This article explains how Event Coordinator's can get the most out of ITM's Online Registration features - to save time and be more effective.
For an Event Coordinator, having to handle dozens of students signing up for courses, can often be quite a lot of work. But now with ITM's Attendance and Registration features, the workload has decreased significantly.
Background
Before reading further, you will need to
understand how Calendars work in ITM, and that Calendars can be made available on both the Public and Secure sections of ITM,
described here.
Displaying your Event
For an Event to be visible on any given calendar, you need to go to the Calendars tab in the Edit screen for the Event. Select the Calendars from the list that you want your Event to appear on.
If you also want it to be available publicly, you will also need to tick the 'Show on public calendars' checkbox.
Enabling Registrations
There are a number of settings on the Registrations tab will help you configure how the Registrations work. At a minimum, you need to select these settings:
You can also
- specify a deadline for people to register,
- set whether any member of the public can register (leave this option unticked to only allow existing Contacts to register).
- Use the minimum, maximum and waitlist values to take full advantage of ITM's ability to manage your participant list for you.
After you configure these settings and save your Event, visitors to your calendars will now be able to see a prominent Register button on your event's description page.
This button changes automatically depending on the circumstances. For example, if the number of Confirmed Attendees has reached the maximum class size that you defined, it changes to say 'Course Full'. If the registration deadline has passed, it says 'Closed',
and if the Event is in the past, the button disappears entirely. Once a person has signed up for an Event, the status of their registration is shown instead.
Whenever someone signs up for an Event or changes the status of their existing registration, ITM always notifies the Event Coordinator with a quick email. In Automatic Confirmation mode (described
here), ITM will also allocate spaces on the course to people as they sign up. In Manual mode, the Event Coordinator is notified, and has to Confirm each registration request.
In Automatic mode, if the participant is allocated a Confirmed space, they are sent a Confirmation email by ITM with a link back to the public calendar page about the Event. This makes it easy for them to come back and read details about the event at a later
date.
Once a participant has submitted their registration request for an Event, later they can come back and change their status in case they need to pull out. To change their status, they must provide a reason, which is included on the notification email to the
Event Coordinator.
Once an Event becomes full (i.e. the maximum class size has been reached, and all the waitlist spaces are filled), the public calendar no longer allows anyone to register for that event. Anyone who has previously registered and then pulled out, will not
be able to re-confirm their registration should they change their mind again.
When registrations are placed on the Waitlist, they are given a number so that they can be offered actual spaces in the order of first-come first-served. Should any of the participants with a Confirmed space pull out, it is up to the Event Coordinator to
talk to each of the people on the Waitlist in order until they find someone able to fill the space on the course.
In Automatic mode, the system will reserve any available spaces on the course for people on the Waitlist. In otherwords, no-one will be able to jump ahead of the people on the Waitlist if a space opens up.
Related Articles:
How Event Attendance Works
Confirmation Mode