Planning the Event

Before you dive in to create an event, we recommend you review the work flow in this chapter to help you plan for setting up and managing the event. The work flow also includes concepts you should know about the structure and functions of the event management process.

Global Event Configuration

There are several global event configurations as well as general CiviCRM configurations you will need to consider before you create your event. These configurations define the details and structure of the event, such as the type of event, the cost if it's a paid event, and the payment processor to handle credit cards. You can also configure information about the type of participant, e.g. attendee or speaker, and define different status options to help track participants' progress through the event process, from being Registered to indicating whether they Attended or were a No-Show. You may also want to capture additional information about the participant, such as food preference if the event is a Dinner. Additional data often requires you to create custom data and profiles in the general CiviCRM configuration.

Some of these configurations are a required prior to creating the event, so familiarizing yourself with these concepts and planning your data needs before you create the event will help streamline the event configuration process. Although, if you've already begun creating an event when you decide to expand your configuration needs, you can always complete the event configuration process, address your additional data needs, and return to reopen and complete the event configuration.

You may want to review the following concepts before you begin to configure your event.  These concepts will be discussed in more detail later in the following chapters of this Events section.

• Event Type
• Participant Role
• Participant Status
  
• Price Set
  
• Payment Processor
• Send Email Settings
• Event Templates
• Additional Custom Data and Profiles 
• Email Message Templates
• Participant Listing Templates
  

Creating the Event

In addition to planning the configuration you will need, you may want to ask some questions to help you make some decisions about the details of your event:

• Will this be a paid event?
  
• Will you charge multiple fees, such as fees for additional sessions or meals?
  
• Are you restricted to a maximum number of participants?
• Will there be a wait list if the maximum number of registrations is exceeded?
• Will you allow a contact to register multiple people?
• Will you allow online registrations to the event through a website?
• Will you be emailing participants to confirm their registrations?
• Will you be publishing a listing of the participants? 
• Is there specific information you want to collect about participants, e.g., food and lodging preferences?
  

Thinking about the structure of your event and how you want a person to experience the event registration will help inform whether you need to do additional configuration and how to set up the event.

Test Driving the Event

Once you finish configuring and setting up the details of your event, you are well advised to test drive the event to make sure all the pieces of the event process are working according to your expectations. You may want to test the following:

• Do the description of the event, dates, cost of the event, etc., make sense and match your organisation's plans?
• Are the messages that confirm the registration clear?
• Did you receive the email message that confirms and thanks you for registering?
• If it's a paid event, did payment processing work?

Test the event through the eyes of a person who is registering for the event, to make sure the flow of the registration process guides the person effortlessly each step of the way. After initial testing, if you send your invitation email to a person in the organisation that hasn't been directly involved in the the configuration of the event, you can get a fresh point of view that represents what your contacts will feel during the process.

When using the "Test-drive Registration" option, you see the same registration pages as a regular user, but the online payment isn't really debited from your card (and you can enter a fake one).

Promoting the Event

Think about all the ways you would like people to learn about your event:

• Will you be posting your event on your website and allow people to register that?
• Will you be writing an email blast to your constituents about the event?
  
• Is your event "by invitation only"? Who are the people you would need to email the invitation?
• Have you planned a schedule to announce your event from the initial invitation to sending out event reminders?
  
• Can you create message templates ahead of time to ease the process of getting multiple messages out about your event?

In addition to configuring and creating your event, you may need to plan how you could use other CiviCRM functions to promote the event, as well as determine what other tools, such as as your website, may need to be utilized to promote your event.

Managing the Event Process

From the time you announce your event to the time the event is over, there will be ongoing event management tasks that you may need to carry out to ensure good participation:

• Check to see the status of the participants, such as finding out the number registered, the number confirmed, or who canceled
• Find out the total event fees received to-date to check that you're on budget for the event
• Check to see that your volunteers and speakers have confirmed to attend
• Decide when and how to announce or market your event further if you see that number of registrations are low
• Manage the waiting list of people once the maximum number of event registrations is exceeded
• Review participant information, such as food or lodging preferences, to organize additional event logistics
• Determine how you will indicate whether a participant attended and enter the information into CiviCRM
  

The event management tasks vary depending on the type of event and venue you're planning, and CiviCRM supports these tasks through many event and communication tools, along with its searching and reporting features.

Consider asking the staff people directly involved in these tasks to add a report for that event in their dashboards, in order to have a direct overview directly on their homepages.

Following up after the Event

Once your event is over, you may want to evaluate the event by looking at the total number of attendees, the total event fees received, who hasn't completed payment for their registration, and who canceled. Several event reporting tools can help, including the Event Participant Report, the Event Income Summary Report (summary and detail), the Event Dashboard, and search tools such as Find Participant.

It is worthwhile updating the status of each participant during the event or just afterward, while it's fresh in your memory, so you properly flag the no-shows.

It is good practice to send an email after the event to all the participants to thank them and provide links to pictures or slides of speakers if you have published them online. You might want to use this opportunity to promote a new event, suggest that attendees join your organisation as a member, or solicit donations for a specific campaign.