BK-Event

1. Introduction

This manual explains, step by step, how the BK-Event tool is used in everyday practice. It is written for everyone who works with the system – from the webmaster to a staff member on site – explicitly including readers who don't otherwise consider themselves especially comfortable with computers and websites. Which of the described features you can see or use depends on the role assigned to you (see Chapter 4).

This manual is deliberately written in great detail: every action is described as a numbered, step-by-step set of instructions ("1. Click on … 2. A page opens … 3. Enter …"), and technical terms are either explained directly in the text or can be looked up in the glossary in Chapter 2. So it's perfectly fine if you don't understand everything right away, or if you need to read a chapter twice – that's exactly what this manual is for. If something is still unclear, simply ask your Event Manager or the Webmaster – nobody expects you to know this manual by heart.

The tool is used through a normal web browser (e.g. Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge) – on a computer just as well as on a tablet or smartphone. No installation is required: you don't need to download or set up anything on your device, you simply open a web address, just as you would for any other website.

All screenshots in this manual are taken from the "Blue Knights Sandbox Convention" – an internal test event set up specifically so that all processes (registration, accommodation, check-in) can be tried out safely before they are used for a real event. The names, addresses and other data visible there are test/sample data, not real participant data.

The diagram below gives a bird's-eye view of the whole process, from an Event Manager requesting an event through to a participant's check-in on site. Each of its nine steps is covered in detail in the chapters that follow.

2. How to read this manual (basic concepts)

This chapter explains some very basic terms related to browsers and websites that come up again and again throughout the rest of the manual. If you're already familiar with these terms, feel free to skip this chapter and continue with Chapter 3.

3. Getting started: Signing in & your password

3.1 Signing in (Login)

Here's how to sign in to the tool, whether for the first time or again:

1. Open your browser (e.g. Chrome or Safari).
2. Open the tool's login page by entering the web address you received from the webmaster.
3. Click into the "Email" field and type in your email address.
4. Click into the "Password" field and type in your password.
5. Click the "Sign In" button.

You will then be taken automatically to the Event Overview (see Chapter 5).

3.2 Your first access: the invitation email

When a webmaster creates a new user account for you, you automatically receive an email with the subject "Welcome to BK-Event - Set Your Password". It contains a link that lets you set your own personal password.

1. Open the "Welcome to BK-Event - Set Your Password" email in your email program.
2. Click the link in the email. A page opens where you can set a new password.
3. Enter a password of your choice (and, if asked, enter it a second time to confirm).
4. Click the button to confirm/save it.
5. Then sign in as described in 3.1, using your email address and the password you just set.

3.3 Forgotten password

If you've forgotten your password, click the "Forgot password?" link on the login page. Then:

1. Enter your email address.
2. Click the corresponding submit button.
3. You will then receive an email with a link that lets you set a new password.
4. Open this email, click the link, and set a new password.

For security reasons, this link is only valid for a short time (one hour) – if it no longer works, simply request a new one via "Forgot password?".

3.4 Changing your password proactively

You can also change your own password at any time, without having forgotten it – see Chapter 17 "My Profile".

4. Roles and permissions at a glance

BK-Event has four different roles. Your role determines which sections you can see and what you're allowed to do in them. You can check your own role at any time in the bottom left of the screen, next to your name.

Your name and current role (e.g. "WEBMASTER") are always shown in the bottom left of the tool. If you have questions about your permissions, contact your Event Manager or the Webmaster.

Any page you don't have permission for is either not shown in your navigation at all (e.g. "User Management" and "Audit Log" are visible only to webmasters), or shows you its content in read-only form, without any editing buttons.

5. The Event Overview (list of all events)

After logging in, you first see a list of all the events you have access to (as a webmaster: all of the club's events). This list is the starting point for everything else – from here you open the event you want to work on.

Each event shows its title, date range, chapter and status. The status can be one of the following:

• Draft – the event is still being planned and is not yet visible to participants.
• Registration Open – public registration is open.
• Registration Closed – registration has been closed.
• Archived – the event has concluded and been archived.

To open an event:

1. Find the row for the event you want in the list.
2. Click the "Open" button at the far right of that row.

Webmasters also see a "+ Create New Event" button for creating a new event, as well as a "Delete" button to permanently delete an event (see the warning in Chapter 15).

Depending on your role, the left-hand navigation also shows the sections Administration (User Management, Audit Log – webmaster only), Personal (My Profile), and Help & Support (Changelog, Help & Docs). These are explained in Chapters 15–19.

6. The event home page in detail

Once you click "Open" (see Chapter 5), you arrive at the home page for that one event. From here you can reach all the tools (modules) available for this event. "Back to Event" (or "Back to event") in each module brings you back here at any time, and the "Events" item in the left-hand navigation takes you back to the full Event Overview from Chapter 5.

6.1 Header area and Event Details

At the very top is the event's title, below it the organizer/chapter and location, plus a countdown ("Starts in …") until the event begins. Next to it, on the right, is the "Edit Event" button, which lets you change the event's core data (see Chapter 7).

The "Event Details" box shows the most important key facts at a glance:

• Period – the event's date range (start to end date).
• Location – the street address of the venue.
• Town – postal code and town/city.
• Organizer – the hosting chapter or committee.
• Registration Deadline – the last day participants can still register.
• Max. Attendees – the maximum number of participants for this event.

6.2 The "Event Management" tile overview

Below that you'll find eight clickable tiles (rectangular fields with an icon, a title, and a short description) – each one leads to its own module. Which tiles you see depends on your role (see Chapter 4). Clicking anywhere on a tile opens the corresponding module:

6.3 The "Registration Status" box

Further down the event home page, the "Registration Status" box shows the current registration state:

• A colored field on the left shows the current status as text (e.g. "Registration Open" on a green background) – the same four states described in Chapter 5.
• Next to it, on the right, is the current number of participants relative to the maximum (e.g. "137 / 300 ATTENDEES").
• The "Close Registration" and "Archive" buttons change the event's status (see below).
• The yellow box below shows the public registration link for participants, with the buttons "Copy" (copies the link to the clipboard, e.g. for pasting into an email) and "Open" (opens the public registration page directly in a new browser tab, see Chapter 8.1).

7. Editing an event

The "Edit Event" button in the top right of the event home page (see 6.1) opens the editing form for that event, where you can adjust all of its core data. Only webmasters, Event Managers and Co-Event Managers see this button.

To change an event's core data:

1. Open the home page of the relevant event.
2. Click "Edit Event" at the top right.
3. Change the fields you want (see the overview below).
4. Click the save button at the bottom to apply your changes.

The form contains the following fields:

7.1 Pricing & Payment

Further down in the same editing form, you can optionally set up a cost breakdown and payment details for the event. Both are entirely free-form and manually maintained by the Event Manager – nothing here is calculated automatically.

8. Module: Registrations

8.1 The public registration page

Every event has its own, publicly accessible registration page (no login required), which you can, for example, send as a link or link to from the club website – you'll find this link conveniently in the "Registration Status" box on the event home page (see 6.3). The page shows the club logo and, if set, the chapter logo, plus the event title, location and description. If the event has a location and/or town set, a "📍 Get directions" link also appears above the form, opening the address directly in Google Maps. As long as the event has the status "Registration Open", participants can register there with the following details:

• First name, last name, email address (required fields)
• Chapter, gender (required field: male / female / other), country, nationality
• T-shirt size, special dietary needs
• Preferred accommodation type: shared accommodation (default), single room, or their own RV/caravan (no accommodation needed)

If the Event Manager has set up price options for the event (see 7.1), an additional "Attendance & Cost" section appears on the form: participants tick every price item that applies to them (e.g. "Day price") and, where relevant, enter a quantity (e.g. number of days). The total amount to transfer is calculated live as items are selected and shown directly on the form. If pricing has been configured for the event, at least one price item must be selected before the form can be submitted.

Immediately after submitting the form, the participant receives an automatic "Registration Received" email confirming that their registration has arrived. If price options are configured for the event, this email also includes a full cost breakdown (the items and quantities they selected, plus the total amount), the account details to transfer the money to, and an explicit note that the booking is only confirmed once the full amount has been received.

If the event is not set to "Registration Open", visitors to the page instead see a message that registration is not currently possible.

8.2 The registration list on the organizing team's side

As an Event Manager, Co-Event Manager or Staff member, the "Registrations" section shows you the complete list of all registrations received, with a search (name/email) and filters by gender, chapter, nationality and status. Each row shows the name, booking number (with barcode), gender, email, chapter, nationality, registration status and check-in status.

The registration status can be one of the following:

• Pending – the registration has been received but not yet confirmed.
• Confirmed – the registration has been confirmed (either manually via "Confirm", or automatically upon accommodation assignment, see 9.3).
• Cancelled – the registration has been cancelled.

To confirm or cancel a registration directly from the list:

1. Find the row for the relevant person in the list.
2. Click "Confirm" or "Cancel" at the far right of that row.

Clicking a person's name instead opens the detail view with all their information (see 8.3).

8.3 Editing a single registration

When you open a participant, the detail page shows four status indicators (small, colored "badges") at the top, at a glance:

• GDPR Consent – whether data protection consent has been given (see Chapter 20).
• Registered – the date/time of registration.
• Confirmed – whether and when the registration was confirmed.
• Checked in – whether and when the participant checked in on site.

Below that, all details can be edited: first name, last name, email, status, chapter, country, nationality, gender, T-shirt size, dietary needs, notes, family/group code, preferred accommodation type, assigned house, accessibility needs, transfer needed (e.g. pickup/shuttle), and photo consent. The family/group code is a freely chosen short code used to automatically keep people who belong together (family, travel group) together in the Accommodation module (see Chapter 9).

8.4 Booking number and barcode

The system automatically generates a random, 6-digit booking number for every registration (e.g. "404389") – you don't need to set anything up for this, it happens in the background as soon as the registration comes in. A barcode (a classic bar code, not a QR code) is also automatically generated for each booking number, which can be scanned at check-in with an ordinary barcode scanner, for example.

• In the registration list (see 8.2), the booking number itself appears in the "Booking #" column, shown in bold for easy reading. The barcode graphic is only shown on the check-in slip and in the confirmation email, where it can actually be scanned.
• As soon as a registration is set to "Confirmed", the system automatically sends a "Registration Confirmed" email to the registered person. This email contains the booking number as text and the barcode as an embedded image – so the person can print the email or show it on their phone, with no internet connection needed on site.
• The barcode also appears on the printable check-in slip (PDF) for the registration.

8.5 Export & Import

Three buttons above the registration list (see 8.2) let you get data in and out of the system:

The Import CSV button is only visible to Webmasters, Event Managers and Co-Event Managers – Staff can view and export the list, but not import.

On the import page, use the "Download CSV Template" button first to get a file with the correct column headers already in place. Required columns are firstName, lastName, email, gender; optional columns include chapter, country, nationality, tshirtSize, dietaryNeeds, accessibilityNeeded, transferNeeded, ownMotorcycle, bringingPassenger, firstTimeAttendee, volunteerInterest, photoConsent, notes and familyGroupCode (use "yes"/"no" for the checkbox-style columns). Before importing, you must tick the checkbox confirming that GDPR/privacy-policy consent for everyone in the file has already been obtained by other means (e.g. a paper form or club membership) – imported people are added directly as Confirmed registrations, skipping the normal Pending step.

Rows whose email address is already registered for this event are automatically skipped (not overwritten), so it's always safe to fix a few problem rows and run the import again. After importing, the page shows how many rows were imported, which were skipped as duplicates, and which had errors (with the reason and row number), so you can check the result at a glance.

9. Module: Accommodation

The Accommodation module is one of the most powerful tools in the system: a visual board where houses/rooms are shown as cards, and participants can be dragged in and out via drag & drop (see the glossary, Chapter 2) – optionally with the help of an automatic allocation calculation.

9.1 The accommodation board

On the far left is the "Unassigned" pool, containing all participants not yet allocated. Next to it, all houses/rooms that have been created are shown as cards, each with a name, a capacity indicator (e.g. "3 / 4 spots") and the people currently assigned to it. People bringing their own accommodation (RV/caravan) don't appear here at all – they're recorded separately, as a count.

Each person's card shows their name, a gender symbol, country and chapter. A green dot marks people who have already checked in, and a blue "Single room" badge marks a requested single room. People who share the same family/group code are automatically shown with the same (randomly assigned) background color, so families/travel groups are recognizable at a glance.

If a house has a conflict, its card is outlined in red and a warning line is shown, for example:

• Mixed genders without a shared family group – men and women without a shared family/group code in the same house.
• Mixed nationalities – people from different countries in the same house.
• Overbooked – more people assigned than there is capacity for.

These warnings are informational only, not hard blocks – the organizing team can deliberately allocate people this way anyway (e.g. if a mixed group explicitly wants to stay together).

9.2 Creating houses/rooms

Event Managers and Co-Event Managers can create accommodations in two ways. To create a single house:

1. Click "+ Add house".
2. Enter a name, e.g. "Villa Ana".
3. Enter the capacity, e.g. "8" (spots).
4. Confirm the entry.

For many similar rooms at once (e.g. a hotel or a campsite), there is a batch generator:

1. Click "📦 Add multiple".
2. Enter a name prefix, e.g. "Room".
3. Enter the starting number, e.g. "1".
4. Enter the number of rooms you want, e.g. "150".
5. Enter the capacity per room, e.g. "1".
6. The tool shows you a preview beforehand, e.g. "Creates 150 rooms, 1 spot each: from Room 001 to Room 150" – check this preview carefully.
7. Click "Create all" to create all the rooms in one step.

A single house can be deleted using the "✕" on its card (any people already assigned to it are automatically moved back into the "Unassigned" pool). "🗑 Delete all houses" deletes all of an event's houses at once – after a confirmation prompt, since this cannot be undone.

9.3 Assigning people

Assignment is done via drag & drop (see the glossary, Chapter 2): drag a person's card from "Unassigned" (or from another house) onto the desired house card while holding down the mouse button, then release it there.

Alternatively – especially handy on a phone or tablet, where drag & drop is more cumbersome – you can open a dedicated assignment view for a single person from the registration list:

1. In the "Registrations" section, open the relevant person (click their name).
2. Switch to the accommodation assignment view (all houses are shown there as tiles).
3. The tiles are color-coded: green = empty, yellow = partially occupied, red = full.
4. Use the filters (house name, country, chapter, gender) as needed, or the quick filters "Only with free space" and "Only matching (country/gender)".
5. Houses that match the person (same country/gender, or the same family group) are marked "★ matches" – a good first indicator.
6. Click the desired house to assign the person to it.

Once a person has been assigned accommodation, their registration can be confirmed directly from there with a click on "✓ Confirm registration now" – this automatically sends a confirmation email. Without an assigned accommodation, this button is disabled (except for people bringing their own accommodation).

9.4 Automatic allocation ("Calculate suggestion")

Instead of dragging each person individually by hand, the tool can calculate a complete allocation suggestion. Here's how:

1. Click "⚙️ Rules" to set the rules you want (see below).
2. Tick the desired rules and save.
3. Click "✨ Calculate suggestion".
4. Review the suggestion shown, including any list of people who could not be placed (with a reason, e.g. not enough free capacity).
5. Click "✓ Apply suggestion" to apply it, or "Discard" to discard it.

The four available rules:

• Keep families/travel groups together – people with the same family/group code always end up in the same house.
• Separate by gender – men and women without a shared family/group code are not placed in the same house.
• Consider nationality – each house only gets people from a single country.
• Keep chapter members together – each house only gets people from a single chapter.

People already assigned or already checked in are never moved by the calculation; people bringing their own accommodation are never included, and single-room requests automatically get a house exclusively to themselves.

9.5 Resetting assignments

"↺ Reset all" removes all current assignments (everyone moves back into "Unassigned"), while the houses themselves remain – handy for starting fresh after test runs, or for running a completely new automatic calculation.

9.6 Legend

At the top of the board, a legend explains the symbols used: a plain card = an individual, a colored card = a family/travel group (color = family), a green dot = already checked in, a blue "Single room" badge = single room requested.

10. Module: Program / Schedule

In the "Program" section, you maintain the event's chronological schedule, automatically grouped by day. Each program item consists of:

• A start time and (optionally) an end time
• A title
• A location
• A category: Ride, Meal, Ceremony, Free Time, Meeting, Other – each shown in a different color
• Notes (e.g. meeting-point details)
• A "Staff only" option – marks an item as visible only to the organizing team

To add a new program item:

1. Click "+ Add Program Item".
2. Enter the title, start time (and end time, if needed) and location.
3. Choose the appropriate category from the dropdown menu.
4. Add notes if needed, and/or tick "Staff only".
5. Save the entry.

Existing items can be changed via "Edit" or removed via "Delete" (Event Managers and Co-Event Managers only).

Any item not marked "Staff only" also appears automatically on a public program page that participants can view without logging in (button "View Public Page" at the top right).

11. Module: Tasks (To-Do)

The "To-do list" section organizes all open tasks related to the event, grouped into expandable topics (e.g. "Check-in Preparation", "Accommodation", "Catering", "Programme", "Logistics", "Communication" – topic names can be freely chosen). Each topic shows the number of tasks it contains in parentheses.

Clicking a topic opens (expands) a table with all its tasks. Each task has:

• a title
• a priority: Normal, High, Urgent (shown in different colors)
• a person responsible (optional)
• a due date/deadline (optional)
• a status: Open, In Progress, Done – changeable directly via a dropdown menu in the table

To create a new topic:

1. Click into the "New topic" field.
2. Type in the desired topic name.
3. Click "+ Add topic".

To create a new task within a topic:

1. Expand the desired topic.
2. Click "+ Add task".
3. Enter the title, priority, and optionally a person responsible and a due date.
4. Save the task.

Event Managers and Co-Event Managers can create topics and create/edit tasks. Deleting topics and tasks is reserved exclusively for the webmaster. Staff members can change the status of a task if it is personally assigned to them – this way, progress stays visibly up to date for everyone, without staff being able to change other people's tasks.

The "Open tasks" button at the top right (with a counter, e.g. "19") leads to a combined view of all currently open tasks across every topic, with a topic column for context – handy for a quick overview of what's coming up next. As soon as a task there is set to "Done", it automatically disappears from this list.

12. Module: Address Book

The address book ("Directory") consists of two sections:

12.1 Staff contacts

Automatically populated with everyone assigned to the event from user/staff management. Name and role are always pulled live from user management and are therefore always up to date – they cannot be changed here. Via "Edit", you can add, per person: address, phone number, mobile number, WhatsApp contact, and availability.

12.2 Other Contacts

Freely created external contacts via "+ Add Contact" – e.g. service providers, suppliers or authorities, each with a name, title/description, address, phone, mobile, WhatsApp and availability.

12.3 Search and permissions

A search bar at the top of the address book searches all fields in both sections at once (e.g. by name, location or phone number) and filters the display accordingly. WhatsApp contacts are set up as clickable links and open a chat directly.

Permissions: Event Managers and Co-Event Managers can create and edit entries. Staff can view the address book but not change it.

13. Module: Communication Plan

The "Communication Plan" automatically shows an organization chart of the event team, built on three levels:

1. Event Manager (top level)
2. Co-Event Manager
3. Staff

Each person is shown with their name, role and – if entered in the address book – their mobile number. The mobile number is directly clickable and starts a call on mobile devices.

If an additional webmaster is not directly assigned to the event but nonetheless has full access to it, this is noted as a footnote at the bottom of the page. This organization chart never needs to be maintained manually – it is generated automatically from the roles assigned in user management and the mobile numbers stored in the address book.

14. Module: Emergency Management

The "Emergency Management" section shows two kinds of information:

14.1 Emergency phone numbers

At the very top, clearly visible in red: police, fire brigade and ambulance numbers for the country the event takes place in (see the "Country" field in Chapter 7). For a country already known to the system, the actual, valid national numbers are shown (e.g. for Austria: 133 / 122 / 144); if a country hasn't been set up (yet), the Europe-wide emergency number 112 is shown as a safe default.

14.2 Nearby emergency facilities

Below that, the tool lists the nearest hospitals/emergency rooms, police stations and fire stations around the event's venue address, each with an address, distance in km and, where available, a phone number (facilities without a publicly listed number are marked "Phone not listed"). This data comes from OpenStreetMap and is fetched automatically the first time the page is opened; a timestamp ("Last updated …") shows when the data was last refreshed. The "Refresh from OpenStreetMap" button lets you manually trigger the search again at any time, e.g. after the event's address has changed.

15. User Management (Webmaster only)

The "User Management" section is where all of the system's user accounts are managed: name, email, role, and the events the person is assigned to (automatically "All Events" for webmasters).

15.1 Creating a new user

1. Click "+ Add New User".
2. Enter the name and email address.
3. Choose the desired role from the dropdown menu (see Chapter 4).
4. Click "Create User & Send Invite".

15.2 Changing a role, resetting a password, assigning events

Click "Manage" next to an existing user to open their profile page. There you can:

• Change their name, email address and role (button "Save Changes").
• Set a new password for that person (field "New Password" + button "Set Password") – handy if the person can no longer access their invitation or forgot-password email.
• Delete the user account entirely (button "Delete User").

Further down, in the "Event Assignments" section, you assign or remove individual events for the person via checkboxes. This section has no separate save button: clicking a checkbox saves the assignment immediately in the background, so you don't need to click "Save" anywhere afterward. Deliberately, no large success message appears – if the checkmark stays set (or removed) after clicking, the assignment worked.

16. Audit Log (Webmaster only)

The "Audit Log" records who changed what in the system, and when – the most recent 200 entries. Each row shows a timestamp, the person who made the change (name and email), the action performed, the affected event, and technical details about the affected record. This log exists for traceability – for example, to later clarify who made a particular change, such as who changed an accommodation assignment or cancelled a registration. It cannot be edited or deleted, only viewed.

17. My Profile

Under "My Profile", any signed-in person – regardless of their role – can change their own name and set a new password. This is the right place to proactively change your own password, without having to go through the "forgot password" route on the login page. To change your own password:

1. Click "My Profile" in the left-hand navigation.
2. Enter your desired new password in the "New Password" field.
3. Click "Set Password".

18. Changelog

The "Changelog" section shows BK-Event's development history as a timeline, viewable by any signed-in person. Each entry shows a short description of the change, and the newest entry is marked "LATEST"; clicking an entry expands further details (where available), including an identifier, date and author of the change. This makes it easy to see, at any time, what was most recently improved or added to the system.

19. Help & Docs

This section is intended as a place for help pages and documentation directly within the tool. For questions this manual doesn't answer, contact your organizing team or the webmaster directly.

20. Data protection and GDPR

20.1 Consent at registration

Participants must actively agree to the privacy policy on the public registration page (Chapter 8.1) before a registration is even possible. Whether this consent has been given is visible for each registration individually as a "GDPR Consent" badge on the detail page (Chapter 8.3).

20.2 Role-based access

Who can see and edit which data is governed strictly by the assigned role (Chapter 4) and, within an event, by the event assignment (Chapter 15.2). People with no access to an event don't see its data at all; within an event, Staff only see the sections needed for their own tasks.

20.3 Passwords and credentials

Passwords are stored only in encrypted (hashed) form – nobody, not even a webmaster, can view another person's actual password. New user accounts are never given a plaintext password set by the webmaster; instead, users set their own password themselves via a time-limited invitation link (Chapters 3.2 and 15.1).

20.4 Traceability

Security-relevant changes (e.g. new user accounts, changed accommodation assignments, cancelled registrations) are logged in the Audit Log (Chapter 16) and can be traced by the webmaster.

20.5 Purpose limitation and deletion

Data collected for an event is used exclusively to organize that event. A webmaster can completely and irreversibly delete an event, including all of its registrations, accommodation data, tasks and address book entries (Chapters 5 and 15.2).

20.6 Disclosure to third parties

Data collected is not passed on to third parties outside the organizing team, with the exception of technically necessary automatic emails (e.g. confirmations, invitations) sent via the club's own mail server.

20.7 Access to, correction and deletion of your own data

If you would like to know what data is stored about you, have it corrected, or request its deletion, contact your webmaster.

21. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

22. Technical background: system, how it works & backup (Webmaster)

22.1 What kind of system is BK-Event, technically?

BK-Event is a custom-built web application – not an off-the-shelf standard product, but written specifically for the Blue Knights European Conference. It consists of two core components:

• The application itself – responsible for everything you see and do in the browser: displaying pages, processing forms, checking permissions (Chapter 4), sending emails, and so on. It runs on a server on the internet, not on your own computer.
• The database – permanently stores all the content: events, registrations, accommodations, tasks, users, and so on (see also the glossary in Chapter 2 for the term "database").

Both run together on what's called a VPS (Virtual Private Server – a rented, virtual server somewhere in a data center). Besides BK-Event, this same VPS also runs other, independent Blue Knights systems (e.g. membership management or the board portal) – but each of these has its own, separate database, so a problem in one system doesn't automatically affect the others.

Two technical helpers work in the background to keep the application reliably reachable:

• A process manager makes sure the application keeps running continuously, and automatically restarts it if it crashes unexpectedly.
• A web server/reverse proxy receives requests from the internet (the address you type into your browser), handles the encrypted connection (the padlock icon/"https" in the address bar), and forwards the request internally to the application.

22.2 Source code, changes and updates

The complete BK-Event program code lives in a private version control repository (comparable to a very detailed, unbroken "change history" of the entire program – similar in principle to the Audit Log from Chapter 16, but for the code itself instead of event data). Every change to the system can therefore be traced individually, with a date and a description, and can be reversed again if needed.

New features or bug fixes are never pulled in automatically "from somewhere" – they go through a deliberate, manually performed process: the code is changed, the database structure is adjusted in a controlled way if needed, the application is "built" (translated into an executable form), and then restarted. During this brief restart (typically a few seconds), the site is briefly unreachable – changes are therefore made outside of peak usage hours whenever possible.

22.3 Data backups

BK-Event runs its own, dedicated backup process automatically every 6 hours (independent of the backups for the other systems on the same server). Each run backs up:

• a complete export of the entire database (all events, registrations, accommodations, users, etc.),
• the application's central configuration file (including credentials for the database and for sending email),
• any uploaded files/content that may exist.

Each backup is encrypted immediately on the server itself (decryptable only with a private key that only the webmaster holds), and is then automatically transferred to a second, independent storage location in the cloud – so the data is never kept in only one place. After every run, the system automatically sends a success or failure notification, so that any problems with the backup process itself get noticed.

Retention periods:

• Locally on the server: the last 30 days.
• In the cloud, daily backups: a rolling 30 days.
• In the cloud, monthly backups: additionally, one version per month, kept for a full year (365 days).

As a result, BK-Event's data can be restored to any given day within the last 30 days, plus the start of any of the last 12 months.

22.4 In an emergency: restoring data

Restoring a backup is a purely technical process (accessing the server, decrypting with the private key, restoring the database) and is therefore exclusively the webmaster's task. As a regular user, you neither need to nor can restore a backup yourself – if you encounter data loss or something displaying incorrectly, simply contact your webmaster (see also Chapter 19, Help & Docs).

23. Using BK-Event on a smartphone

BK-Event can be used entirely in a smartphone browser, with no app installation needed (see also Chapter 1). On smaller screens, the display automatically adapts in a few places to keep everything usable:

23.1 Navigation

On narrow screens, the left-hand sidebar (navigation) is hidden by default. Tap the menu icon (☰) at the top left instead to show or hide the navigation.

23.2 Lists as cards

Large tables with many columns (e.g. the registration list, Chapter 8.2) can't sensibly be displayed as a table on a smartphone screen. On narrow screens, a card view is therefore shown automatically instead: one card per registration, with the name, status and the most important details, followed by the usual action buttons (Check-in, Confirm, Cancel). The barcode isn't shown there, for lack of space – it's only needed at the check-in desk anyway (see Chapter 8.4).

23.3 Operating the accommodation board by tap

The accommodation board (Chapter 9) normally works via drag & drop (see Chapter 2) – which can't technically be replicated with a tap on a touchscreen (smartphone/tablet). An alternative way of operating it is therefore available on touch devices:

1. Tap a person's card – it gets marked with a gold outline.
2. Then tap a house (or "Unassigned") to move the selected person there.

This works in addition to the familiar drag & drop on a computer, not as a replacement for it – on a computer with a mouse, you can still drag as usual.

24. Process for chapter representatives: Getting a new event set up

BK-Event does not create new events or user accounts automatically or on its own – for security and oversight reasons, this is done exclusively by the webmaster (see Chapter 15). If your chapter would like to run an event through BK-Event, the following process applies:

24.1 Requesting it by email from the webmaster

Send an email to the webmaster with the following details:

• Name of the event – the official name of the event, as it should later appear to participants.
• Location – the venue/location of the event.
• Period – the event's start and end date.
• Chapter logo – as an image file, for display within the event (e.g. the header area, Chapter 6.1).
• Name and email address of the staff members – for each person who should work in the system, along with their requested role (see Chapter 4 for the role overview: Event Manager, Co-Event Manager or Staff).

24.2 What happens next

1. The webmaster creates the event with the submitted key details.
2. A user account is created for each named person, with the role they requested, and assigned to the event.
3. Each person created automatically receives an invitation email with a link that lets them set their own password (see Chapter 3.2).
4. From that point on, the organizing team can continue working on the event independently – editing details (Chapter 7), opening registration (Chapter 8), and so on.