Project Overview
One of the largest such organizations in the United States, serving over 74,000 students at over 140 member schools, an Association [name available upon request] needed a new registration system for managing their multiple annual events — especially their complex Annual Conference. They turned to Engaging to build their new event registration portal.
Previously, each member school’s registration manager had to re-enter each attendee’s details for each event, an administrative chore particularly burdensome for larger schools. Now, they need only check a box next to someone’s name.
Other features include:
- Event tracks/streams (single-choice pathways within events)
- Event sessions (each with its own cost, venue, date & time)
- Discounts for events series (each promoted and purchasable from its sibling events)
- Bulk pricing (set in ranges)
- Member and non-member pricing
- Speakers and other descriptive aspects of an event such as its target audiences, topics, testimonials, photos and agenda
- Dietary preferences (set per person then override-able for each event)
- Saving then returning to a registration before submitting
- Adding additional attendees to already-submitted registrations
Registration signup forms only appear during each event's configured registration period. For payments, the Association chose to keep their current processor Authorize.net.
The Association is enjoying other new benefits of the system, such as:
- Automated nametags: Event nametags can be generated directly, eliminating the manual merge process.
- Instant reports: Comprehensive reports are available at all times, streamlining what was previously a manual process involving collating data from various sources. Any report can be instantly sorted, filtered and exported to a CSV file.
- Log in as: System administrators can log in as other users without needing their passwords, providing necessary perspective on the system’s usability vis-a-vis all types of users.
- Manual resend: While notification emails are triggered automatically by defined events, such as a registration, they can also be manually resent.
On the go, day and night
Although the most common usage for the system is from a desk during work hours, the system nonetheless reduces neatly for mobile-sized screens and sports a rather dashing Dark Mode.
It also builds on the Asssociation’s branding, utilizing the fonts and colors of their main site.
Unto semantic blocks
To reduce cognitive load on users, each content type has its own distinct typographic treatment; we call this semantic typography. Here this extends further to semantic blocks; for each event, not only its title but all its aspects — its date, location, topics, registration deadlines and more — appear consistently across the system as a unit.
Engaging OS
Powering these and other enhancements is Engaging OS, our role-based engine for organization-wide systems.
Built on Directus and the Vue framework Nuxt, and informed by business process management systems such as Camunda, Engaging OS is the culmination to date of our experience in developing such systems.
Future-ready
After launch, the Association’s events director wrote:
I love that it is so customizable; after working through all of our events the first year and making the customizable changes, this is going to run really smoothly in the future with the specific fields we need, which is awesome... People have complimented how easy it will be to register in the future, and I believe that will help encourage registrations in general.
We're looking forward to adding new functionality wherever and whenever needed.