How an event works
Everything in OpenMeshTak belongs to an event, such as an exercise or a game weekend. You describe the event once: who takes part, in which role and team, which radio channels and which map data. OpenMeshTak then creates the setup for every participant's devices.
Users and members
A user is a person's account on the installation: their sign-in, passkeys and user groups.
An event member is a user taking part in one event, with that event's role, group and callsign. One user can be a member of several events, with a different role, group and callsign in each. Removing someone from an event ends only that membership; the user stays. In these docs, member always means event member.
Users come in two kinds:
| Kind | Typical for | Exists |
|---|---|---|
| Permanent user | Organizers and people who take part regularly | until you delete it |
| Event account | Someone who only needs an account for one event, for example a one-time guest | until the event is archived, unless you make it permanent |
Both kinds take part in events the same way, as event members.
Event members are not the same as members of a user group. User groups decide what a user may administer. Event membership decides how a user takes part in an event.
Roles and groups
Every member has exactly one event role and one event group:
| What it decides | Example | |
|---|---|---|
| Event group | Callsign pattern, TAK team color, default TAK role and Meshtastic short name | Bravo, radios B1, B2 |
| Event role | The member's function: which channels they receive and, optionally, a different TAK role | Participant, Squad Leader |
The group sets most of the profile. The role adds to it, for example a leaders' channel that only Squad Leader receives.
Roles and groups describe the event, not access rights. Who may administer what is decided by user groups in the Web app's settings.
The participant's profile
From the role, group and event settings, OpenMeshTak works out each member's profile: callsign, TAK team and role, the configuration revision it came from and, in Meshtastic events, their radio names and the channels they may use. Every file a participant downloads is built from this profile, so every device runs the same base configuration.
Draft, active, archived
| State | What happens |
|---|---|
| Draft | You prepare the event. Participants see nothing yet. |
| Active | Participants see their setup, download files and connect to TAK. |
| Archived | The event is read-only. Event accounts are removed. |
Start and end dates describe the schedule but do not change the state on their own.
Configuration revisions
Activating an event publishes its configuration as revision 1. Later changes to channels or radio settings become a new revision when you publish them. Files that participants already downloaded keep the revision they were made from. To publish, open the event's Overview tab and select Publish configuration: it lists the unpublished changes for you to confirm, and stays disabled while there are none.