in 4.5.0 Participant registration no longer showing only the active events

[Flaf]

After upgrading to CiviCRM 4.5.0 (on Wordpress) we noticed a disturbing change in the registration form for events.

In the previous versions, the "select event" field was showing a drop down list of the currently active event.

In the new version (4.5.0) we have a gorgeous new drop down  but it is listing every event in the database; currently active ones + pass event.

This has three disturbing impact:
1- The list can become quite long and will probably take much longer to generate for org. that have been using CiviEvent for a long time.

2- The list is show, correctly, by date but if we have a long lasting event it is push down the list by all the small (short live) events and become difficult to find.
For example: In our org. we have weekly food distribution that we manage as weekly event but we also have a "generic" event that we use to register people who get emergency food help outside the regular distribution periods. This "generic" event is open for the year. With the new drop-down it will get push down every week by the 3 regular food distribution event that gets create.

3- Finally, having all those pass event available for selection will increase the risk of human error while registering people.

Is there a setting to control the content of the drop down list 

The image below was taken on the 23th of sept.
We see that many pass event (that don't show in the manage event view) are still showing as available selection.

[Dan C]

The new drop down isn't just a dropdown, it is a search box like the Quick Search at the top of the site.  So while the dropdown shows everything, if you start typing in the name of the event you are looking for it will shorten the list as you type until you can reach the one you like.  This way you have access to all of your events without changing a setting like you had to in Civi 4.4 if you wanted to register someone for an event that had already ended.

[Flaf]

Thanks for the info.
I had figured that one out but it's nice to see it confirm.

Unfortunately this is going to be a major pain for most org that have regular events like weekly class or, in our case, weekly food distribution event.
Most org will do like us; keep the same name for the evnt and append the date to make it unique.
With that kind of naming convention the "search" feature will not resolve the problem.

For example:
You have a weekly food distribution event that you named the model: "Food distribution"
Each week you create a new event, based on the model, and add the date. You end up with a list that look like this:

- Food distribution 24-9-2014
- Food distribution 18-9-2014
- Food distribution 10-9-2014
- Food distribution 2-9-2014
- Food distribution 26-8-2014
etc

So to use the search fonction would force our people to type "Food distribution 24-9" to find today's event quickly.
They will have to do it for EVERY registration they do (50-100 per event)

Can anyone suggest a way to revert to the old behavior for this field?

We are ruuning one of our event today and i'm 99% convince that I will be asked to revert to 4.4.6 despite all the other nice features in 4.5.0.

Events are one of or two main use of CiviCRM and our volunter staff can become quite vocal when a "new" feature actually make their work more complex .

[Eileen]

Do they tend to register lots of people for the same event at once? I usually recommend people use the front end forms - even for back office registrations. If you add &cid=0 to an event or membership form you can enter another person's details.

This also gets you past restrictions on what types of credit cards you can use and usually gives you a better data entry experience. If a form is ONLY used for data entry I also have a trick to redirect people back to the start page once they've finished (frontendpageoptions extension which I don't usually promote because it has a dependency on entity_settings extension)

[Dan C]

It's good to know about the cid=0 trick, but I tend to take the opposite opinion and recommend people don't enter using the front end forms.  On Wordpress and Drupal installs I have seen too many instances where someone does it while signed in and because they don't know the cid=0 part they end up overwriting their own record several times.  And it is almost next to impossible to untwist their database after that.  It's a very dangerous way to go.

I do think that he has a point about not being able to apply a filter to the list to only show active events, or only search the active ones.  This is something I think would be worth considering for the near future (unless someone has a reason why this was purposely left out).