CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

We are a not-for-profit using the CiviEvent for registrations for a conference where we expect 500+ attendees.   It has 4 sessions where there are concurrent presentations.

When someone registers they must choose the presentations they will attend during each session as some presentations are limited to just 12 participants.

The ability to set the maximum number of participants for each price field option is great, but it doesn't seem to work reliably.   

I could be wrong but it seems to me that the number of participants for an option is checked when the registration process starts, but it is not checked again when the registration is submitted.   This means that an option can be oversubscribed quite easily.

For example.  If the max particpants for option 1 is 12 and there are only 11 for the option when John starts registering, his registration screen will show that he can choose option 1.  John is interupted during the registration process and doesn't return to complete it until 30 minutes later.  He has selected option 1 and his registration is OK'd.

However, whilst John was attending to his emergency, Mary started and completed her registration for the event also choosing option 1.  She is the 12th participant for the session and John is actually 13th. 

When John's registration was submitted it should have been declined with the message - "Option 1 is no longer available please select another option" in similar way to the error message you get if you try to register multiple participants and one of them has already registered themselves.

If I am wrong and the number of participants for an option is checked when the registration is submitted,  why do I have 13 participants in one of the options where the maximum is set to 12? (I have set the participant count to 1 and the option cannot be selected by anymore people but there are 13 in the group, not 12.)

I would certainly like to be able to pay our developer to do the work, but we are still converting our entire system to civiCRM and are rather stretched for funds at the moment.   There are other modifications on our list that have a higher priority and I will have to wait to see if there is any money left at the end.  In the mean time I have indicated to registrants that places in the very restricted sessions are provisional only and will be confirmed closer to the conference.

I am hoping that some of our higher priorities might be useful to the civiCRM community and will be asking our developer for his opinion in that regard.  I am very aware that free open source software can only thrive if people contribute back when they can.