Have a limited amount of space for a session? Want to require users to register for a session and view who signed up? Our Attendance feature and Audience Management tools allow you to manage registration and waitlists to maximize session attendance.
Attendance Options: Space Limitations and Waitlists
There are four types of attendances options:
- Anyone can add to My Schedule: This option does not restrict the number of users that add the session to their My Schedule.
- Nobody can add: This option prevents the session from being added to users' My Schedule.
- Registration Required: This setting should be used when you only have a select number of seats or wish to verify who is in attendance.
- Preset registrants only: Users with Preset Schedules are registered for their sessions automatically. This option prevents other users from adding the session to My Schedule.
If you set a session to Require Registration, you have three additional choices:
- Registration Start (Optional): You can control the date/time when users will be able to add sessions to their My Schedule.
- Limit Capacity (Optional): Enter a numeric value here to prevent users from registering for a session after a certain number have registered.
- Waitlist (Optional): After setting a space limitation, you can choose to enable a Waitlist. If someone drops out of a session, the first person on the waitlist will automatically be added to the session. The waitlisted end-user will receive a notification in the app, alerting them they have successfully been registered for that session.
This feature is only available on an Engage (previously Premium) plan.
If you choose to set space limitations or use registration required for sessions, your users will be required to log in to an account before they can add sessions to their My Schedule.
Users who are assigned sessions using the Preset Schedule feature will not take up the spaces set using the limited capacity functionality.
You can read more about the user behaviour of conflicting sessions here.
For sessions that require registration, you can also hide linked content as well as engagement features until a user registers for the session.
How to Set Attendance
When importing your Schedule template spreadsheet, use the Attendance columns (H-L) to allow adding to My Schedule, require registration, set your registration time, limit capacity, and/or allow a waitlist if you would like.
When editing a Schedule session manually, visit the Attendance tab within the Schedule feature. Here, you can select a single session to edit or use the checkbox feature to edit multiple sessions at once.
How to View Registrations
You can read more about viewing registrations and managing attendance in Builder in our Audience Management support article.
If you would like to see how attendance limits show for end users, you can find out more in our My Schedule article for mobile or on our Guidebook Web for End Users article.
Session Content Visibility
If you want to limit what information is visible to users before they register for a session, it is possible to gate content for sessions that require registration. Any links, videos, or engagement feature,s like a live poll or session discussion, will be hidden from view until a user registers for the session.
To set this up, navigate to your schedule feature and click Settings. Scroll down and toggle the “Session content visibility” toggle “off” and click Save. Now, all content besides the description of the session will be hidden from view until the user registers.
Note that this toggle applies to all sessions that require registration in your guide; it is not session specific.
Schedule Conflicts
How Schedule Conflicts Work
When a user tries to add a session to their My Schedule that overlaps in time with a session they've already added, Guidebook will surface a conflict prompt to help them decide what to do. The exact prompt depends on the attendance type of both the existing session and the one they're trying to add.
Conflict scenarios
Adding a session set to "Anyone can add" when there's already a session at that time: The user will see a prompt that says: "This event conflicts with your current schedule. Add it anyway?" If they tap to continue, both sessions will be added to their My Schedule.
Adding a "Registration Required" session when there's already an "Anyone can add" session at that time: The user will see a conflict prompt and can choose to add the new session in addition to the existing one. Both sessions will appear in their My Schedule.
Adding a session when there's already a "Nobody can add" or "Preset only" session at that time: The user will see a conflict prompt and can add the new session in addition to the existing one. Sessions added via Preset Schedule will remain in their My Schedule — Preset Schedule sessions cannot be replaced or removed by the user.
Adding a "Registration Required" session when there's already a "Registration Required" session at that time: The behavior here depends on whether the existing session has a capacity limit set:
- If the existing session has a capacity limit: The user will see a prompt that says: "By registering for this session, you will automatically be unregistered from the other session." They can tap Continue to swap their registration over to the new session, or Cancel to stay registered in the original.
- If the existing session does not have a capacity limit: No conflict prompt appears, and the user can register for both sessions. Because there's no capacity limit on the original session, registering for an additional session at the same time doesn't take a seat away from anyone else.
For details on what users will see when adding sessions that conflict in time, see My Schedule: Conflict Rules.
Sessions added via Preset Schedule
Preset Schedule sessions are special — they're assigned to users by the guide builder and can't be removed by the user. If a user tries to add another session at the same time as a Preset Schedule session:
- They can register for sessions that take place at the same time as Preset Schedule sessions, but they cannot replace the Preset Schedule session.
- The Preset Schedule session will remain in their My Schedule alongside the new session.