The Basics of Event Registration

Before getting too deep, let's establish some of the key terms and concepts related to event registration.

A Typical Event Registration

Hang in there - we're almost to the meat. First let’s make a quick overview of what an event registration will look like to your members. The example below uses the default registration out of the box. While you'll see that this experience is simple and mobile-friendly, we plan to create even simpler experiences for very basic registrations (think: give me your name and we're done).

Let's get some background on the registration we're walking through below. In this case Ted Decker will be registering his two children Noah and Alexis, as well as Alexis' best friend Katie for camp. The camp costs $200 but also has an optional fee for a t-shirt.

1

Step one: Tell us how many people you plan on registering. Technically, you'll only see this screen if you've enabled Allow Multiple Registrants. Otherwise you'll be limited to a single registrant. As you can see, Ted has selected three registrants.

2

And we’re off! We'll start by entering the information required for the first child. In this case Ted has entered Katie's information.

3

Now we see the entry form for the next child. Let's pause here for a second and mention that while this case has one form for each registrant, Rock allows you to configure multiple entry screens for each registrant. OK, back to the registration. You'll see that Ted has entered Alexis' information. Notice how we've put an asterisk marking part the page. Since the registration was configured to Ask if registrants are in the same family, that's exactly what it's doing. This will help make sure that the data that is entered into Rock is consistent with the actual family structure of the individuals being registered.

4

Now it's Noah’s turn. Again notice the family selection. Ted has selected that Noah is in the same family as Alexis.

5

Now it's time to pay up! Here we see a nice break down of the costs and fees. We have the opportunity to enter a discount code as well as enter the amount we wish to pay today. You'll also note that the registrar can enter their information here also. Like the registrants, they can select which family they belong to.

6

Done!

General Settings

1 Template Name

The name of your template.

2 Active

When a template should not be used anymore you can deactivate it. You could also delete it, but that would also delete all the registrations that use it.

3 Category

To help organize registrations, you can organize and secure them by category.

4 Group Type / Group Member Role / Group Member Status

These fields help tell Rock what settings to use when it drops the person into a group. In this case they will be placed into the group with the Role of Member and the Status of Active.

5 Allow Multiple Registrants

Fairly straight forward.

6 Maximum Registrants

This limits how many people can register on a single registration.

7 Registrants In The Same Family

Creating the family structures during the registration process can be tricky. This setting allows you to give Rock hints about the people that are registering for the event. If you're hosting a pastors' conference, you'll probably want to enter No since the registrants are most likely not in the same family. Rock will then create new families for each registrant. Yes will assume that all the registrants are in the same family. Ask enables the cool functionality you saw during the walk-thru above. It provides a very elegant way for the registrar to tell you the family make-up.

8 Notify

When someone registers for an event we often can’t wait to find out. This setting allows you notify several different parties.

1. Registration Contact: This is configured on the registration instance.
2. Group Followers: The groups that the registration is linked to can be followed by people with view permissions.
3. Group Leaders: All of the individuals that have roles that are marked Is Leader in the group linked to the registration will receive an email.

9 Set Cost On

This setting determines where the cost will be set, on the template where all registration instances will share it, or on the instance.

10 Cost

The cost of the registration.

11 Minimum Initial Payment

This is the minimum amount that must be paid at the time of registration. Leaving the field blank will have the effect of requiring full payment.

12 Financial Gateway

The financial gateway you would like the financial transactions to be processed with.

13 Batch Name Prefix

Optional prefix to add the the financial batches. If left blank the prefix from the registration block will be used.

14 Add Person Note

When checked registrars and registrants will have a note added to their timeline that denotes that they have registered for the event.

15 Login Required

Requiring the guest to login ensures that a duplicate record is not created for the registrar, but it does come at the cost of requiring the guest to login (and possibly register for a login) on your site.

16 Allow Group Placement

Rock provides tools to help place your registrants into groups for you. This is helpful when creating teams or when working with camps. See the Registration Group Placements chapter for more information on this tool.

17 Allow External Updates to Saved Registrations

This setting keeps individuals from editing a registration once it has been saved. It's common that someone may come back to a registration to make a remaining payment. While there they can change any of the registrant information. Disabling the feature keeps these edits from occurring.

Forms

Now for the fun part - creating the entry form. When you see the power here you'll have no choice but to smile.

At a minimum you must collect the registrant's first and last name. But in most cases you'll want to add at least a couple more fields.

When adding fields, you have you choice of where and how they're stored. Let's look at each type.

• Person Field: These fields come right off the person's record. They include things like:
• Campus
• Address
• Email
• Birthdate
• Gender
• Marital Status
• Phone Numbers
• Person Attribute: This type allows you to take what they've entered and place it into a person attribute.
• Group Member Attribute: This allows you to store their entered values into a person attribute of the linked group.
• Registration Attribute: The final type allows you to configure new attributes that will be stored with the registration.

You'll notice a few other settings on the add screen. These settings allow you to:

• Common Value: Filling out forms can be tedious. This setting allows you to take the entered value from the first registration and auto-populate the same field for the subsequent registrants.
• Internal: This setting allows you to define the attribute, but keep it from being displayed on the external registration form. It will be made available however when editing the form internally. This is used for internal fields that will be entered after the registration takes place.
• Use Current Value: In an effort to reduce the amount of data that must be entered, this setting takes the current value from the registar's record. This is especially helpful for attributes like 'Address'.
• Show On Grid: This will place this attribute on the grid of registrants. It can be very helpful as long as you limit the number of items you put on the grid.
• Pre-Text / Post-Text: Like the workflow entry forms, these fields allow you to surround your entry fields with custom HTML markup. With some basic web design knowledge you can use these fields to create richer experiences.

Optional Fees

We get it - events are tricky and often come with odd requirements for additional fees. We've tried to think of as many combinations as possible when creating the features here so we have a lot to cover.

Before we look at how to configure fees let's look at the various types of fees that are available. Below is a chart showing the four different fee types.

1 Single Option Fee

You either want it or you don't.

2 Single Option Fee with Quantity

You can get as many as you want.

3 Multiple Options

Variety is the spice of life.

4 Multiple Options with Quantity

What's better than a little spice? A whole lot!

Now that we see what's possible, let's learn how to set up these fees.

1 Name

This will be used for the label that goes above the fee selection.

2 Options

Here is where you'll make the determination of whether the fee has multiple options. When selected, it will display a key/value input that allows you to enter optional text as well as the cost.

3 Enable Quantity

Pretty obvious what this does (enables the quantity picker).

4 Discount Applies

Sometimes you'll want the discount calculation to apply to fees sometimes not.

Discounts

Discounts allow you to give individuals a code to reduce the amount of their registration. This discounts can be in the form of a percentage of costs/fees or a fixed amount.

Confirmation Email

After completing the registration, you can set up a confirmation email. This email also acts as an emailed receipt.

While you're free to modify this email, we've provided a template that should work in most cases. Below we've shown what this sample email will look like. Note that the highlighted section comes from the Additional Confirmation Details field of the registration instance.

Reminder Email

We all appreciate reminders. Especially for events we may have registered for long ago. On this screen you can edit the reminder emails. When you create the registration instance (discussed next), you' will configure when this email will be sent.

Again, we’ve provided you with a capable template (shown below). One thing of note here is that the template relies on the registration instance's Additional Reminder Details to set when the event will occur. We've highlighted this part in the email below.

Payment Reminder Email

Allowing partial payments is great, but getting the remaining balance has always been difficult. That was until Rock came around. There's now several tools for getting the remaining balance quickly and easily. The configuration items in this section help setup the communication tools for these reminders. For the most part you can leave them as is. You can read more about these tools in the section below.

Terms / Text

Event registrations can be used for several different kinds of events. To help fit different types of events, we allow you to customize many of the terms used during the registration process. In this section you can also configure the success text that displays on the final page of the registration screen.

Instance Settings

Clicking the from the instance grid will bring up the instance editor show below.

1 Registration Instance Name

This is actually an important field that will be shown during the registration process. It will be used to describe the event that you are registering for (e.g. Thank You for Registering for "_______").

2 Active

This determines if the registration instance is currently active.

3 Registration Starts

The date and time that the registration starts.

4 Registration Ends

The date and time that the registration ends.

5 Account

The financial account that the registration costs/fees should be tied to.

6 Contact Name / Phone / Email

The information that should be displayed as the contact for the registration process.

7 Send Reminder Date

The date and time that the reminder should be sent.

8 Reminder Sent

This displays whether the reminder has been sent. This also allows for sending multiple reminders. Once your first reminders is sent you can change the Send Reminder Date and uncheck this box. As far as Rock is concerned, that first reminder never existed and will send the new one at the appropriate date/time.

9 Additional Reminder Details

This text is used in the reminder email template defined on the registration template. It's important that you include information on when and where the event will occur. For more information on the reminder email, see the template section above.

10 Additional Confirmation Details

Like the reminder details, this field is used to provide additional, instance-specific, information to the template stored on the template.

Now that we've shown you how to make a new registration instance from this page, we should tell you that you'll rarely ever create an instance from here. More about that later in the chapter Bringing It All Together.

Promoting Your Registration

The easiest way to give your guests access to an event registration is through a calendar event. The Bringing It All Together chapter below covers the process of linking calendar events to registrations. Once linked, the event detail will display the Register button as show below.

You can also link directly to an event registration using a URL. The formats for doing so are:

• http://www.yourexternalsite.com/page/999?RegistrationInstanceId=999 (where the page id and registration instance id match the appropriate values)
• http://www.yourexternalsite.com/Registration/<slugname> (you can find more on slugs in the Bringing It All Together chapter below)

Managing Registrations

You can mange the registrations by going to the Event Instance Detail Page (Tools > Event Registration > Registration Detail > Registration Instance). At the top of this page you'll see the details of the registration with an Edit button to modify its settings. You'll also notice three tabs.

Registrations Tab

The Registrations Tab shows all of the registrations that have been entered into the system. Remember these are registrations that could have multiple registrants.

From this tab you can view and edit an existing registration or manually add a registration yourself (great if you also allow paper registrations).

1 Registration Details

This shows the details of the registration including information on the Registrar. You can easily resend the confirmation email from here.

2 Registrant Details

Next you will see a panel for each registrant on the registration. You can also edit their registration details from this screen.

3 View Edit Payments

This link allows you to view and edit payments. We'll discuss this further below.

4 Audit Log

This button allows you to view information about how to registration was entered and any financial changes that were made.

5 Move Registration

Sometimes a registration needs to be moved. Perhaps the person registered for the wrong instance of the event, or maybe they just just changed their mind. Don't worry, moving a regsitration is easy! You can however only move the event to an instance using the same registration template (moving them across different templates would be rather difficult as there would be different fields, costs, fees and discounts.) This button allows you to comlete the move of the registration.

6 Add New Registrant

Notice that at the bottom of the screen you can add more registrants to the registration if needed.

Registrants Tab

The next tab shows a listing of all registrants for the event. Clicking a row will show you the registrant's details as well as the rest of the related registration information. If this screen seems familiar, it's because it's the same screen as the one above except that we scroll down to the selected registrant's information.

Payments Tab

The payments tab allows you to view all the payments that have been made for registrations for this instance. Clicking on one of these tabs allows you view the financial transaction for the payment. From this transaction detail screen you can process a refund for the payment.

Linkages Tab

This tab will make more sense once you read the Bringing It All Together section. Basically, it shows all of the related calendar events and groups that are linked to this registration.

Manual Reminders

One way to remind individuals of remaining balances is to manually send them a reminder. You can do this from the Registration Instance page.

Once you click the Send Payment Reminder link you'll see the page below. This page allows you to customize the reminder text and who should receive the email.

1

The "from" name and email as well as the subject should be filled in for you based on the values supplied from the registration template. You can edit these values to suit your needs.

2

Next you see a preview of the email the individuals will receive. The preview uses the information for the first person on the grid below to give you a precise view of what the person will receive in their inbox.

3

You can choose to edit the email template if you wish by clicking the Source toggle. This will display the Lava template that creates this email.

4

Below the preview you'll see a list of those with a remaining balance. When creating the list, Rock looks at the Payment Reminder Time Span setting for the registration template. If the registration has already received a reminder or was created within this timespan, the registration is greyed out and is not selected (the checkbox is checked). You can, however, override this and select specific registrations or all registrations.

5

Click the Send Reminders button and you're off to the races!

Automatic Reminders

Manual reminders are nice, but automatic ones…well they're even better! If you provide a Payment Reminder Time Span on the registration template, Rock will send an automatic reminder to the registrations based on that timeframe. So for example, if you provide the value of 30 for the Payment Reminder Time Span, they will receive a reminder every 30 days until their balance is paid.

This sending is done through the Event Payment Reminders job under System Settings > Jobs Administration. This job does have one configuration parameter you should be aware of. The job Cut-off Date is the number of days past the registration close date to send reminders. After this cut-off, reminders will need to be sent manually to prevent eternal reminders.

Placement

Once the placement feature is enabled, you will see an extra tab under your registration instance. From this tab you can quickly place the registrants into groups of your choosing. Let's see how this works.

The first thing you'll notice is the parent group drop-down. This setting allows you to pick a group that will become the top level or container group for all of the placement groups. When you select a parent group, you may notice that some of the registrants disappear. Don't worry, this just indicates that that registrant is already in a child group under the parent. Hiding them allows you to focus solely on the registrants who have not yet been placed. If you'd like to change a registrant's placement group, simply remove them from the group and they'll re-appear.

After selecting the parent group it's time to select the placement group for each child. Note that the registrant list shows all the attributes that are selected as Show On Grid. During the placement process you may wish to adjust which attributes are shown.

Once you have selected the placement groups, select Place to add the individuals to the groups.

Adding Payments

While most of the time payments for events will be handled by the registrar during the registration process, you can manually enter payments on their behalf from the registration details page Tools > Event Registration > Registration Template > Registration Instance > Registration (ok... that seems complex, but it's really not as bad as it look on paper...)

From the Registration Details page you can manage payments using the View/Edit Payments Link (highlighted below).

Once you click the link you will see the Payments Edit Panel. The screenshot below shows you all the options on this screen.

1 Payment Detail

Clicking on the date of the payment will take you to the financial transaction detail page for the payment. From here you can get more information about the payment and process a full or partial refund.

2 Process A New Payment

Selecting this option allows you to run a new payment through Rock.

3 Add Manual Payment

This optional allows you to enter the details of a manual (off-line) payment.

4 Cancel

To go back to the view mode simply select the cancel button.

Refunds

Processing full or partial refunds through Rock is simple. Simply click the Payment Detail link show in call-out #1 above to proceed to the financial transaction detail page for the payment. From here you will see the screen below. Note the refund button at the bottom of the page.

Clicking the Refund button will show the refund modal below.

1 Amount

This tells Rock how much the refund should be for. By default the full amount of the financial transaction is entered into the box.

2 Refund Reason

This dropdown allows you to pick from a standard set of refund reasons. You can modify this list under Admin Tools > General Settings > Defined Types > Refund Reasons

3 Sumary

This field allows you to enter specific notes about the refund.

4 Process Refund Through Gateway

This checkbox determines if the refund should be automatically run through the payment gateway or just entered into Rock (unchecked).

Partial Payments

Partial payments are a popular feature for events with higher costs, like camps. The age ol' problem with them comes when it's time to complete the payments. May times people want to pay off the balance, but they're not sure how. Other times... well... they just need a reminder. Let's look at several strategies on how to make partial payments work for you.

Recent Registration Block

Rock also ships with a Recent Registration block on the My Account page of the external website. This block lists any recent registrations and notes if a payment is due. Clicking the link will take them to a page where they can complete the payment.

Event Calendars

Every organization has the need for multiple calendars. Even a small organization will have a public and private (internal) calendar. Most will have several more. You can administrate calendars under Tools > Calendars.

Out of the box Rock ships with two pre-configured calendars:

• Internal: Used for internal events like staff meetings retreats, etc.
• Public: For events targeted towards your members and attendees.

You can add additional calendars by selecting the add button in the upper right of the panel. When adding or editing a calendar you will see the screen below:

1 Name

The name of the calendar.

2 Active

Whether the calendar is currently active.

3 Description

A quick reminder of what the calendar is for and how it should be used.

4 Icon CSS Class

The Font Awesome icon class the calendar should use.

5 Event Attributes

Each calendar can define custom attributes available to the events that are on them. This is where you define these attributes.

6 Content Channels

We'll cover content channels later in the Bringing It All Together chapter. For now just know that you can link content channels to events to allow you to easily promote them.

Calendar Security

You can set up security for each calendar you define. This allows you to delegate the management of these calendars and their events. You set security from the Calendar Details Page by pressing the button.

Events

Once you've created your calendar, you're ready to place events on them. The Calendar Details Page (Tools > Calendars > Calendar) shows a list of the current events for a calendar. As you get more and more events you'll want to start using the filters on this grid to help you manage the events that are displayed.

The event add/edit screen below shows you how to manage the events on the calendar.

1 Name

The name of the event.

2 Active

Whether the event is currently active.

2 Approved

If you have 'Approval' permission to the calendar you'll be able to approve the event here.

4 Summary

A quick description of the event that will display on the calendar when listing multiple events.

5 Description

A more complete description of the event that will be displayed on the event detail page.

6 Audiences

This helps to categorize the events by those who would be most interested. These are the same audience choices that are used for the other web content channels.

7 Photo

A picture is worth a thousand words right? So don’t skimp - include one on your event.

8 Additional Calendars

As we mentioned above, you can place your event on as many calendars as you'd like.

9 Details URL

If you provide a web address here it will be used instead of the Rock event details page when your guests click 'More Information' from the calendar.

10 Attribute Values

Remember how we could define custom attributes for the events on custom calendars? This is where you'll add the values for these attributes. The attributes are grouped by calendar.

Event Occurrences

We have our calendar and now, events. All that's left is to add the event occurrences that determine when these events occur. Some events may only occur once, while other apply often. Either way, you'll add the occurrences from the Event Details Page.

1 Campus

First we must select which campus this event will occur on (single campus organizations can select either all or the main campus).

2 Contact Information

Next we select who the contact will be and provide their email and phone number.

3 Location Description

Now we can describe the location where the event will be held. Instead of using a location picker, we decided to allow you to enter a more descriptive text of where the event is being held.

4 Schedule

Ok, now for the important part. When will the event occur? Hopefully by now you've had a chance to use the Rock Schedule Builder tool in other features. It's a powerful tool for defining complex re-occurring schedules. It also does simple one-time schedules too.

5 Registration Instance / Group

Most often, you'll want to create a registration for your calendar event. Instead of having to leave the screen to create the registration instance, you can do it right here. We'll talk more about how to do this in the Bringing It All Together chapter.

6 Occurrence Note

This note will be shown on the calendar detail screen on the pubic website. It's used to provide custom notes about the specific occurrence.

You might be thinking, "Hey! Reoccurring schedules? I thought we were supposed to create a new occurrence each time the event occurred?" Yes... and no... Some occurrences of an event may last two to three weeks (say a single occurrence of a three-week stewardship class). In this case, make a single occurrence with a reoccurring schedule.

Once you save your calendar occurrence, you'll be taken to the occurrence detail screen. From here you'll see that you can add any content channel items that have been configured for the calendar. This allows you to enter and track promos for your event.

Calendar Blocks

Below is what the calendar looks like on the external website. These blocks have a ton of settings (much of the page is rendered in Lava so the possibilities are endless).

Securing Calendars

While those in the RSR - Staff Workers and RSR - Staff Like Workers roles can view and add new events only those in the RSR - Calendar Administration can approve events and create new calendars.

Securing Event Registrations

Like calendars those in the RSR - Staff Workers and RSR - Staff Like Workers roles can create new instances of registrations but only those in the RSR - Event Registration Administration can create new registration templates.

From a financial perspective anyone in the staff/staff-like roles can add payments to a registration but out of the box you will need to be in the RSR - Finance Administration role to process refunds.

Calendar Block Calendar Lava

This block is the basic calendar list block for your external calendar. The screen shot below shows the block in its default form, however this block comes with a ton of settings to change the way it is displayed. Below is a list of settings that this block provides.

• Event Calendar: The calendar (public, internal, etc.) to pull events from.
• Default View Option: Which view option (day, week or month) to initially show .
• Details Page: The page to navigate to, to show the event's details.
• Campus Filter Display Mode: Options to show a campus filter (Hidden, Plain, Panel Open, Panel Closed)
• Audience Filter Display Mode: Options to show an audience filter (Hidden, Plain, Panel Open, Panel Closed)
• Filter Audiences: Allows you to filter which audiences you'd like to show as filter options.
• Show Date Range Filter: Determines whether a date range filter should be displayed.
• Show Small Calendar: Determines whether the small calendar in the upper left should be shown.
• Show Day View: Determines whether the day view should be shown as an option.
• Show Week View: Determines whether the week view should be shown as an option.
• Show Month View: Determines whether the month view should be shown as an option.
• Enable Campus Content: Determines whether the campus context should be used to filter the events (assumes that a campus context is in use on your site.)
• Lava Template: The Lava template that will be used to format the list of filtered events.
• Start of Week Day: Determines what day is the start of a week.
• Set Page Title: Determines if the block should set the page title with the calendar name.
• Enable Debug: This setting helps you create your Lava template by allowing you to view the Lava objects available.

Event Item Occurence Detail Event Item Occurence Lava

Once you pick an event from the calendar, this is the block that displays the details for the event occurrence. This page is formatted entirely using Lava, so customize at will.

• Registration Page: The page to navigate to for registration.
• Set Page Title: Determines if the block should set the page title with the event item name.
• Lava Template: The Lava template that will be used to format the list of filtered events.
• Set Page Title: Determines if the block should set the page title with the calendar name.
• Enable Debug: This setting helps you create your Lava template by allowing you to view the Lava objects available.

Event Item Occurence List Event Item Occurence List Lava

This is more of a specialty block. It lists upcoming occurrences for a specific event item. This is helpful for events like specific classes (e.g. Starting Point, Stewardship Class) or events that routinely happen (e.g. Baptisms).

• Event Item: The event item to show occurrences for.
• Campuses: Which campuses to show occurrences for.
• Use Campus Content: Determines whether the campus context should be used to filter the events (assumes that a campus context is in use on your site.)
• Date Range: You can filter the occurence list by a sliding date range (e.g. upcoming two weeks).
• Max Occurrences: The maximum number of occurrences to show.
• Registration Page: The page to navigate to for registration.
• Lava Template: The Lava template that will be used to format the list of filtered events.
• Set Page Title: Determines if the block should set the page title with the calendar name.
• Enable Debug: This setting helps you create your Lava template by allowing you to view the Lava objects available.

Event Item Occurence List By Audience Event Item Occurence List By Audience Lava

This is another specialty block. It lists upcoming occurrences for a specific audience (All Church, Youth, Children, etc.). This is helpful for pages devoted to these audiences.

• Audience: The audience to filter on.
• Calendar: Which calendar to use.
• Use Campus Content: Determines whether the campus context should be used to filter the events (assumes that a campus context is in use on your site.)
• Date Range: You can filter the occurence list by a sliding date range (e.g. upcoming two weeks).
• Max Occurrences: The maximum number of occurrences to show.
• Registration Page: The page to navigate to for registration.
• Lava Template: The Lava template that will be used to format the list of filtered events.
• Set Page Title: Determines if the block should set the page title with the calendar name.
• Enable Debug: This setting helps you create your Lava template by allowing you to view the Lava objects available.

Event Item Personalized RegistrationEvent Item Personalized Registration

This is a quirky, but insanely cool little block. Its main use is to faciliate internal registrations for special classes from an individual's Person Profile page. Let's dig into a sample to understand this better.

Say your organization has a special orientation class called Starting Point. Previous attendance in this class is really important to you so you've create a special badge to show if someone has attended this class. But... you also want to easily be able to register people for upcoming classes when they call or email you. You can then set the markup of your badge to link to a page with this block if they have not attended Starting Point. This block takes the person and looks up upcoming class dates based on their campus. Once you select a date you can select other members of the family and create a registration to add them to the class.

It should be noted that this block creates an online registration and then redirects to the registration block to complete the process. This allows for the collection of extra fields configured for the registration and also allows for things like confirmation and reminder emails.

• Include Family Members: Determines if a list of family members should be displayed to include in the registration.
• Days In Range: The number of days in the future to filter event occurrences for.
• Max Display Events: The maximum number of occurrences to show.
• Registration Page: The page to redirect to, to complete the registration.
• Start Registration At Beginning: You can optionally choose to redirect to the beginning of the registration process (a good option if you expect additional custom fields to be needed) or the end (a good option if additional fields are not needed as you can quickly complete the registration).

The block requires the following inputs through the URL:

• PersonGuid: The Guid of the person to be registered.
• EventItemId: The Id of the event item to process the registration for.