In an event with multiple registration categories and multiple activities, there are many possible paths an individual registrant can take to make all their selections. Even more so, if they are registering multiple people.
You may need to control these flows in various ways, for example:
The standard registration flow is to start from one of the registration categories in the main event, and then select from each of the activities. Then, repeat that process for each additional registrant. For example, say there are three registration categories, and three activities:
| Registration Category | Activity |
|---|---|
| Delegate | Seminar |
| Spouse/Partner | Museum Tour |
| Exhibitor | Banquet |
Normally, you would select a registration category from column 1, then choose any/all of the activities in column 2, then repeat for each additional attendee. If this flow works for your event, then you do not need to make any special adjustments.
If some categories or activities are restricted to members, you can set the fee access to members only. If the registrant selects one of those fees, they will be asked to log in if they are not already, to verify their membership status. But other than that authentication/verification step, which is performed automatically, there is no change to the basic flow. The registrant is still offered all options, even though they might get blocked from some of them if they cannot authenticate themselves.
You can further restrict some fees to particular membership types, if you need to. Set the fee access to members, and then add the membership type ID to the fee configuration setting "Allowed membership types".
The standard registration flow offers all options to the registrant. Customizing the registration flow basically involves removing some options in specific cases.
To restrict which activities are offered to which main registration categories, use the fee setting "Hide from fees". Go to your activity fee, select the configure tool, and enter the main fee ID of a registration category that should not see this activity. (You can enter multiple fees IDs, separated by commas.)
For example, if the Spouse/Partner registration type should not be able to attend the Seminar, then in the Seminar registration fee, enter the Spouse/Partner fee ID into the Hide from fees setting. Then, when you register the Spouse/Partner, they will only be able to choose from the other two activities.
To hide an activity from all registration categories, enter * into Hide from fees. Then use ! to indicate exceptions. For example, *,!225 means hide from all except fee 225. This can sometimes be more convenient when an activity is only open to a small set of registration types. In the above example, if the Seminar is only available to Delegate registrants, then you could enter *,!X into the Seminar's Hide from fees setting, where X is the Delegate fee ID.
The list of main registration types is shown in two cases:
By default all registration categories are shown in both cases.
To hide a registration type from the starting screen (part 1), configure the fee, go to the Access Controls pane, and set it to Hide from "indexes". Note that this setting is ignored in part 2, so when a registrant has completed their primary registration and they go to add an additional registrant, they will then be able to select the missing registration type.
For example, if you only want the Spouse/Partner registration type to be available as an add-on, and not as a solo registration, then set it to hide from indexes. It will not be shown on the starting screen, but will reappear automatically when the registrant goes to add a second registrant to their package.
To do the opposite—show a registration type on the starting screen but remove it as an add-on option—use the Hide from fees setting. Set this to the main fee ID(s) you want to hide it from, or use the * + ! trick above to hide from all but a set of fees.
You can also do both—that is, hide it from the starting options, but also hide it in certain cases from the add-ons. For example, to make the Spouse/Partner option only available to Delegates, you would set the Spouse/Partner fee to Hide from indexes, and also set its Hide from fees to be *,!X where X is the Delegate fee ID.
To completely black out a main registration category, set it to Hide from indexes, and also Hide from fees * (with no exceptions). Then it will be hidden in all cases, and normal registrants will never see it. You will have to push out the link to the fee in some other way, such as by manually linking to it, or e-mailing it to prospective attendees.
To prevent ANY additional registrants from being added to the invoice, use the No guests option on the starting fee(s) that should be solo registrations only. If a registrant selects any No guests fee, they will not be able to add additional registrants to their registration session.
Larger events can have simultaneous activities occurring in parallel. If you want the registration system to properly enforce the time constraints so that registrants cannot double-book themselves, configure the affected fees by checking off the "Time exclusive" option.
Registrants will still see those registration options, but if they select ones that result in a time conflict, it will refuse to add the second one to the cart. The registrant has the option of removing the first one from the cart and then trying again.
Normally you need to be registered in the main event before you will be allowed to register in one of the activities. Sometimes you may want to allow people to bypass the main event registration and register directly into the activity. Select Allow bypass registration in the activity fee to make this possible.
Example: you have a conference dinner, but you would like the dinner to also be open to those who are not attending the conference.
Simply selecting the Allow bypass option will disable the validation check that you are already in the main event, but it will not otherwise assist the registrant in finding their way to the activity. So you will have to push out those bypass registration links on your own. Go to the public fee link, copy the URL, and either link to it manually from an appropriate place, or email to prospective registrants, as needed.
If you want to actively promote the bypass in your normal registration flow, you should also check off Allow bypass registration in one of your visible main fees. This will signal to the registration system that you want those bypass fees included in your main registration options.
Note that activity registration forms typically do not ask for first_name and last_name because that information has already been collected on the main registration. If you allow bypass registrations to a fee with such a form, the registrants will go onto the roster with no name. So your bypass fee forms should allow for registrant name to be collected. If there is no form for the bypass fee, the registration system will automatically collect a name.
If you need to provide special instructions to the registrant to help guide them through some complex choices, there are two places you can add help text:
Note that the Shopping Cart also has options for providing contextual help or purchase notes based on what has been added to the cart.