Event inception (requirement gathering), planning, execution and more, require the collaboration of multiple professional event vendors to create a memorable experience for clients and guests. The clients chose to throw events to commemorate memorable occasions in their lives and seek professional services from vendors. Vendors advertise/promote and provide their services to clients for a fee.

To deliver memorable events, vendors rely on software to streamline each distinct planning and design phase – booking, planning, design, coordination, execution, and post-event follow-up. To the best of our knowledge, there is no one platform that provides the complete offerings for all the phases to create an ideal environment for both vendors and clients. Hence, vendors are obliged to use many software platforms to accomplish these tasks. Moreover, no platform has yet to digitize the execution phase.

We therefore propose the Event Workflow Platform (EWP), to enable vendors and clients to seamlessly streamline all the distinct phases in event management using one platform. The first release is web-based. Three categories of users interact with the platform – clients, vendors, and the employees of Event Workflow, LLC. Both clients and vendors are grouped into site members. Moreover, vendors and clients subscribe to one of the packages of the platform – Free Trial, Standard, Pro. Therefore, the User Interface (UI) seen by a platform member depends on the member’ package, from the least available features “Free Trial Package” to the most available features “Pro Package.”

The platform includes a marketplace with vendors and clients. Potential clients post requests for proposals or potential discussions, all based on the scope of work (vision for their events and allocated budget) they have defined and published on the marketplace. The clients may ask selected vendors to submit a proposal. Vendors may be an Event Planner, Makeup Artist, Videographer, etc. Vendors advertise their services to the public in the marketplace. Vendors shall be able to create and submit proposals to potential clients, manage their accounts and clients/associates, track their time and associates time, see the calendar events from their timeline, and provide per project or general review or recommendation to other vendors. Clients should be able to sign vendors' contracts on the platform, make payments, and provide post-event reviews. Vendors should be able to create a market calendar in which they display available time for potential bookings. Clients should be able to schedule appointments with vendors from the marketplace calendar. Vendors should be able to save time slot-related messages to be automatically sent to clients or vendors that request appointments during the time slot.

An event is created by an Author who may be a vendor or client. It is customary for an Event Planner to coordinate all aspects throughout all the phases. As such, an Event Planner may be an event author. A client may choose not to hire an Event Planner and to plan his/her own event. Once an event is created, the author will create a profile for new clients if they are not already members of the platform using their email addresses and other required personnel information. An author may also list himself/herself as one of the clients or the event client. In an event with multiple clients, all clients may not have the same level of permission. The author may invite existing vendors to collaborate on an invite or create a default account for a new vendor using the vendor's email address. All default accounts will be updated by the owner on the first login (for instance, the default password must be reset).