Correct functioning of Countdown component

How To
1

Dear support,

For the beams.web.cern.ch page, we use the Countdown component to show the next BE Seminar. The events are coming from an Indico feed. What is the correct functioning of this component? Next week, there are two seminars, and we would expect it to show the first of those events (the next event), but it shows the last event of the events imported from Indico (which is correct according to the view configuration). How should we configure this component to show the next event? Is it possible?

Kind regards,
Katarina

2

Hello Katarina,

Regarding the configuration the functionality is the following:

  • The countdown shows only the future events (date_of_event >= current_date). If the event has “expired”, the event will not be shown.
  • You can have more than one queued events. Lets say for example that your view returns 3 events in the following order based on the Filter and Sort configuration that you have set:
  1. Event_1
  2. Event_2
  3. Event_3

Countdown for Event_1 will be displayed first. When its done, then it will display countdown for Event_2 only if the date of Event_2 is still in the future. The same logic applies for Event_3 etc.

Let me know if it is not clear.

Konstantinos

3

Also something that I forgot to mention is that you should set the view to display only one result, hence the first one in order.

40

This will not affect the view since when the first one will be finished, the second one will take its place etc.

Konstantinos

4

Dear Konstantinos,

What you describe is the behaviour that I expect of this component, however this is not the behaviour that I see from our usage. With two events in the queue, it shows the last event, and only because I am sorting to put this event first in the view (https://beams.web.cern.ch/admin/structure/views/view/indico_events_block_with_details?destination=/admin/structure/views). If I remove this sort, it shows the first event imported from Indico (which of course is in the past). This is why I am wondering how we should configure the filter and sort options for the view to get the expected behaviour.

Cheers,
Katarina

5

Hi again,

I solved it by filtering the view on the start date >= today. It was not clear to me if this should be managed by me or was managed by the component.

Thanks for your input,
Katarina

6

Hello Katarina,

The component does not display countdown for past events (since having negative countdown does not make sense) so yes you should filter out past events.

I will update the documentation to make it more clear.

Konstantinos

7

Hello,

On the same subject, indico feed, I have an issue with the appearance of the event: when I sign in I see the upcoming one, that is to say the event on 25 October, when I am not signed in, it shows the previous one, on 18 October.
Any suggestions why this occurs, please?

Many thanks for your help.

Efthymia

8

Hello Efthymia,

I checked your website and I see the event of 25 both when I am logged in and when I am not. Try to clear the caches of yours browser to see if it fixes the issue.

Konstantinos

9

Many thanks for your fast reply, Konstantine.
However, I checked with 2 of my colleagues and they had the same issue.

I will follow your advice and clear the caches of the browser.

Efthymia