The Home Screen Builder

The Home Screen is the bedrock of every successful event. It acts as your first impression, your Swiss army knife, your base of operations, and your attendees' information dashboard all rolled into one.

In this article we'll talk about:

• Home Screen Basics
• The Widgets
  • Announcements
  • Pinned
  • Social Feed
  • Agenda
  • Media
  • Button
• Building a Sample Home Screen

The Home Screen

Bluebird's Home Screen is the first place your Attendees will visit after logging in to your event, and the main dashboard they'll return to as they navigate the various tools and experiences you prepare for them.

The Home Screen consists of a Background and any number of Widgets that you add using the Home Screen Builder. These widgets are interactive tools that can quickly and easily deliver live content from across your event. Although some Widgets may show different content to different users, all users will see all Widgets on your Home Screen.

The Widgets

The following Widgets are available in the Home Screen Builder:

Announcements

The Announcements Widget displays an attendee's most recent unread Announcements. Useful for making sure people don't miss an important update!

Pinned

The Pinned Widget lets you highlight a social feed post or Announcement for special attention — if there's a special social feed post you want everyone to see, or an Announcement you want at the front of everyone's mind, you can use the Pinned Widget to make sure it stays at top of mind!

Social Feed

The Social Feed Widget displays the most recent posts made to the Social Feed. It's great for encouraging a collaborative, vibrant, and lively atmosphere on your event app.

Agenda

The Agenda Widget displays upcoming events, tailored to the user. If Tracks are being used, Attendees can also filter what they see here using Track Filters.

Media

Media allows you to add an image to your Home Screen, whether it's an event logo, special instruction, or a cat you think is just wonderful.

Button

The Button widget is useful for linking to a page in your Event that isn't covered by any of the other Widgets. It even lets you link to external URLs!

Building A Sample Home Screen

Actually putting together a Home Screen is quite simple! Bluebird allows you to place Widgets together like building blocks to create a living, breathing, customizable Home Screen.

When you're just getting started, your Home Screen editor will look like this:

First, let's add a background:

Click on "Design Options" at the bottom of the page. An editing panel will pop up in the middle of the screen:

If I wanted to, I could use a prepared background image as the backdrop for my Home Page. For this very simple demonstration, I'm just going to select two basic colors from the color editors: blue for the background and white for the Widget Accent Color.

With my updated background, my Home Screen now looks like this:

Now it's time to start adding Widgets!

I want my event's Logo to be at the top of my home page, so I'm going to add the Media widget. I'll click and drag the widget from its toolbox on the right, into the top row of my Home Screen:

I'm now prompted to upload a Media Source (the image this widget will display) and a Media Link (a destination I can send Attendees who click on this image to).

My Media Source is going to be a logo I've designed for my new event. This will just be my logo, so I won't add anything to the Media Link field.

Once I've uploaded my image, my Home Screen now looks like this:

I want my Home Screen to display Announcements, the meeting Agenda, and a Button linked to a page to connect donations for my event. So, I'll click and drag each of those elements on to the Home Screen. When I'm done, I'll have a full-feeling Home Screen!

The resulting Home Screen has a logo, provides live updates when I send Announcements, and shows each user a preview of their Agenda!

What will you make with your Home Screen?