Speakers

Speakers is the directory of everyone who appears in your event’s programme: presenters, moderators and anyone else with a part in the running order. Most entries here really are speakers, which is why the area carries that name, but that’s not a rule. A profile can also belong to someone moderating a session, sitting on a panel, or simply appearing on the event website with a photo and a bio without speaking at all. Two pages belong together: the speakers list and each person’s detail page.

The speakers list

The list shows everyone in the event as a list, table or gallery, searchable by title, name, job title, email or languages, sortable by name, job title, email, languages, number of programme assignments or last update. Only producers see the email address, so search and sorting by it work only there. A badge tells you whether each profile is still a draft or already published. The tag “Invited” marks people who have an invitation but haven’t registered yet; “iveo user” marks people with an account of their own. The list starts with active people only. The filter icon narrows or widens it to “Active”, “Archived” or “In programmes”, or several of them at once; archived people are marked as such. The list updates itself when someone else on the team adds, edits or archives an entry. If the “Add speaker” button is missing, that’s down to your role rather than a fault (see Roles and permissions).

If your event belongs to a series with other editions, the “From earlier edition” button sits next to it. It searches every edition in the series, and each result shows which edition it comes from. You adopt people one at a time or all from one edition. Adopting means copying: the person comes into your event with their master data, photo and organisations, but not their programme assignments. If they are already archived in your event, the dialog offers “Restore”. Organisations are adopted the same way.

Adding or editing a person

Adding and editing use the same dialog: title (such as “Dr.”), first and last name, job title, a rich-text bio, language on stage, social links, email and a photo. Enter an email address and you get the option to “Save & invite” as well. The person then receives an invitation and, with it, the event role Speaker, regardless of whether their actual part in the programme is presenting, moderating or something else entirely. That’s precisely where the area’s name matches the person’s real function least. Only producers see the email address. Everyone else sees “Email on file” instead (or “Email address confirmed” once the person has confirmed it through their own account) and can enter a new address without seeing the old one; opening and saving does not delete it. Organisers and programme organisers can only set an address while none is on file yet; an existing one can only be changed by the event team. A phone number, as imports fill it, is visible only to producers and moderation, for example as a call link in the live view. If the invitation fails to arrive, you’ll see an error; the person is still saved, and you can send the invitation again later.

Who can edit a profile

Adding, general editing and archiving in the list depend on your event role. Editing one specific profile is narrower still: it’s allowed for the person themselves, whoever created the entry, whoever invited them, or (if the person has no account of their own) anyone with the general editing right. Without that right, the detail page shows a notice that the profile is locked and drops the edit buttons, leaving only the content visible. When you open a person from a programme item, every field you can’t change carries a padlock in the dialog, and a notice gives the reason: “Own iveo account” or “Checked and protected”. Role and status on the programme item stay open; the primary organisation of such people can only be changed by the event team. The full role breakdown lives on Roles and permissions.

If the profile is linked to the person’s own iveo account, they maintain it themselves under “My profile” in the sidebar: photo, name, job title, bio, social channels, languages and visibility, plus their organisations. Archiving and locking stay with the team.

Locking master data

A producer can freeze a person’s master data with “Lock master data” in the row menu. After that, “Edit” and archiving are switched off for everyone, and the row carries a padlock with the note “Locked by a producer: master data is frozen”. “Unlock master data” opens it again. The assignment to programme items is not affected: role, participation, order and removal can still be changed. The same applies to organisations.

Programme assignments and publishing

A person’s detail page lists which programme items they’re assigned to, with date, title, their role on that item and participation type. This view is read-only; to change an assignment you edit the programme item itself, not the person. Whether a person shows up on the public event website comes down to their own publication status: while the event itself is unpublished, no person inside it can be published either. Once the event is live, you publish a person individually from the button on their detail page. When you publish a programme item, its confirmed people go online with it if they are new or have changed. On a programme item, though, the site only shows them if they are marked “Confirmed” there; more on the Programme and Calendar page.

Archiving instead of deleting

Removing someone from the directory in iveo means archiving them. Before you archive a profile, a dialog shows how many programme assignments it currently has, so you know what’s affected. Archived people can be restored at any time. While archived, they don’t appear on any programme item: not in the Speakers box, the agenda or the stage order, and not in the briefing, the social media graphics, the lower thirds or the director view. Their assignments are kept. When you restore a person, their published programme items count as pending, and with the next publish they’re back on the website. Locked people cannot be archived. There’s currently no way to delete a profile for good from the interface; for all practical purposes, archiving is how you take a person out of the active directory.

Merging duplicate people

Over time, the same person can end up in the directory more than once: after a data import, say, or when the same person was invited through several submissions. That’s what “Find duplicates” is for: the page lists every group of likely duplicates, searchable by name and organisation and filterable by status (“Open”, “Ignored”, “Merged”). It also compares against entries from earlier editions of your series, which stay untouched. Not every role can see this tool, and actually merging is more restricted still than just viewing it.

For each group, iveo suggests a profile, pre-selected field by field from the variants. You can switch any field to another variant or fill it in yourself. “Merge” leads to a final check, after which you save or discard. On saving, one entry with these values remains, the programme assignments of the others move onto it, and the surplus entries are archived. If a group isn’t a duplicate at all, “Ignore” takes it off the list. The profile also shows whether the person has been invited; you resend an expired invitation with “Invite again”.

To stop duplicates appearing in the first place, iveo checks after every new person whether they already exist in the event or in an earlier edition, typos included. If it finds something, “Already exists?” appears, and “Compare” opens the entries on the duplicates page. The new person is already saved by then. The hint shows up for anyone who may see the duplicates page.