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lhammond
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January 20, 2015 at 8:28 am
We are using a slightly older version of EE3, and we have had a problem when registration opens and many people all are vying for the same spot that the system does not decrease the available seat count until after checkout is completed. In our case, people may be registering for many classes at once, and it takes some time to fill out the registration forms. Then by the time they submit the final form, the class is oversold! So my question is: is there an easy way to change this? Does the newest version already address this problem? Is there a patch for EE3 or maybe the newest version adds a placeholder in the database so the seat count is decreased even before the registration is completed, and then releases it 10 minutes later if it was not completed? Thanks for your help.
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Lorenzo Orlando Caum
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January 20, 2015 at 10:39 am
Hi, in the current release, seats are reserved for one hour.
If the registration is not completed within that window, then the seat is released and becomes available to another attendee/registrant.
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Lorenzo
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lhammond
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January 20, 2015 at 1:04 pm
The current release of EE3 or EE4?
We use 3.1.35.1.P, but have had to modify several core files. Should that feature work as you said in the version I have? If not, in what version was it added (or changed)?
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Lorenzo Orlando Caum
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January 20, 2015 at 3:35 pm
Hi, the seating chart add-on is only available for Event Espresso 3 at this time so that would be the current release of the seating chart add-on and the current release of Event Espresso 3.
It is not available for Event Espresso 4.
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Lorenzo
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lhammond
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January 20, 2015 at 5:21 pm
Oh, I don’t mean the seating chart add-on, sorry. I just mean the number of tickets available, or registration spaces available that is part of the default event. Does that change your understanding of the expected functionality?
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Lorenzo Orlando Caum
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January 20, 2015 at 7:55 pm
Alright, sorry about that. Here is how its handled in the current release of Event Espresso 3.
Each event has an attendee limit. The attendee limit is updated after a successful registration occurs. If this is a free event, then it happens after the registration is completed.
If this is a paid event, then it happens after the registration and payment is completed.
The current release has an option for registration timeout:
http://cl.ly/image/2u3A0r421W0M
That could be used to reduce overselling.
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Lorenzo
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lhammond
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January 20, 2015 at 10:12 pm
Yes, that image of the registration timeout is exactly what I’m looking for. Where is that setting? I don’t see it in the General Settings page of EE 3.1.35.1.P but I don’t see the feature listed in an update in the release notes, either. Was it added in 3.1.36? Or is it in EE4?
Also, does the Ticket Reservation Time mean that the attendee limit *is* temporarily affected when people put an event in their cart? That is what we need – if someone has it in their cart but hasn’t completed registration, we need the available attendee count to be decremented until the Reservation Time is met or registration is completed.
Thanks!
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Lorenzo Orlando Caum
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January 21, 2015 at 4:36 am
Hi, the screenshot is from the current release of Event Espresso 3.
I’m not sure of the version that it was introduced in but it has been in Event Espresso 3 for the past year.
It temporarily holds a reservation for a registration for the specified period.
For example, if you set it to 15 minutes and the attendee takes 20 minutes, then they’ll lose their tickets to another attendee since the ticket or pricing options would have already been released.
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Lorenzo
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lhammond
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January 21, 2015 at 5:51 am
On what page did you take the screenshot? How do I get there? I want to make sure it’s not already in the version I have and I’m just missing it somehow.
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Dean
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January 21, 2015 at 7:22 am
Hi,
It’s in the General Settings > Advanced features section http://take.ms/6o9mq
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lhammond
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January 28, 2015 at 2:46 pm
What is the expected behavior if 2 people simultaneously add the last open spot to their cart, and then one finishes checkout first? What happens to the person to finish second? Do they get added to the waitlist for that event automatically?
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lhammond
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January 28, 2015 at 7:16 pm
I just installed the latest version of EE3 and it is not doing what I thought it would in terms of holding the reservation. I opened 2 browsers, and had 2 simulated users try to register for an event that only allowed 1 attendee. They both were able to add it to cart, then enter registrant information, and finish checkout — but the second one got a weird generic confirmation screen that didn’t have any event-specific info, and their registration never showed up in the database. Am I missing something here? I’m thinking that as soon as the first users puts the event in their cart, the second user should get an error saying the event is already full, sorry. Then if the first user never finishes registration, the slot is released back to another user after the timeout is reached.
Is there some terminology I’m misunderstanding, like does this setting only apply for the seating chart add-on or paper tickets or something like that?
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lhammond
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January 28, 2015 at 7:59 pm
Ok, after looking at the code, I think I might understand what is going on, but can you please verify? What the current reservation timeout appears to be checking for is registrations that have been submitted but are in the incomplete status because payment has not yet been received. Is that correct?
In other words, this will do nothing to prevent overselling during high traffic periods, because it does not decrement the number of available attendee slots when the event is added to the cart, only after a registration form is submitted. I think to prevent overselling you have to add an empty row to the attendee database as soon as an event is added to the cart, and then clean it up later if the registration process is abandoned. Even then, I suppose you could have overselling if you really have a lot of people registering exactly simultaneously…
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Sidney Harrell
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January 30, 2015 at 2:05 pm
If you don’t need the seating chart add-on, then you should seriously consider switching to EE4. There you can set the availability by event, by event datetime, or by ticket type.
It is also much better architected and so is in a much better position to deal with this problem, to which we have devoted considerable attention.
That said, when you are testing in the latest EE3, are you using one browser window incognito, or two differenct browsers, FF and Chrome. Having the site open in two windows with the same browser causes them to share session data.
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lhammond
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February 2, 2015 at 1:14 am
I tested with one user in Firefox and one in IE so there would be no session clash. I did notice that when I used my back button in Firefox the cart wasn’t empty after completing registration, which I thought was odd, too, but I figured it was because I wasn’t navigating in the correct order. Aside from using back buttons, can you confirm the expected behavior of this reservation timeout bit?
I’m about ready to override the add_attendees_to_db function so that it puts a placeholder row in the database as soon as somebody specifies how many students they want to put in the class, but before they enter the attendee names. That way they can be sure if they’ve gotten to the page with the registration form, they’re temporarily holding a spot in the event as theirs. Then the reservation timeout value will get used whenever we display the number of open spots left to clean up any abandoned registrations from the attendee database.
We can’t switch to EE4 because of several EE3 exclusive features that we require, but we don’t use the seating chart add-on. We do use multi-registration (cart) and MailChimp.
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Sidney Harrell
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February 2, 2015 at 11:16 am
Yes, everything appears to work as intended from what I can see in my testing. One thing to note, when you hit the back button, it often doesn’t reload the page from the server, it just pulls it up from the browser cache. You have to explicitly hit the reload button after you go back to get it to reload the page. That may be why you were still seeing the non-empty cart.
The EE4 MailChimp add-on is available. There isn’t really a MER-equivalent right now for EE4, but it is a shopping cart-like experience.
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lhammond
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February 2, 2015 at 2:54 pm
Does EE4 address the overselling problem that occurs when registration traffic is heavy? Does it decrement the available ticket count once events are put in the cart, or only after checkout?
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Josh
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February 3, 2015 at 9:01 am
Hi there,
EE4 will not allow payment if the event is sold out. So for example if there is one ticket left and there are two people both registering at the same time, the first one that pays gets the ticket. The other person gets a message that says the event is sold out and it will not let them proceed to payment.
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