Agenda Module

Contact: Todd Satogata (Jefferson Lab)

The Agenda module provides a simple interface to the SPMS conference agenda. In particular, it is a convenient single location for presentations managers (and possibly attendees) for downloading slides and seeing an overview of the scientific program.

  • urlToConferenceSpms/agenda.html : Compact overview with links to sessions
  • urlToConferenceSpms/agenda.full : All talks and sessions presented inline

For example, the compact agenda of the JACoW 2015 Team Meeting is located at

Agenda Access

Access to the agenda module pages is by default limited to those with the Conference Administrator privilege. This is a default setting for agenda.html on the Overall Database Administration / Privileges, Roles & Users / Web Pages page. Under this condition, only the Conference Administrator has access to the agenda page.

This may be changed on the Overall Database Administration / System Parameters page, menu User, line "Users can see the Agenda". If this is set to "Yes", then all users (even those not logged into the SPMS!) can see the agendas at the URLs listed above. However, only certain privileged users can see links to talks as described in the next paragraph.

By default, if "Users can see the Agenda" is set to "Yes", then users with the privilege Conference Administrator, Presentations Management, or Transparency Editor can also see links to download files of type Transparency that have been uploaded for each program code. Thus presentation managers and transparency editors can log into presentation computers at the conference or workshop and bookmark an Agenda page to have straightforward links to all presentations.

This restriction of access to slides is generally the best arrangement for most conferences and workshops. Everyone with a link to the agenda can see it, but only conference staff can download slides from the agenda. Many speakers prefer to restrict access to their slides until processing and publication, possibly withholding some or all of their slides from publication altogether.

Open Agenda With Transparency Access

For a few meetings (such as JACoW Team Meetings), it is appropriate to give everyone viewing the Agenda pages full access to all slides immediately. This should be done only for meetings where you know that all speakers consent to their slides being available to anyone that can see the Agenda. To open the agenda:

  • Make the Agenda accessible by changing "Users can see the Agenda" to "Yes" in System Parameters as described above.
  • Open the Overall Database Administration / Privileges, Roles & Users / Web Pages page in SPMS
  • Click "Edit" next to "transparencies.%". Unselect all privileges, click Submit, and click "Return to main application menu".
  • Click "Delete" next to "transparencies.%".
  • Click "Edit" next to "transparencies.html". Unselect all privileges, click Submit, and click "Return to main application menu".
  • Click "Delete" next to "transparencies.html".

Now all users (even those not logged into SPMS!) should be able to see the agenda with links to submitted transparencies.

Technical explanation: The above steps remove all privilege requirements for access to the transparencies.html page. Access to this page is hard-coded in the SPMS Agenda.sql routine as a requirement to see the links to the talks, so removing privilege requirements to this page lets all users pass this hard-coded check and see the links. Removing these privilege requirements to transparencies.html is, for the most part, not a problem since other privileges are required to see other transparency processing pages.