We are rather upset as we are launching our website with Jomsocial very soon. We have now realised that there are a number of major issues with Jomsocial regarding Private events, which were not clear to us, even though we have been implementing Jomsocial for a while.

Please can you confirm if the following issues are correct features of Jomsocial?

1) Private events are NOT private at all, as they appear in All Events and the Events module for everyone in the community to see. (This is for personal private events which are not created within a group).

For example, if I want to have a birthday party and invite 10 friends from my Jomsocial community, why would I want this event to appear in All Events for the whole community? This is embarrassing for me, because the people who I did not invite now see the event! What you mean by private event is only 'need invitation' or 'attending this event is moderated', not that it is actually Private.

This is ridiculous! It is a major requirement of our website that people can create totally private parties, which can only be seen by the people invited. No-one else should be able to see any record of this event, not in profiles, events, activity streams or anywhere else.

Therefore I think you need to have 3 types of events: public events, moderated events (eg need invitation, but can be viewed by all - this is what you currently call private), and then you need to create a new type of totally private events - for individuals to create private parties, which no-one else can see. THIS IS VERY URGENT! I can see that other people have asked on this forum for this before. We are not the only community who needs this feature!

2) Private group events are not shown in Event module or events list. Is it correct that the events don't show on the walls of the members, they only appear when they visit the group page.

Why wouldn't you display an event from a private group to members on their own Home page? We want an Events module which shows every event I am invited to, private or public. This is what we assumed it was! People are in a lot of groups - they can't visit every group page every time they visit the site to see if there is an event.

3) Private group events can be seen on Activity Stream and thus non-members are available to view the Event (they can see see details but not full guest list and can't attend, but they can see existence of event). Again - these events are private for a private group. For instance a group which is the club committee might wish to have a private event. Why does everyone else have to see this? The group is private, so we do not want other people to see the event!

4) Also, I have just read that "group events won't show unless you ALLOW members to CREATE group events...." is this correct? This is also strange! Sometimes you won't want members to create events, but you want them to see them.

PLEASE JOMSOCIAL - THESE ARE ALL MAJOR FLAWS IN YOUR SITE DEVELOPMENT REGARDING EVENTS! please can you fix 1) at least. A private personal party has to be completely private!

Now we are considering delaying the launch of our website because of this, and we are very upset!

Thank you for any advice you can give!

Hi Susan,

1) Private events are NOT private at all, as they appear in All Events and the Events module for everyone in the community to see. (This is for personal private events which are not created within a group).

The option to "Set event as private" is probably not the best wording that could be used, but it is making the event private by these means. The event is private because you cannot attend the event unless you have been invited, Until you are invited you cannot see the stream for the event or anything else on the recent activities until you are attending. You are correct in saying it should say "Make event invite only" and this can easily be changed in the language overides section of joomla admin. At the moment it is working as designed and you could add a feature request in the uservoice if you wanted to request any new features for this.

2) Private group events are not shown in Event module or events list. Is it correct that the events don't show on the walls of the members, they only appear when they visit the group page.

If an event is created in a private group it is not shown anywhere on the site other than in the group, once a member of the group selects to attend the event, then it shows in the my events menu, the other thing to remember is when a new event is created then the group members will get notifications, The same priniple applies on facebook the only way to keep updated if you have a lot of groups and pages is by the notifications you receive.

3) Private group events can be seen on Activity Stream
Unless your site has a bug on it a private group event does not show up on a stream unless 1. you are a member of the group or 2. you are logged in as an administrator or super admin these two ACL groups can see everything. Please check this with a standard registered user.

4) Also, I have just read that "group events won't show unless you ALLOW members to CREATE group events...." is this correct? This is also strange! Sometimes you won't want members to create events, but you want them to see them.

"group events won't show" this means the group events button not the group events themselves

If you have enabled events in groups in jomsocial admin but untick allow members to create events then they cannot create an event in a group , they can still see the events just not create it, This can then be turned on or off in the local groups settings or if you make a group member an admin then they can create a group regardless of that setting .

I understand this is not the reply you were hoping for but this is not functionality that would be changed in this version. To make the events totally hidden and not show anywhere unless you are invited is a modification to the core of the privacy system in the component and not a small change.

I am finishing up my shift now so let me talk with a few of the developers tomorrow to see if there are any work arounds anyone can come up with and i will reply again tomorrow

Thanks Paul - we would REALLY appreciate a fix to 1). I think a lot of other people will be happy if you can do that too!

Regarding 2), once you have accepted an invitation to a private group event, it seems silly that it won't appear in the All Events Module, because that should be showing All Events available to you?

Also, it would be good if the Events Module had a choice at the top between "All Events' and 'My Events', a bit like the Friends module shows Latest / Featured etc.

Really hoping you can come up with a solution to the private party problem......our members won't use our site if non-group events can't be kept completely private.

Any update on this? Thanks very much!

Hi Susan,

Sorry for the slow reply it took a little bit to work out the smallest way to make the change so it is easy for you to maintain. I have done it as overides so it wont be lost in minor releases. Do you want me to make the change for you? if so i need FTP access added to this post by pressing edit on your first post and adding the details if you want to make the code changes yourself let me know and i will write list the code to change here.

The hack changes it to work as follows
1. User 1 creates a new event and makes it private (invitation only)
2. when user 2 logs in and goes to the all events page they only see a list of events that are public (private event option not selected)
3. User 1 logs in and invites user 2 to the private event
4 User 2 logs in and now in the all events list he sees the private event and it also shows in the my events list
5. The user then selects to addend or not attend the event

This then makes a private event Private :)

The events module i am still working on at the moment

Thanks SO MUCH Paul - we are checking with our developer whether you or he should do the change - he is busy on something else. We are really grateful.

I am assuming that this means that no-one who is not invited can see this private party anywhere - eg not on the profile of the person holding the party, not on the activity stream, even if they are Friends?

It would be great if you are able to change the Events Module to show My Events and All Events as option (with My Events as default!)

Thank you very much

Hi Susan,

Yes i have made the code check if 1. the event is private and 2. if you are attending, if you are not attending then it displays nothing, if you go to the all events page and there is 10 private events in the site and you are only attending 2 then you will only see 2 events, and any public events. if someone has invited you into an event it then shows in the my events page, if you accepts the invitations then you see the event everywhere. if you decline then it disappears from your view again. I'm sure the module wont be a problem to do either.

let me know how you want the changes

have a good day

Hi Paul,

We have worked out where every type of Event appears on Jomsocial and I have summarised it in the attached table, as we could not find a summary anywhere. (By the way the Jomsocial documentation at documentation.jomsocial.com/wiki/My_Events is factually incorrect in several instances and does not give this level of detail on where Events actually appear on the site, which caused confusion!). Please could you confirm that I have made the correct assumptions about where events are currently displayed?

We think there will be lots of users who will have the same requirements as us, as we can't be the only community where people have birthday parties and private events! Having looked at everything in detail this is what we require for our site:

1. Personal (non-group) private events should not appear in anyone's All Events.
(Personal private Events should only be visible to Event Creator and people invited, in their 'My Events' and 'Pending invitations')
1a. ie Personal private events should NOT appear in All Events of Event Admin or people attending, as we think it will confuse people about whether or not other people can see it (this is a slight variation to the fix you already wrote).
1b. & Personal private events must not even appear on profile of Event Admin or people invited, when viewed by non-invited people
2. Personal private events should have Private on event Avatar, so that Event Admin and invited members can see it is Private.
3. All events in MY groups (public and private) should appear as invitations in My Events and Pending Invitations before I reply, like other Invitations do
4. All events in my private groups should appear in MY own 'All Events', even if not published to whole community, so I see that they are on when searching for a date to create another event.
5. Private group events should have tick-box option for Event Admin to choose to display event to public community calendar for non-group members to see so that other events are arranged to clash (because many members of one group could be members of another group which is arranging an event).
6. Private group event ideally needs 'Private' avatar label if published to community.
7. Group name should be automatically displayed for group events (like location is) in Event lists, Event modules, Activity Stream notifications, so people can see which group is inviting them to an event, as otherwise you have to actually enter the event to see which group it is.

I am really hoping you can help with these requirements. I hope you can see the logic in having these options! it will make Jomsocial a better product!

Thank you very much indeed for your help.

Hi Susan,

We are happy to give you small snippets of code or minor changes to tweek things in our product when it is possible and support staff have the time. The specification you list below are modifications that are not covered by our support. You would need to hire a developer and discuss any changes / modifications to our product with them. We would not be able to make these changes for you.

We don't have any plans in the next few releases to make changes to the events system. We have a uservoice @ uservoice.jomsocial.com where you are welcome to add your ideas and other users can vote on it.

Hi Paul,

OK, I agree that there is a lot in that list of requirements! Sorry!
So please can we return to our original support discussion?

Firstly, thanks so much for working out a solution to the problem that private events are not actually private - that is great as it is absolutely essential for our site. I'm really hoping you could modify your solution step 4 slightly so that the event does not appear in 'my' All Events at all, but only in My Events.......? When I wrote the original support request I did not mean for the private personal events to appear in All Events actually. For us private personal events are not community events, and they should only only appear in My Events and Pending Invitations (we think that members will worry that their event can be seen by others if it appears in their All Events). Thanks so much. It would be great if you could give us the code for the solution?

You also mentioned in your reply that it shouldn't be a problem for you to do an Events Module which showed My Events with all events that I am invited to (i.e. both group and non-group/personal event invitations). I am hoping you can still help with this My Events Module for us, as we were really pleased you could do it...?

Linked to how you would do that 'My Events Module' is Group events and where they are displayed. Currently an Event in a group it won't appear in group members My Events or Pending Invitations until they have said yes. This has caused a lot of confusion amongst the group of users testing our new site - because they cannot understand why when you invite someone to an Event in a Group it isn't treated in the same way as a non-group invitation and show up in My Events and Pending Events (as well as in their All Events). This is both for private and open Groups.

So in reality what we are asking is that a) the My Events page displays all of your group invitations and personal invitations until you say No, (when they would disappear), b) that Pending Invitations shows all Group and personal invitations until you reply, c) that when we display the Events Module on the Home Page the Module shows this 'new' All MY Events' list rather than All Events in the community, and d) ideally that my private group events appear in my All Events too. Please could you help us with this.....? We would be so grateful! Having spent so long getting our site set up we have been very stressed that Jomsocial doesn't do what we expected it to do.

Thank you very much for your help.......

Dear Paul, I didn't hear back from you after my last message.....

Hope you can help with my reduced request....
Thanks a lot

Hi Susan,

Sorry for the late reply, i have spoken to the developers and they have looked at the changes i was suggesting. This would not be a solution for private events as there are many other pages that if you know the direct URL you would be able to access the private event and potentially see details that the user thinks are private. So it then becomes a security issue. Due to these implications i am not able to provide a small hack to fix the issue because it would require major work to make these changes and it is not something that is on our planning in the near future. We are looking at restricting details shown to non attendees but this is not anything to do with hiding events in lists

Dear Paul,

Oh no! This is a real disappointment. I am trying to think of a solution, as we desperately need this:

What about if we hid 'Events' from showing on any profiles and hid private events from Activity Streams? We don't need our profiles to show Events - it is not relevant for us. Please could you ask your developers whether 1) if we hid Events from profiles and 2) also prevented private Events from showing on Activity Stream of people who aren't invited and 3) used your hack, then would we achieve the Events being private? if not, please could you let me know the other places that you think people could access the Event?

Please could you also return to the second half of my message #94358 about 'My Events' displaying all group events I am invited to, even when I haven't replied, and the module we discussed. As almost all of our groups are private it makes the current My Events confusing, because the group events don't appear in All Events or My events.

Thanks so much for trying to help....

Hi Susan,

The events system can be accessed from search pages, expired events, event page itself.. just few on top of my head. But there are many more places that you can drill down to get to events. Making a change to the events system at first looks reasonably simple but once i discussed this with the developers it became clear the reasons why we cannot make small changes as it is not that simple. Currently it is working as designed. I understand that the design does not fit your site but thisis the events system in Jomsocial. My only advice from here is to hire a developer to make the customization so it works how you want it to.

I'm sorry but there is nothing more i can do