Expanded List of Features

The following is a detailed list of features available in Helios Calendar.

Optionally, you can click here for the bullet list.


Web Based Publishing
Securely manage your event calendar from any computer at anytime. All you need is an internet connection and a web browser. All popular browsers (and platforms) are supported: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Maxthon, Netscape and more...

Repeating Events
Save time by entering recurring events only once. Miss a date? Need a unique event series with different times for different days? Helios Calendar allows you to easily build event series with existing events so there is no need to spend time re-entering event information.

Event Submission
Let your users find and submit events for you. Easy to use approval system gives you total control over event information allowing you to edit events before publishing them on your site. Send approved and declined messages to event submitters with just a click to encourage repeat submissions.

Event Newsletters
Send email newsletters with event content chosen by your users. Users sign-up for the categories they are interested in and you can send newsletters by simply selecting the date range. Build customized HTML templates and save them for later use to dress up your newsletters.

RSS Event Feeds
Helios Calendar provides advanced support for syndicating your events via RSS feeds. Included standard feeds are: All Events, Newest Events, Billboard Events and Most Popular Events. RSS feeds are RSS 2.0 compliant and work with any RSS 2.0 supported software, site or script.

Mobile Ready
Included XHTML Mobile site allows users to browse and search your calendar on their PDA or Mobile Telephone.

Distributed Publishing
Eventful® API integration allows simultaneous publishing of events on both your Helios Calendar and Eventful.com.

Helios Tawc
Helios Tawc (pronounced 'talk') is an automated promotion feature that allows Helios Calendar to write a personal micro-blog at twitter.com, promoting itself, it's features and (most importantly) it's events, dynamically and without any interaction or work by it's administrators.

Event Search
Event Date, Title/Description Keyword(s), Location, City, State(Region), Postal Code and Categories can be used in various combinations and results can be linked to directly and saved for future use.

Event Registration
Powerful and easy to use registration tools. Event contacts receive an email each time a new user registers. Administrators can login and view all event registrants and easily add/edit/delete registrants as well as send the entire roster to the event coordinator with a single click.

Browse Filter
Users can browse by any combination of active cities or categories that they are interested in finding events for to customize their browsing experience. Filter settings can be saved via cookie for use in return visits to your calendar.

Browse By Location
Users can browse Locations by using the embedded Google Map or browse events by selecting a Location. Special Location tools include iCal Event subscription, RSS Event feed, Google Maps Driving Directions and more.

Custom RSS Feed Builder
Users can create their own unique RSS feed for the categories and/or cities they are interested in finding events in. RSS feeds are RSS 2.0 compliant and work with any RSS 2.0 supported software, site or script.

Personal Calendar Integration
Helios Calendar supports both vCalendar & iCalendar event download formats. Users can save events to their Microsoft Outlook, Apple iCal, Mozilla Sunbird/Lightning and other desktop calendars as well as their Google & Yahoo web calendar accounts.

Helios also supports the very popular iCalendar subscription allowing Apple iCal & Microsoft Outlook 2007 users to subscribe to unique event and location calendars.

Email to a Friend
Tell friends about events via Email to a Friend. Recipients receive a personalized message (including up to 250 characters of text written by their friend) with a link back to the to the event.

Social Bookmark Tools
Helios Calendar includes links in event view to over fifty (50) of the worlds most popular social bookmark/content sharing sites on the web. With just a click on the icon of their favorite site your visitors can instantly submit your event and promote them all over the web.

RSS Subscription Tools
Integrated RSS subscription links allow users to subscribe with just a click. Supported sites include: AOL.com, Bloglines.com, del.icio.us, fyuze.com, Google Reader, Kinja.com, My MSN, Newsburst.com, NewsIsFree.com, Newsgator.com, Pluck.com, Rojo.com, My Yahoo.

Multilingual
Users can choose any language from the installed language packs by clicking the associated flag icon.

Shared Administration
Helios Calendar promotes collaboration and shared management. Configure administration accounts to varying levels of access to tailor the account for individual responsibilities. Select from eight (8) different access settings to distribute responsibility across your team.

Advanced Traffic Reports
Calendar wide overviews or individual event details, whichever you are after, Helios Calendar will have, in real time. Most Popular Events gives an overview of which events are receiving the most traffic both on your public calendar and your mobile site. Calendar Overview gives a high-level view of your Helios stats and Event Activity Report gives you event specific totals and daily average statistics for every event in your calendar. Build custom event reports and print them in a printer-friendly format.

Event Export
Helios Calendar currently supports CSV export.

Event Import
Helios Calendar currently supports iCalendar and CSV/Tab delimited event import.

Location Management
Manage locations separately from events. Make a change to the location and all events assigned to it are updated simultaneously. Location specific info includes: Address, Email, Phone, Website Link and Description (With Full XHTML Support).

Unlimited Events
Helios Calendar has no built in limits for the number of events you can store in your calendar.

Unlimited Administrators
Helios Calendar has no built in limits for the number of administrators you can have.

Source Code Delivery
All versions of Helios Calendar are delivered in unencrypted source code form to allow for customization.

XHTML 1.0 & CSS 2.0
Helios Calendar is XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.0 compliant to give you easy access to customizing the look, feel, layout and color scheme of your calendar. Separated stylesheets ensure that you will not have to redo all your customizations when upgrading versions.

Seamless Site Integration
Powerful, yet easy to use, skinning and integration technology allows you to seamlessly integrate Helios to your websites layout and design.

Cross Platform Compatibility
Built with PHP and powered by MySQL, Helios Calendar will work on any server that has these two very popular server software titles installed. This includes Linux, Windows and Mac OS X servers, along with many other popular server Operating Systems.

Microformat Support
Support for Microformat hCalendar and hCard is included in all event details allowing any script/site/application capable of parsing microformat data to import your event data.

Live Clipboard Support
Easily copy & paste events using Live Clipboard. A customized Live Clipboard format is utilized within the Helios Calendar admin to allow for the easy duplication of events with minimal effort. Public calendar users can copy & paste your event data into any supporting script/site/application.

OpenSearch
By adding Helios Calendar OpenSearch to their favorite browser, users can search for events on your calendar instantly from anywhere at anytime, even when not on your site. Current generation browsers that support OpenSearch include Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2.0

CAPTCHA Spam Prevention
Helios Calendar includes spam prevention CAPTCHA for all public forms, including: Public Event Submission, Email Event to a Friend, Newsletter Registration and Event Registration.

JavaScript Event Syndication
Commonly referred to as Stickers, Magnets, Widgets, etc, users can add simple JavaScript code to their website to syndicate events linking back to your Helios Calendar to help promote event exposure and traffic to your site.

Over 20 Customizable Settings
Personalize Helios Calendar with over twenty customizable settings, including: RSS, Billboard and Most Popular list sizes, Public Submission Category Selection, Date and Time formats, Weather and Map Links (including UK, Canada & Australia options by default), Event Approve/Decline Messages, Default State/Province/Region, WYSIWYG Editor (enable/disable TinyMCE) and much more.

Search Engine Optimized
Control your calendar meta Keywords and Description in the Helios Calendar administration console without changing any code. Additionally, event detail links open in the same window and not a pop-up window so all event content is indexed by popular search engines, increasing your search exposure.

Language Pack Support
Upload language packs to use multiple languages with Helios, or, you can easily translate Helios to create new language packs without editing any source code.

Localization
Quickly and easily change Helios settings for date & time format within the admin console settings. Region (US State by Default) select lists are easily customized as part of the Language Pack structure.

*Use of Eventful® Publishing requires a valid API Key, and is governed by their Terms of Service
**Use of Google Web Services requires a valid API Key and is governed by their Terms of Service