Every HappenBoard event is in-person, virtual or hybrid. It is a single setting, and it changes both what the editor asks you for and what the event page shows.
Setting the format
Open the event in the editor and find the Format panel in the sidebar. Event format offers three choices:
- In-person: a physical event. This is what a new event starts on.
- Virtual: online only.
- Hybrid: both at once.
The panels below react to your choice. On Virtual the Venue panel disappears entirely, because there is nothing physical to record. On In-person and Hybrid it stays. Hybrid also shows a short notice reminding you that the Venue panel is still there and that both sides need filling in.
The online fields
Choosing Virtual or Hybrid adds two fields.
- Meeting URL: the public join link. Treat it as public, because anyone who can see the event page can read it. HappenBoard Pro adds per-attendee links and holds them back until the sign-up is confirmed.
- Provider: Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Jitsi Meet, Whereby, or Other. It decides the label and icon used on the calendar and in listings.
You rarely have to set the provider yourself. When you paste a meeting URL and the provider box is still empty, HappenBoard reads the address and fills it in. It recognises zoom.us and zoom.com, meet.google.com, teams.microsoft.com and teams.live.com, meet.jit.si and other jit.si addresses, and whereby.com. It never overwrites a provider you have already picked, so you can tag a Zoom-compatible bridge as Other and it will stay that way.
What visitors see
The Event Venue block reads the format and adapts.
- In-person: the venue name, its address, and an embedded map when the venue has coordinates and the block is set to show one.
- Virtual: no venue details at all, just one line reading Online via followed by the provider name and the join link.
- Hybrid: the venue details, then a line reading Also online via followed by the provider name and the link.
The provider name shown is Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Jitsi Meet or Whereby. If you pick Other, or leave the provider blank, the line reads Online meeting instead.
Two cases produce nothing. If you set Virtual or Hybrid but leave the Meeting URL empty, no online line is printed. And a virtual event with neither a meeting URL nor a venue renders no venue block at all. For in-person events, which map is embedded depends on your map provider setting.
On the admin calendar
Virtual and hybrid events carry a small marker on their chip. Hover it and you get Virtual event or Hybrid event, followed by the provider name when you have set one. In-person events carry no marker, which keeps the calendar clean for the most common case.
Search engines
HappenBoard emits Event structured data on every event page, and the format drives the attendance mode inside it. In-person events with a location emit a physical place and the offline attendance mode. Virtual events emit a virtual location and the online attendance mode. Hybrid events with a venue emit both, and the mixed mode.
Two safety nets are built in. A hybrid event with no venue filled in falls back to the online mode rather than emitting an incomplete payload, and an in-person event with no location at all falls back to a virtual location pointing at the event page. You can read more in the guide on automatic Event schema.
Events created before the format setting existed have no stored format. HappenBoard reads them from their data instead: an online URL plus a venue counts as hybrid, an online URL on its own counts as virtual, and anything else counts as in-person.
Sign-ups still work
The format has no effect on sign-ups. A virtual event can have a form and a seat limit exactly like a physical one.
What’s next
- Create a venue and add its coordinates for in-person and hybrid events.
- Walk through creating an event from scratch.
- Place the Event Venue block on your event page.