excel File:

• Choose “Date Sponsorships” from online menu
• Click on “import Excel file”
• Click “browse” to choose the correct file on your computer
• Click “upload” to upload the file to our system
• If the system detects a sheet, it will load the column names (or if it can’t find any, the contents of the first row) into the four dropdown-boxes below.    Make sure the system detects all the columns in your file, then choose the correct column for each of the four pieces of information the system needs to detect
• Click on “import list”, at which point the system should load your entire list.

Once your list is uploaded:

• Click on “show unavailable dates” to check if there are any dates which our system will not be able to place automatically.
• By default, our system will show a little icon for a candle, birthday cake, and Chupah for yartzeit, birthday, and anniversary date respectfully.  This minimizes the clutter on the actual calendar.  You can choose to change it to display  “Happy birthday”, “In memory of” and “Happy anniversary” by changing the setting on top of the page.  
• Our system will automatically break up lines if they are longer than 28 characters.   If you wish to control where the text will be broken up, you use the “|” character as a line breaker (“shift”+”\”).
• Date of type “Local holiday” will show up at the bottom of the box; followed by “event”, and then Yartzeit, birthdays, and anniversaries.
• Local Holidays will have a different, somewhat larger font (Zurich, 9pt).  Events, as well, will have a different look (Berlin Sans, 9pt).  Birthdays, anniversaries, and yartzeits will be italicized depending on whether they represent the secular or the Hebrew date.
• Use the “create preview” button to see how the dates will look on your calendar.  When creating your proofs upon submission of your files to print, make sure to choose the option of including your date sponsorships.
• We take no responsibility for any errors or mistakes.  The responsibility for to double check everything that is printed on your calendar is always yours, and yours alone.
• This system is still new and evolving.  Errors? Problems? Suggestions? Please write to us immediately.

 Date last updated: 08/01/2011