An EVENT may be a gala, a workshop, or any activity with a start and end time for which you want to offer and manage registrations.

  • A volunteer event with no fee and a limit to registrations where the volunteers will receive a t-shirt in their size
  • A parent-child class where the parent can register multiple children
  • A ticketed gala with different entry times and fees with a meal choice
  • A tabled event, with the ability to sponsor an entire table and enter the attendees later
  • A multi-day, multi-track event with different activities packaged and priced differently for early-bird and full-price registration


Other Big River items can be associated with an Event when it is published to your catalog

  • Donations in lieu of attendance
  • Corporate sponsorships
  • Raffles
  • Merchandise


An Event contains the following elements:

  • Name
  • Optional Time & Location for presentation in the Catalog
  • Optional start and end time for public registrations
  • Optional limit to the number of registrations for the event
  • Event Packages - the registration items you will publish to your catalog
  • Agenda Items - optional detailed activities happenning within the event that you want to track discretely
  • Ticket Template - optional HTML document with optional merge fields that will be generated for each registrant and attached to the email receipt
  • Registrations - records for each registrant to the event


Event Setup

An Event is created using only a few descriptive properties:

This sets up the container for event packages, registrations, etc.  You can access the Event from the Event link on Event Packages or from the Pages menu, on the sidebar.


Event Packages

You sell registrations on your catalog and forms by publishing Event Packages defined in the event.  Event packages are defined like other items in Big River.  They have the common item properties of name, image, price, custom fields and restrictions etc.  You can create an Event Package from within an event or within your catalog.  In the latter case, you will be prompted to add the Event Package to an Event, or to create a new Event to contain the Event Package.



Custom Fields allow you to create meal selections, shirt sizes, and other additional data you want to collect for the registration.


By using the Start Sales and End Sales date controls, you can create early-bird pricing packages that are available for a limited time, after which regular pricing is offerred.


The quantity restrictions allow you to control ticket sales and scalping:

  • Total available:  total number of registrations to sell from this package
  • Limit per transaction:  caps the number of registrations that can be bought at once
  • Limit per email:  total number of registrations that can be bought per person (via their email address)


Attendees

When an event registration is purchased, a registration record is created for every attendee defined in the package.  By default, it is assumed that the buyer and the attendee are one and the same. If you want to support a scenario where the buyer may not be the attendee, or where a registration includes more than one individual, you will define that on the Attendees tab.


Attendee definitions are reusable in Big River.  You can select an existing definition from the dropdown menu or click the + next to Attendees dropdown to create a new definition.  The fields defining attendees for an event are:

  • Name: Internal name for the definition. Choose a name that will make the use clear so you can easily find it in the dropdown menu for future user.
  • Prompt on Pages: This is the prompt that appears on the item when a buyer is purchasing it.
  • Rule type: This defines the number of possible attendees included in this registration.
    • One: One attendee per registration
    • Fixed: There are a fixed number of attendees possible (i.e. 2 for a couples ticket or 8 for a table of eight).
    • Open Number: There are an unlimited number of possible attendees
  • Include Buyer?: Should it be assumed that the buyer is one of the attendees?
    • Buyer – assume that the buyer is an attendee
    • Not Buyer – assume that the buyer is not an attendee (i.e. parent buying registration for kids art class)
    • Either / Primpt – The buyer may or may not be an attendee and will be asked if he/she will be attending or if the registration is for someone else.
  • Prompt For Contacts: If there are a fixed number of attendees, you may expose all of the fields for the possible attendees, or you may prompt the buyer to click “ADD” to add attendees as-needed.   For larger numbers for attendees, such as tables, this is preferred.

  • Number: Number of possible attendees on this registration. Enter 999 if RULE TYPE is OPEN NUMBER.
  • Checkboxes: Select the information you want to collect for each attendee.
  • Custom Fields: Add custom fields to collect additional information for each attendee (i.e. t-shirt size, meal choice, etc.). You can SELECT an existing custom field, or create a new one. Add as many custom fields as you need.
  • Minimum Required:  the minimum number of attendees that must be specified (includes the buyer if appropriate)

When an event registration is purchased, a registration record is created for every attendee defined in the package.


Activities

Detailed activities allow you to manage a multi-day and/or multi-track event efficiently:

  • A Convention with professional and spouse/guest tracks with different pricing
  • A multi-day event with different activities on different days when people may arrive n any day and take part in only a limited part of the event

By using activities you can keep accurate counts of the number of registrants to the discrete parts of your event which you can use to manage vendors specific to those events

  • How many professionals are attending the seated luncheon
  • How many guests are taking the days tours
  • How many total professionals and guests are attending the closing banquet

You create activities on the Activities tab of the Event or any Event Package, and you add Activities to an Event Package on the Activities tab of the event package using the Select button.  

Reports roll up the number of attendees per activity.


Publishing Events

Event Packages are published to catalogs and landing pages like other Big River items.  Events are usually published within a category in the form of an Activity Aggregator.  This collects items into a single page in the catalog with the ability to choose from multiple items to add to the cart without moving between item pages:


From the detailed editor for a Category:


  • Click Activity Pages on the left menu
  • Click Create Item Aggregator


You will be prompted for the content which will be used in the card for the aggregator on the Category page:


After you select the Create button, you will be in the detailed editor for the aggregator, and can select the event packages you want to post on the page.  From here you can add other items from your catalog such as donations or merchandise:



Registrations

A Registration record is created for each attendee to the event.  You can view, change and export the registrations for an event or for a specific event package on the Registrations tab.



A registration record is created whether the contact information for the attendee is filled out or not.  For example if someone purchases a table of 8, and you have set it up so that they are not required to enter all the attendees, registration records will be created for each of the 8.  This enables the correct count of registrations to be reported, and restrictions to be observed.  Later when the names of the attendees are known, you can edit the corresponding registration records, adding contacts if necessary by clicking on the popup link:

You can enter or change the attendee by searching in the Attendee box or create a new one by clicking the plus button.


Dashboard and Reports

The Event Overview tab shows the number of registrations and history of registrations over time.  The Reports tab has a number of reports relevant to events, filtered automatically in the context of the current event.


You can generate a list of registrations from the Registrations report on the Reports tab.  This will include all registrant and attendee info as well as custom fields (meal, shirt size) associated with the registration.