Support

March 29, 2019 at 4:09 am

Hi Michael,

I understand that because of the way EE works based on tickets, it’s probably not easy to do it any other way, but can’t there be a solution that in this situation their info they’ve previously entered can be populated into the form again?

There can be and most it is already built into EE, but your asking for it to be disabled, or at least an option. The fact that we store registrations early and update them through the reg steps means a feature could be developed to pull those details back on the attendee information step and ‘roll back’ the completed steps so the user can view the registration form again after proceeding to the payment options.

However, there’s a lot of moving parts to this with registrations, EE Contacts, Users and so, then add-ons (for example the WP User integration add-on) hooking in the steps completion and firing functions to do various things… such as creating user accounts and linking them to the current registration which means theres a lot more to take into consideration.

Using the User integration add-on example, what happens when you complete the step and User A is created, they return to the registration form and change the primary registrant details?

Do we just update the current user account linked to the registration? User A in this example to match the new details (risky because what if the user wasn’t just created)
What if that user account now matches another because the details were changed to match a current EE contact?
Do we limit it only create on the initial registrations to prevent users from breaking the relationships with unexpected changes?

There are more questions and planning based on the current behaviour but that’s just one simple example of creating a WP User based on the registration form info, but as should be obvious, there’s a lot more to it than it seems. Its not about it being ‘easy’ but the multiple various different expectations of how it should work and the issues that can come if it doesn’t work in that way.

E.g. on our website, we only ask for 1 form to be filled out no matter how many tickets are selected, so for those kinds of scenarios a pre-population should be okay, right?

Possibly yes, but in this same thread your asking to disable the very method we would use to do that.

Also why does EE have to write incomplete registrations into the system already after they fill out the form or when they simply exit from the payment selection page? I think that is unnecessary and just creates extra clutter in the database. If you have a lot of abandons like that, you have to spend extra time deleting them, and you can only delete registrations at once that are on one page.

There were a few reasons for creating registrations very early on in the process and updating them as the registrations step through the reg steps, one of which was to eventually allow for users to return to their registration and storing that info in the DB is the most reliable method to doing so.

As mentioned above, some of your requests are conflicting with each other but I’ll answer each point below:

– a back button to the form or a “leave the current page” popup. (There are some forum posts talking about this, but I see no resolution, no popup)

I’m curious as to how this solution would help.

What would be the purpose of a popup in that situation? To show they are leaving the current page doesn’t solve the problem you are opened this thread for so I’m trying to see how this fits.

– if someone ends up on the ticket selector and then makes changes and clicks on Register now, to have their info pre-filled

So if a user selects tickets, enters their details and stops at the payment options step, then returns to the ticket selector (in whichever way they chose to do so), adds more tickets and click to proceed, we should pre-fill the data from their previous session?

Are you using the Multi Event Registration add-on (MER for short)?

– same thing for abandoned people – pre-filled when they return (let’s say within 1 month)

But you’re deleting those registrations, so how would that work after a month?

Which ties into….

– not enter abandoned registration unless they have clicked “Finalize registration” i.e. end up at Payment Processor and abandon there. Before they click this button, it does no make sense to store them in the database (or at least make this optional in the admin, if possible)

In your previous request, your asking for this feature to be disable? It may not work how you want in the way EE allows for it as it stands but you’re requesting that we store the details to allow them to return, the only way we can reliably store the details for that period of time is to save them to the database.

March 29, 2019 at 10:59 am

1) How do we enable the feature of pre-filling the form data from the user’s previous session?

Currently, you can’t (at least not without custom development), especially if you don’t have MER enabled as the ticket selector clears the session on submit and re-submits your new selection.

With MER you obviously need to submit multiple ticket selections so the user’s session is not cleared on doing so.

Enabling this feature isn’t something I can just give you in a snippet.

2) How do we put a warning message when the user uses the browser’s back button or reloads the page?
I’ve tried some JavaScript, but that will affect click on anything, including “Finalize Registration” button, and that is not desirable.

I’m not JavaScript guru but if you post the code your using I’ll take a look and see if it can be imporved to prevent it on the finalize button.