CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I am using CiviCRM 4.5.2 on Joomla 2.5.17.  I am a newbie to CiviCRM, so I hope what I describe below is user error (or I hope I have found a known defect).

Setup:
I created an Event of new type "Exhibition" to be side-by-side with a regular medical conference.  The new "Exhibition" event will be used by exhibitors and they have a different registration and price set than the doctors for the conference.  I made the participant role to be of a new type "Exhibitor" (although if this is part of the problem, I am happy to change it back to "Attendee".)

I then created a Custom Field Set named "Exhibitor" to be used for "Participants (Event Type)" of "Exhibition".  It's main purpose is to collect booth information such as preferred booth number, power needs, etc.  I then created a new Profile of "Booth Information" which included only fields from the "Exhibitor" field set.  Upon saving, I noticed the new profile is of type "ParticipantEventType::Exhibition".

I then went back into the event and Online Registration page and attempted to select Include Profile only to find that the "Booth Information" profile isn't listed in the drop down.  If I Create a new profile directly in the Include Profile, none of my new fields are listed in the Participants fields.

Attempted Workaround:
If I play around and change the field set type to be a generic "Participants" and then go into the "Booth Information" profile, edit a field and then save, the profile changes to type "Participants" but it still doesn't show up in the Include Profile drop down.  So I think I ruled out this having to do with my event type.

Successful Workaround:
If I change the field set to type "Individual" and then update a field in "Booth Information" and save, the profile changes to type "Individual" and then it shows in the drop down but that is not what I want.  I only want the field set to be part of the Participant for the event, not to be part of the Individual.

However, if I then go back and change the field set type back to "Participants" or "Participants (Event Type)" of "Exhibition", the profile continues to be there as an Included Profile but the name in the drop down is "- select -".  I can see and Edit the fields, but it concerns me that the drop down shows "- select -".  Is the profile still correctly attached to the online registration.  I don't want to feel that I have tricked CiviEvent to do what I want.

Questions:
Am I using the field concept correctly?  What am I doing wrong?

Is it a defect to not have the profile show up in the drop down?  Or is it a defect that I can get it to be included as long as I make the field set be of type Individual first, include the profile, then change the field set to be of type Participant?

I retraced my steps in the demo site for Joomla: http://joomla.demo.civicrm.org/

It is at the lower version of 4.4 (not 4.5.2).  It worked as desired (and expected).  The page layout of the Add Profile and Fields are different so I am left wondering if something in 4.5.2 is now different.  It would be great if the demo site could be upgraded to 4.5.2 so I could attempt to reproduce the issue there.  Is there a forum for making that type of request?

I am also going to redo everything from scratch in my environment.  Maybe I set up the Fields wrong (I have been tweaking and updating them for a couple weeks now in an attempt to overcome this issue).

I have entered data into the sandbox using the event "NWNPC Test" with an type of "Exhibition".  It replicates the undesired behavior of not being having the "Exhibitor Information" profile show up in the Include Profile drop down list.  "Exhibitor Information" shows in the list as a derived type of "ParticipantEventType::Exhibition".

That led me to query the Issue tracker and with some searching, I found this:
https://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-15427

with text of "Profiles that use fields from custom fieldsets that have "Used for" set to Participants (Event type), Participants (Event Name) or Participants (Role) are not available for inclusion in event online registration. "

That describes my problem exactly!  It shows closed yesterday and fixed in 4.5.3.  So my next question: is there a page which shows the release schedule?

good sleuthing

there is some reference to release cycle on LTS here and i assume dates are same for 4.5.x

https://civicrm.org/comment/8260#comment-8260