If you’re planning to host an event with sessions/events - e.g., pick the time that works best for you, choose one or many events from a list, etc. - there are a few different ways to set up your form. This guide walks through each type of setup and highlights what each setup will allow you to do as well as limitations to consider.
Appointment Scheduling (Recurring Time Slots)
RSVPify’s recurring time slots feature is best suited for events that happen many times. The main block of an event that is using recurring time slots appears in the form of a calendar, so it works best for events that have multiple slots across different days. This setup can be very useful, but it is not perfect for every event type. An example of an event created through the use of the recurring time slots can be checked out here:
Advantages:
Quickly set up a large number of time slots (ie indicate you’d like a time slot every 30 minutes for 2 weeks). The time slots will be generated automatically.
Calendar invites will be automatically created for all time slots.
Set check-in to automatically alert you if a guest is checking in outside of their time slot. Control how far outside of the time slot these alerts show.
Limitations:
Guests can only register for a one-time slot in one submission, however, they can register for multiple tickets/guests for that time slot.
Filtering limitations: there is no filter for each time slot. This impacts the ability to filter the dashboard, invite list, or email audience by time slot.
Secondary Event(s)
The secondary events feature is very useful if you have a centralized primary event that has multiple breakout sessions or other activities that can be described as ‘sub-events’ of the larger primary event. With the secondary events, you can separate the registration for each of the sessions within the same form, and each of the different sessions can have its own unique time and location (and its own calendar invites). Setting up the event through the use of secondary events also enables a higher level of conditioning the form experience and more control over which questions will be asked of each attendee.
Advantages:
The secondary event setup allows you to receive separate registrations for multiple events within the same registration form.
The secondary events can be visible to all the registrants, or only those who are specifically tagged.
The use of secondary events allows the conditioning of specific questions based on the reply to secondary events. More on that here
The email builder allows the use of the filters by secondary event replies in the creation of the audience for the email campaign.
The check-in suite will include the secondary events you have in your form as their own specific ticket types.
Limitations:
You have to have a ‘primary’ event block, though you can make this something generic vs a specific event.
The responses to the secondary events are not immediately displayed in the invite list, so it would be necessary to go to Dashboard > Secondary events to view their breakdown.
One secondary event shows at a time in the form.
Ticket Tiers
The ticket tiers setup is a very common one for events that have multiple sessions across different days. This setup allows you to create a detailed breakdown of the event sessions, including a description of each one as well as a calendar invite for each of them, all within the same block (the main ticketing block). The setup of sessions with ticket tiers is suitable for events that have a limited number of sessions that the attendees can choose from, and for events that are not recurring but only have multiple sessions over a single event. This event, which was created using the ticket tier setup can be very helpful in checking out the guest experience of this type of registration:
Advantages:
Ticket tiers setup allows you to create multiple sessions within the same main block, which then allows your attendees to choose from a single list of sessions they’d like to attend.
The check-in suite includes the ability to set filters based on the ticket type the person selected during their registration. These filters can be used during check-in itself and in the live activity feed of the check-in suite
The system allows filtering by both ticket types and the add-ons in the dashboard overview of the event
Limitations
Selected ticket tiers will populate into the same column in the exported spreadsheet, so this might cause some trouble with reconciling the collected data after it has been exported
If multiple tiers are set to the ‘admit one’ type that requests names, selecting them won’t work well for invite-only events, as the tier selection won’t be attributed to the named invitee except for the first selection they make.
Each 'admit one' type tier counts as a registration credit.
Custom Question(s)
The registration form for events that have multiple sessions can also be created through the use of the custom questions feature. In this setup, the session options are added as selections in a custom question that follows the main RSVP block that collects the guest details. This type of multiple-session event setup is best suited for events that have a specific timeline and a limited number of sessions that don’t require additional information to be collected. The session selection is attributed to the attendees listed in the main block, and they can be asked either once on behalf of the whole group, or by each attendee individually. This sample event was created using a custom question for the session selection:
https://writersfestival-demo.rsvpify.com/ - multiple choice format
Some of the options for the custom question that could work for this setup include the ‘single selection’, ‘dropdown’, and ‘select multiple’ custom question types. The best type to be used in the form depends on the parameters of the event and whether the attendees can choose a single session or multiple sessions to attend. If the attendees can only select one session, a dropdown or single selection is a good choice of question type. On the other hand, the ‘select multiple’ question type offers the ability to choose multiple sessions at once, while the event host is able to create a minimum number of required selections, and a maximum number of selections allowed.
Advantages
Custom questions can be set to be asked either once per group or to each attendee
Reminders that include a custom question response merge tag can be sent out to remind the attendees of the sessions they selected
The ‘select multiple’ question type offers the ability to choose multiple sessions at once, while the event host is able to create a minimum number of required selections, and a maximum number of selections allowed
Limitations
The dashboard of the event does not offer the ability to filter by the reply to custom questions, so any filtering would need to be done in one of two ways: 1. Tagging all the people who selected the same session and using filters by tags, 2. Filtering in the exported spreadsheet
If the attendees are allowed to select multiple sessions (in a ‘select multiple’ custom question) all of their selections will populate into the same column in the exported spreadsheet
This setup is not included as an option that can be filtered in the check-in app unless all of the different selections were previously tagged based on their responses
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