Support

March 31, 2021 at 6:24 am

Hi Andreo,

1 – EE3 to EE4 Migration
– I read the forum and it appears there is a data migration tool or step that can be run: https://eventespresso.com/topic/trying-to-update-ee3-to-ee4/. Will this bring over everything (configurations, events, registrations, statuses, etc)? Or just specific data?

This is a little tough to answer in the EE3 and EE4 are very different systems.

The migration script brings over everything it can, this includes settings, events and registrations.

You asked above ‘statuses’, can you add some more details on what you mean here?

EE3 and EE4 use different registrations and transaction statuses, but for the most part and incomplete EE3 registrations will become a ‘Pending Payment’ registration in EE4.

Things like email templates, do not transfer over as they work very differently, so don’t really apply to most of the EE4 messages setup.

– We have many customizations to EE3, is the EE4 framework entirely different or similar? We’re trying to gauge if we have to rebuild things entirely. I know it’s a loaded question w/o details, but just trying to gauge how different EE4 is (code, framework, etc).

EE4 is completely different, it’s not just an update to EE3 but a new system built from the ground up.

The data structure for EE4 is completely different to EE3, we use a hybrid setup where Events (and other entities) are a custom post type, but we have custom tables which we pull in various data/relations for each entity. The EE4 model system handles pulling in that data for you and we add an EE_Event object property to the EE event posts if you use a custom query which means you can grab any data you need via those models.

In short, pretty much any customization/code for EE3 will not work with EE4 but working with EE4 can be much easier than EE3 when using the model system.

– How long until EE5 is released? Will EE4 become obsolete sooner than later or is the plan to keep EE4 as the most stable release for some time?

EE4 is planned to be our stable release for the foreseeable future.

2 – Payment At Time of Registration
– this has been a major challenge for us as EE3 allows user to register and pay later up until event. We’ve got our WP site integrated with Marketing Automation platform and want to pass registration data over at time of payment. If the payment was able to be accepted at time of registration (mandatory step), then we could just pass data. Is there an option in EE4 to force payment at time of registration or does it still work like EE3?

It still allows for return visits to pay like EE3 does.

However, there is a lot more flexibility within EE4 and how it all works.

Each individual registration has a status:

Not Approved (means the user register and it is not awaiting the admin to change the status to allow payment)
Incomplete (no contact details),
Pending Payment,
Approved,
Cancelled,
Declined.

Registrations (and group registrations) are assigned to a ‘Transaction’, which can have its own status:

Incomplete (money owing),
Complete (amount paid == amount owed)
Overpaid (amount paid > amount owed)

When payments are made they update the transaction, which in turn updates the registration status automatically (for example when you pay in full that updates the TXN status to complete, which then triggers all registrations linked to that transaction to update to ‘Approved’) and you can also manually change the registrations status for any registrations in the system regards of TXN status.

What that means is for the above, you could hook into EE4 and only send the data to your Marketing Automation platform only when the registration is approved (or various other points during the registrations if needed).

Please do add any questions you may have and I’ll answer as best I can.

Ultimately, what I recommend doing is creating a development copy of the site you have now, switching over to EE4 on that clone dev site and then run the migration script there to see what data from your site will transfer over. We can’t give you an exact answer, especially with customizations as its so varied but at least you’ll then get a feel for how the migration will go and a little more on how EE4 will work.