"event-first" registration flow

[kmarkley]

There are currently 2 ways to register someone for an event from the backend.  If you go to the contact page event tab and click the button you can create a registration for that contact. Alternatively, by selecting "register event participant" from the menu, you can register anyone (including creating a new contact) for any event.  The trouble I have is that selecting the event from a long drop list is error prone and the pause while civi loads the price set can be kind of long.

It would be cool if there were a way to start the registration process with the event pre-selected.  Still have autocomplete and create-new for the contact.  "Save and New" would start a new registration for the same event.

What is the use-case?  Selling tickets at the door.  Only one event is relevant in this situation and speed matters getting people registered and on their merry way.

I realize that this is a sort of biggish change, but I wanted to put it out there to see if anyone else thought it might be helpful.

[Donald Lobo]

i think adding this feature to the "event" page (somewhere from the admin side maybe?) is not too hard. we have most of the code already and just need to reuse the code and pre-select the event id (and load the price set/amount fees as required)

does seem useful, would be cool if you can work on it and/or sponsor the needed work.

lobo

[Dave Greenberg]

Added to 3.3 roadmap 'candidates' to keep it on the radar.

[kmarkley]

We can't sponsor this now.  But our use of civi is so events-centric (a poor org's box office) that it is not hard to image that we might be able/willing to down the road a bit.

i think adding this feature to the "event" page (somewhere from the admin side maybe?) is not too hard.

I'm not sure where the link should live.  To be honest, I expect that I would want to put in a block or menu (perhaps even manually) so that it is always 1 click away when the phone rings or someone walks up to the registration table.


But as I think about this, there is another key bit of info I'd like to move to a different point in the "flow".  Selecting between live cc processing and "offline" mode (a terribly confusing descriptor, btw) should logically be later in the process.  The "register event participant" menu item only accommodates "offline" mode, but I learned rather quickly that you can hack the URL by adding "&mode=live" to do admin-side cc processing.  Thus I have made "Tickets-CC" and "Tickets-Other" links in the sidebar visible to every civi user.

But the natural conversational progression when registering someone by phone or in person is:

1. What event?
2. Your name?
3. Number of tickets, price level etc.?
4. How would you like to pay?
(2 and 3 are kind of interchangeable)

As it stands now, the conversation has to start with payment method.  I don't suppose it would be possible to switch between live and offline mode after the other info is entered?

[Donald Lobo]

As it stands now, the conversation has to start with payment method.  I don't suppose it would be possible to switch between live and offline mode after the other info is entered?

I dont think it will be too hard. I think it would need to be ajax driven and we'll need to pull in the credit card block if live and the offline payment block if not based on the choice made at 4

lobo