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Even Onsager
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February 15, 2013 at 3:58 am
I’ve been on 3.1.21P for a long time and I was happy with it, but lately my webhosting company started threatening us (more or less) if we didn’t update WordPress to the latest version.
So I updated to the 3.1.30.5P with Recurring Events Manager 1.7. I’ve been able to more or less reconstruct the setup I had (by importing the template files Josh uploaded to Gist/GitHub and modifying the new css files by trial and error). While obviously not a gamechanger release like 3.2 will be, it’s nice to see some cool updates.
However, one crucial aspect of my setup is allowing group registrations without additional info on the secondary attendee. When I set up 3.1.15 (I think it was), I was told, after some discussion, that the only way of showing how many tickets are actually booked was to use the [ATTENDEE_EVENT_LIST] shortcode in the e-mail confirmation.
So far, so good. Even if the table looked kinda weird onscreen, it was good enough, and both I and our guests were happy. But it appears that this shortcode was changed sometime between 3.1.21 and 3.1.30.5 to remove the number of attendees from the e-mail confirmation (screenshot of new email confirmation).
Since my system allows attendees to book two (sometimes three) tickets per name, this is a huge deal for me, and renders the system severely crippled. We can’t demand that people note down somewhere for their own records how many tickets they booked. The email is supposed to be that record. Our guests will most likely book more tickets than they need (all our events are free, so people already book more tickets than they need). Or they will call our front desk to ask, and we already have a shortage of switchboard staff (that was in fact one of the reasons I invested in EE to begin with).
So I’m wondering if there’s another way of doing this. I’ve tried the custom_questions shortcode, but that code shows everything BUT the number of attendees. I’m stumped, and with the rapid pace of development, I’d hate to edit core files (I assume email.php could list this somehow?) since I would have to diffmerge the code back in for every release.
I really hope there’s another way.
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Josh
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February 15, 2013 at 1:07 pm
Hi Even,
I don’t know if you’re using the ticketing add-on or not, but even if you do not plan on checking tickets at the door, you could add the [ticket_link]. Then they’ll have a ticket with a quantity on it for their records.
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Even Onsager
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February 15, 2013 at 1:25 pm
I’m not using the ticketing addon, no, and I wasn’t really planning to. If it’s the only way, I more or less have to, I guess, because not having any record of having many tickets you reserved is not a viable solution for me. Is it included in the business licence?
Is there a specific reason why you removed the output from the shortcode? It worked well and it solved a problem not solved by any of the other email shortcodes, as far as I can tell.
Thanks for the suggestion, though! I’ll try the ticket link now.
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Josh
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February 15, 2013 at 3:18 pm
Hi Even,
Is there a specific reason why you removed the output from the shortcode? It worked well and it solved a problem not solved by any of the other email shortcodes, as far as I can tell.
I looked through the commit logs, and I have no idea why. There was a ticket to fix the attendee_event_list shortcode so it would work with Multi Event Registration, and that may have been what happened.
The ticketing add-on is included in the business license, you can download it from your account page, and access the documentation here:
https://eventespresso.com/wiki/espresso-ticketing/
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Even Onsager
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February 18, 2013 at 8:57 am
I’ve tried the ticketing addon now, and I’m sad to say that – while obviously a very cool addon in a lot of use cases – it’s not at all what I’m looking for. For my very basic needs, using the ticketing addon is a confusingly complex/jumping through hoops way of solving the most basic of ticket reservation problems – showing how many tickets you just reserved in the actual confirmation email.
I wondered on the old support forum (well over a year ago) about why this wasn’t among the main email shortcodes, and it turned out it was relegated to an undocumented shortcode called attendee_event_list (back then there was no mention of it in the email shortcode help) that apart from number of attendees listed non-essential duplicate information like the recipient’s email address. Now even this option is gone, and I’m still confused as to why this isn’t considered an obvious feature. Even on the ticket (which I don’t really need), it’s hidden away in a sidebar and labelled as “Qty. n”, and considering we don’t need (or want) people to bring printed tickets, I have to say that the ticketing addon is just not for me, and that it would just confuse our main audience by making them look really hard for what’s actually the most essential information in the e-mail.
If this isn’t considered a feature worth adding, could you please point me in the direction of how to make an email shortcode for showing how many tickets associated with one Reg ID? Can I put it in a custom file (custom_shortcodes.php? for instance) to avoid it being overwritten by the core plugin? Is it even possible without doing nasty things to email.php?
I’m grateful for all help!
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Even Onsager
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February 18, 2013 at 9:36 am
Sorry if I sound rude or harsh, it’s just that I think EE does an amazing job as an event management system and oversights like these feel like unnecessary blemishes on a great system. I would never write as many words as this on the support forum for a bad product (there I would just suffer in peace, and say to myself that it’s no use complaining). This great forum makes it seem like there’s a point to complaining. 😉
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Josh
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February 19, 2013 at 7:51 am
Hi Even,
I’ll do what I can to help.
In this case, you can add a quantity row to the attendee list shortcode by adding this line to /functions/email.php:
<td>" . $data->attendee->quantity . __(' attendees', 'event_espresso') . "</td>
Starting on line 330, there’s a function named: espresso_generate_attendee_event_list, and you can add the above line of code just above the closing ‘‘ (it should be line 353).
At this time, the espresso_generate_attendee_event_list is not a pluggable function, so it cannot be overridden with the custom files add-on. I’m adding a note to our issue tracker to make a suggestion that this function be made pluggable, so it can more easily be customized with the custom files add-on.
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Even Onsager
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February 19, 2013 at 8:26 am
Great! Thank you so much! I’ll test it right away.
May I suggest a even better solution (for me, at least)? Simply allowing the number of attendees to be an email shortcode that outputs a number, similar to, say, the event [start time] shortcode (only that it outputs a simple numeric value instead of time/date) would be better for me than making it pluggable and custom files-compatible – it would be easier to write confirmation emails this way.
Again, thanks for your help!
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Josh
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February 20, 2013 at 8:45 am
Hi Even,
That is a good idea. Thanks for taking the time to leave this valuable feedback. I’ve registered your suggestion and we will keep it in mind for future features and updates!
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Even Onsager
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February 20, 2013 at 9:08 am
My pleasure. 🙂
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Even Onsager
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February 20, 2013 at 10:18 am
It worked, btw! Thanks to you pointing me to the right line, I also removed the bit about the end date, since we only have single-day events, anyway. (It would be better to use if start date equals end date etc, but I couldn’t be bothered.) 🙂
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