Federation
Share your public events with the getvnt.com listings and send the discovery traffic back to your own site. An administrator turns the network on for the whole install, getvnt.com approves it once, and each schedule then chooses whether to be listed.
Overview
Federation is an optional network that shares your public events with the listings on getvnt.com. Every listing links straight back to the event on your own site, so the discovery traffic comes to you rather than staying somewhere else.
It is available on any Getvnt install other than getvnt.com itself, whether you run a single schedule for yourself or a multi-tenant SaaS for customers. It is free, off by default, and can be switched off again at any time.
What gets shared. Public, upcoming events, online and in person. Events set to Draft, Internal or Unlisted are never sent, and neither are cancelled or password-protected ones, or events from schedules that have opted out or have not opted in.
Turning it on
- Sign in as an administrator and open Admin → System → Settings.
- Switch on Share events with the network.
- Add a contact email. It is shown to the team at getvnt.com who review your install, and used to email you their decision and the steps to get listed. It is never published. It starts filled in with your own address.
- Under Also list these schedules, untick any of your own schedules that should stay off the network. It lists the schedules you own that are still Not decided yet, already ticked, each with the number of its upcoming public events that would be shared.
- Save.
The page lists exactly which events would be shared, so you can see what leaves your install rather than having to trust a description of it. Once sharing is on, each event is marked Sent, Next sync, Needs an image or Not accepted, so an event that is not on the network yet says why.
Saving registers your install with the network and puts it in a review queue. Nothing is published until the team at getvnt.com approves it, which is a one-time step for the whole install. Events from the schedules you listed are sent ahead of that, so the reviewer can see them, and go live as soon as you are approved. The connection status at the top of the card shows where you stand: Pending, Approved (with how many of your events are on the network, and a link to see them), Suspended, or Not connected while a retry is due.
Once your install is approved you get a welcome email with the steps to get your events listed. A suspension, or approval again after one, gets a short email instead. If you add or change the contact email later, saving the card sends the new address to the network, so it can still reach you; if the network cannot be reached at that moment, the next hourly sync sends it.
Per-schedule control
Once the network is on for the install, each schedule gets its own setting under Settings on the schedule edit page, List this schedule on the network, with three choices: Not decided yet, Listed on the network and Not listed.
Every schedule starts at Not decided yet, which keeps its events off the network, and it is opted in when its owner, or anyone who can edit it, chooses Listed on the network, so a customer is never carried onto the network by your decision alone. That includes schedules that existed before the feature: an update reset them all to Not decided yet rather than enrolling them silently. The settings page lists your own schedules still waiting on that decision, with a checkbox each, and counts everyone else's, which is the usual reason the preview is shorter than you expected.
The setting only appears after you have enabled the network for the whole install, so on a multi-tenant deployment your customers never see an option you have not opted into.
Nobody has to go looking for it. Once the network is on, a schedule owner is asked on their dashboard, as soon as one of their schedules has an upcoming public event with an image: List on the network lists the schedules they tick, a few at a time, and every schedule it would list is named first. The same prompt appears on a schedule's own page for anyone who can edit that schedule. Dismissing it leaves the schedules at Not decided yet and is remembered per schedule, so a schedule created later is still asked. A schedule that is listed shows Listed on the network on its page, which links straight to the setting.
The checklist on the settings page and the dashboard prompt only ever offer schedules you own, and a schedule is only listed after someone who can edit it chooses to, so switching the network on for your install never lists a customer's schedule on its own.
On an event with more than one schedule attached, a talent and a venue for instance, any one of them choosing Not listed is enough to keep the event off the network: a listing names the venue, carries its address and links to an event page that names everyone on the bill, so nobody is published on someone else's say-so.
The pages the app creates for performers and venues that are not on your install take no part in that decision. With no owner to opt in, they never list an event themselves, and they do not count as opting out either, so naming an act that has not signed up does not keep an event off the network.
What a listing looks like
Listings appear in their own section on the getvnt.com browse page, badged with your site's address and filterable by country and language. Clicking one goes straight to the event on your site: there is no copy of the event page on getvnt.com, and the link is a normal followable link rather than a tracking redirect. It points at the event's address on your install itself, never at a custom domain a schedule may have.
An event needs a picture to be listed, matching the bar applied to getvnt.com's own events. That can be the event flyer or the profile image of a talent or venue schedule attached to it. An event without one is marked Needs an image in the settings preview, and goes out on the next run once it has one.
Recurring events are listed with their next three dates within 120 days, and times are shown in the event's own timezone rather than the visitor's.
Keeping it in sync
Sharing runs hourly on your existing scheduler, so it needs no extra setup beyond the cron entry Getvnt already requires. Edits appear within the hour, and an event that stops qualifying, because it went back to Draft, was made Internal or Unlisted, was cancelled, or the schedule listing it opted out or was deleted, is removed from the listings on the next run.
You can also run it by hand:
php artisan federation:pushThe settings page records the last successful sync, and shows a warning if the most recent attempt did not complete. Failures retry automatically. If the network stops recognising your install, for example because it was removed while it was waiting for review, the next run registers it again, and it goes back into review before its events are listed.
Schedules must be verified. Only schedules with a verified email address or phone number are shared, matching the rule getvnt.com applies to its own listings. On a multi-tenant install this is the usual reason a particular customer's events do not appear. The settings page shows how many schedules are being held back for this reason.
What is shared, and what is not
Only information that is already public on your event pages is sent. Rather than describe it, here is the complete list, field by field, and where each one ends up.
| What is sent | When | Where it is visible |
|---|---|---|
| Event name | Every listing | On the listing card |
| Next date, time and timezone | Every listing | On the listing card, in the event's own timezone |
| Link back to the event on your site | Every listing | The card's link. This is the whole point of federation |
| Picture | Every listing (an event without one is not listed) | Copied and stored by getvnt.com, shown on the card |
| Venue name and city | When the event has a venue | The card's location line |
| Short description, end time, further dates | Every listing | Sent, but not currently shown anywhere |
| Street address, postal code, coordinates, country | When the event has a venue | Not shown. The country drives the country filter |
| Language | Every listing | Not shown. Drives the language filter |
| Whether the event is online | Every listing | Decides the online label. The joining link itself is never sent |
| Schedule name, and the address of its public page | Every listing | Shown to the administrator who reviews your install, so they can see what they are approving |
| Your site address | Every request | The source badge on every card |
| Install name and contact email | When you join, when you change the contact email, and when the install reconnects | Shown to the reviewing administrator only. Never published |
| Version number | Every request | Shown to the reviewing administrator only, and used to pick the setup steps the network emails you. Never published |
| Your admin language | When you join, and when you change the contact email | Not shown. Decides the language of the emails the network sends you |
No attendee data, ticket data, sales, contact details or private fields ever leave your install. Neither does the joining link for an online event: the network is told only that there is one, because a label is all it has ever done with it.
Pictures are copied and stored by getvnt.com rather than loaded from your server, so visitors browsing the listings never make requests to your site until they click through.
Turning the setting off stops sharing immediately and takes your existing listings down with it: switching off tells the network to drop everything it holds from your install, there and then. If it cannot be reached at that moment, the request is retried on the next hourly run until it lands, unless you switch sharing back on first.