Support

August 30, 2022 at 10:38 am

Hi there,

am I correct that all the messages that go out to registrants are generic and not specific to the event, correct?

No, this is incorrect.

The message templates are designed to be generic but then are generated on the fly using the event object(s) themselves to generate the content, which means they can contain unique event specific data.

I was hoping/imagining that each registrant would receive an automatic message that told them about the zoom url and other details about the class. So that’s not the case?

It can be, but where are the Zoom URL and other details stored within the event?

I would have to manually send that to them and keep track of who I’ve messaged?

No, you will need to customize the templates to and use shortcodes within the message system to pull in the data you need, those shortcodes will be parsed on a per-event basis as the message is generated.

What you need to edit and which shortcodes you need to use, depends on how you are storing the data and how your event(s) are set up.

Where are you storing the Zoom URL?

One zoom URL specific to the event or the datetime within the event?

August 31, 2022 at 2:49 pm

On the VENUE section for each event, I have selected “ZOOM” in the pulldown menu, and in the body of that venue item I have included all the zoom invite info. Is that the best way?

Ok, so you’ve created a ‘Zoom’ venue and you’re selecting that for these events.

Venue details are publicly accessible so I’m assuming you don’t want that info there? (Same with Datetime description)

So are the zoom details the same regardless of the event?

There are multiple ways to set this up and it depends on how much the data changes between events and how flexible you want it to be.

For example, you could use a custom field (or multiple fields) on the events and then use shortcodes within the default template to dynamically pull in that info for each specific event (useful if the link/details change on a per event basis but the rest of the email is the same).

—

Or, if the details are always the same for each event like this and you want a single location to edit those details, you could create a custom Registration Approved message template with the Zoom details hardcoded directly within that template. That way the only thing you need to do on these events is set them to to use the custom message template, everything else within the template can generate dynamically as it does now but it would also include your harder coded Zoom default. You leave the ‘Default’ (aka ‘Global’) templates as-is for your ‘regular’ events to continue on as they do now. That works if your details always remain the same for your events, although even if they changed for a specific event, you could use another custom message template specifically for that event again.

—

I’ve also previously created a snippet that allows you to add custom fields onto datetimes within an event, for example, if you use 1 event with multiple datetimes and each datetime has a unique Zoom URL (or other detail) you want to include in the email you can set them on the specific DateTime and add some shortcodes to the message template to pull them in.

There’s a ton of flexibility within EE and it all just depends on how you want it set up. I’ll happily add more details on any of the above if you let me know which one works best for your set up.

September 5, 2022 at 10:27 am

So, it sounds like it would be best just to use custom message templates for this and set the template(s) to the relevant event type.

To understand this a little better, you’ll need to know a little more about message templates.

Within Event Espresso we have ‘global’ message templates, those are the templates we set up when Event Espresso is installed and they are used by all events by default. Those global templates can be edited within your install so calling them ‘default’ templates gets a little confusing, because are they the defaults we set up, or your edited versions etc? So the global templates are setup using our defaults to start with, they can be edited to suit (say all of your events need a specific greeting added to all registration-approved messages, you can do that in the global templates) and those versions are used by all events that have not been set to use a ‘custom template’.

Custom templates are used when you need a specific event (or multiple events) to use something different to your global templates. You can create them FROM your global template, edit them to be specific for what they need to be and then set specific events to use them. Any event NOT set to use a custom template uses the global template.

If the above doesn’t help, hopefully, a couple of screenshots will…

Global message templates are in Event Espresso -> Messages -> Default Message Templates, like this:

https://monosnap.com/file/tgxLxdBwjrRNjcNBXYtt2z8Jd3WrzV

If we take your example:

(e.g. If I teach geology 4 times per year and Math 7 times per year, that’s 11 events but 2 courses, and when it comes to messaging, there’s mainly 2 sets of messages, not 11).

For those, you need 2 message templates, right?

Registration Approved – Geology
Registration Approved – Math

So on the page I referenced above, the Registration Approved message template has a ‘Create Custom’ button:

https://monosnap.com/file/1hhiklAbyysccBXSZfOtBCIdUKphee

Clicking that creates a custom template from the message you clicked it on and takes you to edit that template, like this:

https://monosnap.com/file/fnUSobgKnwoAdNI7cHCpkSZ68llHVD

The first thing we need to do, is switch to the Registrant context, so in the dropdown at the top, select ‘Registrant’ and click ‘Switch Recipient’.

Now, change the ‘New Custom Template’ title to something meaningful, in this case, I’ll use ‘Registration Approved – Geology’ (you can add/edit the description if you prefer) and hit Save.

Now we have a custom Registration Approved template (which is currently exactly the same as the global one) with a title of ‘Registration Approved – Geology’

In the Main Content section of that template, add something, it doesn’t matter what right now but this could be your zoom details or anything else.

Here is my very original example: https://monosnap.com/file/2NLt4qE82ODDiKZ59SmpdluaQqNbFo

Again, save the changes.

Not you have a custom template you can use specifically for the Geology events, you just need to set it on them.

So in the event itself, go to the Notifications section and select the custom template you just created.

Now that event uses the custom template you just generated, registrations for that event will have the custom content you added in that templates emailed to them.

Does that help?

September 6, 2022 at 3:32 am

Registration-based messages (Registration Approved, Registration Pending Payment etc) are triggered based on what is happening with the registration itself.

Payment-based messages are triggered based on actions with payments.

So when EE detects a payment has been received, it triggers the payment received message. If that payment also changes the registration status, it will trigger the registration-based message simultaneously.

—-

Generally messages work how most would expect a transaction based system to work out of the box. So when a registration is created and payment made there and then (it will be for the full amount in that case) then a payment received message is triggered when EE detects that payment and processes it. Because the payment was for the full amount it also triggers the registration status to change to Approved (it would have been pending payment prior) which also triggers the Registration Approved message without additional actions from the admin.