Support

April 2, 2019 at 3:48 am

Hi there,

I searched through the sql and it appears that all of the attendees were in the attendee meta table

The records in esp_attendee_meta are created when EE generates an EE contact from the data passed to the registration, meaning if they complete the ‘Attendee information’ step, they will have a record in esp_attendee_meta but that doesn’t mean they completed the registration fully.

but were not on the registrations table. How could this have happened.

There are no registrations linked to the ATT_ID’s you found in esp_attendee_meta within esp_registration?

If you found them in the ‘unfiltered’ list below, there must be registrations in esp_registrations.

In fact some of the approved registrations (which were duplicates) were found on the unfiltered list of attendees list but did not appear on the filtered list.

When you say ‘filtered list’, can you provide more details on which filters you applied?

Or do you mean the ‘Approved’ registrations list for a specific event?

Event Espresso -> Events -> {Event} -> Approved registrations (Link shown in the ‘Update event’ meta box)

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If you go to Event Espresso -> Events

Hover over the event in question and a ‘registrations’ link will appear below the name, click that.

Do you see all of the registrations in that list, without changing any additional filters?

April 2, 2019 at 4:20 am

Does this generate when they click to register or start filling out the form, all of our tickets are free and are automatically set as approved when registration is complete.

The registration is generated as soon as they select tickets and click to register (no EE_Attendee/EE_Contact yet though as they haven’t submitted attendee information) as they work through the checkout steps the registration and EE_Attenddee will be updated with the information passed.

So an EE_Attendee is generated when they entered their details and click to proceed, in the case you only have free tickets, so its when they enter their details and finalize the registration. (If the tickets were not free, this would be on the first step where they enter details and click to view payment options).

There are ATT_ID’s in the registration table but none of the duplicates showed in the registration table.

When you say duplicates are you referring to duplicate attendees or duplicate registrations?

We found a one person who was approved in the unfiltered but didn’t show in the filtered, they were in the registrations table.

If you view this registration in the list it should have an Event link in the 3rd column, is that linking to the correct event?

Yes this is what I mean, sorry used the wrong jargon.

No problem, I’m just making sure I follow where you are and on the same page is all.

No they duplicates are not shown there but what is concerning when checking the Messages, there are records for the duplicates for “automated reminder emails” for them being sent an email, containing all their answers to the reg form and the ticket they selected and the event, but I would not find these people in the registrations table.

Ok, in the messages list, on the right you’ll see an actions column.

For one of these duplicates, click on th icon…. what do you see?

I am worried when someone was clearing out an old event and its registrations they have managed to delete or part delete someones registration

It could be that registrations have been deleted.

Can you link me to an event I can run some test registrations on? You can create a test event and link me to that if you don’t want my registrations messing up your real registration figures etc.

April 2, 2019 at 7:00 am

Your first point, am I correct in assuming that for a free ticket as soon as they click to register the information on both tables Attendee Meta and Registrations are created?

‘Click to register’ is to broad for me to answer that question as it means something different to everyone, for example, is that when they select tickets and click register? Is that after they’ve entered their details and click ‘Proceed to Finalize’?

To answer I can give you an example.

Heres a view of my DB tables on a test site before I do anything.

esp_attendee_meta – https://monosnap.com/file/8OkqdOqsDS75iaEU7gaUbY0p3R9E8r
esp_registration – https://monosnap.com/file/6rd5obg650miOvRRkdormFADdP4fJ8

Note the ID’s.
esp_attendee_meta ends at 44
esp_registration ends at 355

If you select tickets on the ticket selector and click register – https://monosnap.com/file/T7E9LXZBgcZhsmWsKWfovnuH85ZoOz

At that point, there is an entry into the esp_registration. We can’t add an entry to esp_attendee_meta yet as we don’t have attendee details to create one.

We will be sitting at this page – https://monosnap.com/file/ShXLlegXRC531XVdTwsl5OoVM4RIG2

Here is both tables now – https://monosnap.com/file/gsX3jkRIGm97EZtfALrcuzs6q3FXbC

We have a registration with no attendee id, because again, we haven’t been given the attendee details yet.

Provide the details requested and click to finalize – https://monosnap.com/file/OmXJoCbXraMTXOMUQxXrD3V8kVDF3y

Now we have attendee info, EE can do one of 2 things with attendee meta, if it finds a current EE_Contact from esp_attendee_meta with matching details, it links the registration to that record, no new entry, it updates the ATT_ID in esp_registration to match that contacts ID.

OR, as in this case, it adds a new record and links the registration to that, like so: https://monosnap.com/file/XcUlJv4Me5CT5uaYf4heV6jDUFRW83

So… you can have a row created in esp_registration without one in esp_attendee_meta.

You can hav multiple rows in esp_registration linked to a row in esp_attendee_meta based on the ATT_ID.

Does this mean for our website it should be impossible for both not to be created?

Nope, as explained above.

You will always have an esp_registration row created for each ticket selected, but not always an entry in esp_attendee_meta, for a few different reasons.

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Looks like you missed my question above:

Ok, in the messages list, on the right you’ll see an actions column.

For one of these duplicates, click on th icon…. what do you see?

April 2, 2019 at 7:33 am

But we still had people attend who we were told had confirmation emails but were not on our system.

The problem now (from a support point of view trying to figure out what has happened) is it sounds like theres confusion over attendees all round and also attendees have been removed from the system manually, which I say based on your comment earlier:

I am worried when someone was clearing out an old event and its registrations they have managed to delete or part delete someones registration

So its possible theres been a mix up and registrations have been accidentally removed manually (EE doesn’t delete registrations that have contacts assigned to them).

I’m not saying it has, but its possible, right?

That means we could be digging deeper and deeper into a rabbit hole that doesn’t actually exist, again I can’t say that for sure as it really isn’t clear what has happened, but your the first person to report this.

I do not understand what has happened, it looks as though when registering some information was saved but not all of it, therefore the website or server didn’t do what it should have.

If you mean the attendee object didn’t save then tt doesn’t work that way, you can’t save some of the data and have everything work.

For example if you had a registration without an attendee, the shortcodes in the messages for the attendee, would fail, likely causing a fatal error which would be logged in the error logs and the message wouldn’t send at all.

Why? Because it’s never expected that a EE Registration would trigger messages without an attendee, no attendee means EE would have no idea who it was from, no name, no email and so on.

What information does EE use to guess whether it is a new record or an old record for attendees

May I ask why you think it ‘guesses’?

It uses the first name, last name and email address. If those all match a current EE_Contact, it’s the same person so uses that contact, it isn’t guessing if those match 🙂

Things get a little more complex when you add the WP user integration add-on to the mix as that can update the EE_Contact based on the registration values, are you using that add-on?

(To give an example if you register with First Name1, Surname1 and email1@example.com, then register again with the same user account and use First Name2, Surname 2, email2@example.com, depending on your settings that can update the contact so all registrations made by that user (linked to the EE_Contact) show as First Name 2)

would setting this to always create new solve this?

No, it would simply mean you’d have multiple EE_Contacts with the same details, that’s going to cause you more confusion in the long run.

We currently have over 11,000 registrations on our website with between 10-20 events each month, is this too much for EE?

No, may I ask why you believe it would be?

April 2, 2019 at 8:47 am

So the most likely event is someone has deleted them and deleted them from the trash as well

If they are missing, then it’s possible.

would this mean the messages would also be deleted?

No, removing registrations will not remove the related messages for those registrations. The messages system stores messages for a number of days and then removes them, its based on a setting in Event Espresso -> Messages -> Settings.

I am trying to understand that if someone deletes an attendees registration then that would mean a deletion from the registration table of the SQL.

I’m not sure I follow? The registrations are all stored in the database, so if someone removes them within EE, they are removing them from the DB.

One last question Tony from our event coordinators is it possible for people to try and book the same ticket at the same time. eg there is a limit of 3 tickets and 4 people all try to book it. I thought that was not possible due to the way EE works.

If they both select the tickets at exactly the same time, then yes its possible. We reduce the time available for this conditional down as much as possible, so say User A selects 4 tickets, those tickets are set as reserved, if User B selects those tickets immediately after, they’ll see an error.

If they both submit the ticket at exactly the same time, both can get through to the registration form. For paid tickets, there’s an additional check right before the payment options load, for free tickets that’s obviously not available.