Customer Support

Now we will discuss some of the more advanced features for managing event participation in VolunteerHub, such as group reservations, waitlists and other registration options. 

Step 1.

To manage participation for an event, go to the Events tile, filter for the event you are looking for (if needed), and click on the name of an event (Figure 1).

Figure 1. The Event summary page allows you to view and manage registrations and reservation details for an event.

Step 2.

Let's start by creating a group reservation for the event. Group reservations allow you to "reserve" some or all available slots of an event for a particular user group. You might do this if a group has expressed interest in an upcoming activity so that non-members cannot sign up for that activity.

Begin by clicking the Add Reservation button and typing the name of one of the user groups we created in Part 4 of this tutorial. Select the correct group from the available matches and click the Register User Group button. The User Group Registration wizard will appear, allowing you to add details for that group's reservation (Figure 2). 

Figure 2. You can now enter details for the group reservation.

Below is a description of each field in the User Group Registration screen.  

The video at the bottom of this article also explains many of these settings and demonstrates how to use them when adding and modifying a reservation.

• Slots Reserved: Enter the number of slots you'd like to reserve (i.e., guarantee) for members of this user group into the Slots Reserved field. If we would like to guarantee 10 of an available 20 slots (as determined by the Event Slot Limit field in the event's Edit page) for volunteers from Wells Fargo, we will enter "10" into the Slots Reserved field. Therefore, only members of the Wells Fargo user group will have access to those 10 slots.
• Expiration: Set an optional expiration for the reservation, which allows any unused reserved slots to reopen to the public (or another user group) a number of hours, days, weeks or months prior to the start time of the event. For example, select "2 weeks" to have the unused slots of the 10-slot reservation automatically open back up two weeks before the event starts. Leave the default value ("No expiration") to make the reservation permanent, meaning users from other groups will never be able to sign up for the reserved slots.
• Default Maximum Party Size: Set the maximum number of slots each user can take when registering for the event. This will include the registering user PLUS a number of anonymous guests, who will take slots on the event but at no point will have a user account or tracked hours. For example, if your event's Maximum Party Size is 3 and a user indicates while signing up for the event that they are bringing a guest, that user will take up 2 of the 10 reserved slots. The volunteer is given the option to include their guest's email address for them to receive the event reminder email. 
  (Leave this field as a "1" if you plan to capture walk-ins using OnSite or Kiosk, as an anonymous guest registration cannot be converted to a user registration.) 
• Waitlist: Select 'On' to allow users to be added to an automated waitlist once all available slots on the reservation are full. Once your event is full, the Sign Up button will be replaced automatically with a Join Waitlist button. You can add a waitlist to a specific reservation, all reservations and/or the general public (i.e., "Unaffiliated Users"). If the event becomes full and a registered user later cancels their registration for the event, the first user on the waitlist will automatically be registered for the event and will receive a confirmation email indicating their updated registration status.
• Reservation Overflow: Select 'On' to allow more than the reserved number of slots to be taken by members of that group until the event is full. For instance, in our example, we have 10 slots reserved for Wells Fargo. Indicating 'On' to Overflow will allow an 11th user from Wells Fargo to register for the event by taking a slot from Unaffiliated Users (which, in this case, is any user not affiliated with Wells Fargo), but leaving the default option of 'Off' will block that user from being added to that group's reservation once the 10 slots reserved for Wells Fargo are filled. Note, however, that this does not allow registrations to exceed the Event Slot Limit, which cannot be bypassed except by an administrator through manual user registration. (We recommend you allow overflow when using the Expiration field so that members of the group registering after the expiration date are still tracked with their group.)
• Anonymous Guest Email Addresses: An administrator may enter email addresses for users attending the event who are not going to create accounts.
• Anonymous Slots: Enter a number of users attending the event who are not going to create accounts. This will deduct that number of slots from the slot limit.

When finished creating your group reservation, click the Save button. You can edit the reservation at any time by returning to the summary page of the event, clicking the ellipsis (...) button next to the reservation, and selecting "Edit User Group Reservation" from the menu that appears.

Step 3.

This page also allows you to register users manually for an event, as discussed briefly in Part 3 of this tutorial. Begin by clicking the Register a User button (under the desired group reservation) and typing the user's name into the text field (Figure 3). As before, the user's name will auto-populate below the field; click on the user's name and click the Register User button to register that user for the event. When registering a user under a group's reservation, it will simultaneously add the user to the associated user group.

Figure 3. Manually register users for an event on the Event Summary page.

Now that you know the "ins and outs" of your VolunteerHub site's basic functionality, you're ready to learn more about creating additional landing pages for specific events or user groups.

This video shows how to add a User Group reservation to an event: