[mellycooks]

Greetings All,

I'm pretty new to TRE but this seems like it should be relatively simple. The DBA who just left our organization ran a query of supporters to invite to an upcoming event. Now I want to mark everyone from that query as Invited for that event. I can't seem to figure out a way to do that other than one-by-one. Any tips?

-Melissa

[SandyWilder]

Melissa,
Open the Event record. Under Tools on the menu bar, select Update participants. Select your query, then pull over the Invitation field (and anothers you want to update like Invitation date. In the bottom center of that window, click Update Participants. This will open a list with each participant in the Query listed. Then click on Apply. It's even easier to do as a Global Change from Admin, if you have sufficient rights to access that area. If not, you shuold probably ask for rights to that particular global function, as it's a great time saver.
Good luck!

[mellycooks]

Thanks Sandy!

I knew it had to be relatively easy.

[Melissa Siobhan]

Melissa,

This all depends on your internal procedures for how you mark someone as invited to an event.

Do you add an event record or an appeal (or both)? I do both so I can add the appeal to gifts when ticket sales come in and can do more spohisticated event income reporting from gifts than the event module can do.

To add either you can go to global add and use the query you have from your predecessor.

[mellycooks]

But then I actually try to make it work. It looks like we're not using the event module to it's complete capacity. So our prior DBA would generate a query of constituents to receive an invitation, and as the RSVPs come in, they have been manually registered for that event.

The problem for me now is that the query is a constituent query and I can only update participants with a participant query. Ok, no problem I think, I'll just re-create the query as a participant query. Of course that isn't possible because the fields that were used to filter for the list of invitees aren't available in a participant query.

The thing I don't understand is how you can create an initial list of constituents to invite, using various filters, and then send invitations to those constituents if you want to end up with a participant query.

Clearly I'm still a bit new at this, so I apologies if I have a glaring blind spot, but I'm confused...

[Melissa Siobhan]

A participant query queries only on those who already have event records. You would use this for an update as Sandy suggested but not to create new participants.

I belive that in global add you can use a constituent query to add event records. Have you tried that yet?

[SandyWilder]

Melissa is exactly right. Do it as a global add,participant. Then the steps I outlined will help you manage those records moving forward.

[mellycooks]

Under Globally add, I have some options, but only two appear to apply: Registrants for an Event & Guests for an Event. Both of these will mark all the constituents from the query as registered. However they may or may not be registered, I just want them to be marked as invited.

??

Thanks so much, by the way, for your help!

[Melissa Siobhan]

Guests are non-paying and must be linked to someone who is their sponsor (the one paying for them)

You most likely are wanting to add registrants. Once you go through the add process and put in the query and event name you go to registrant information.

Now the registration screen comes up. One of the fields you can have it add to all records is invited (top right). You will likely also want to add in their status and participation levels (these are defined by your organization so I can't tell you what to enter).

You're almost there!

[Melissa Siobhan]

Oh, and one more thing - it calls them a registrant but that is not the same thing as registered. (what was BB thinking?) On the registrant screen there is a registration field that can be one of 3 things. Until they accept or decline you will want to leave them as not registered.

It is for this reason (and a few others) that I actually do not use the event record to record invitations - I do it as an appeal and only create an event record for those who actually register.

Did you predecessor leave you any kind of documentation on how they did this in the past?

[mellycooks]

No documentation unfortunately. I don't think they have been utilizing this part of RE, but they want to in the future.

I think the thing that concerns me is that when I select "Add Registrants for an Event" RE says that "...All constituents in the group will be registered for the selected event"

[mellycooks]

Oops, Under Add Registrants I can only add an individual or organization query. sigh.

[Melissa Siobhan]

Yes, add registrant requires either individual or organization

Take the constituent query you have and do save as and rename it for orgs - change that one to an org query (under tools)

Go back to the original query and make that one an individual query.

Do the global add twice.