Managing signing up for breakout sessions for a conference, product attributes and enrollments

[JAM]

Hi all - we have a number of conferences that include breakout sessions, or sometimes pre-conference sessions that are an additional cost.

Currently I create product attributes and options to accommodate this, but there are some issues.

1. People want to change the breakout session after they have registered, but cannot. We can’t change them either.
2. Report viewers can see course reports, but can’t see enrollment reports. So breakouts can be monitored by our conference coordinators from a department, but food preferences (one of our standard enrollment questions) cannot - we have to provide updated reports on a daily basis. Would love to have report viewer be able to see both enrollment and course reports.
3. All product attributes are in a single column in the spreadsheet, so creating a list of who is going to what is quite cumbersome.
4. We can’t limit enrollments to a particular breakout session, only to the conference.

I see now we can go in and change enrollment responses (cool!) after someone has enrolled, and I thought about doing it that way, but when there is a cost I can’t use it. Plus we’ve been told not to create a bunch of enrollment types even though I can’t see any other way, as making even a small change to a question affects ALL users in courses that use that enrollment type.

I understand why we can’t change product attribute option selections after the fact (there could be $ tied to the option) - but I feel like there needs to be an in-between of these two features.

I also tried creating a parent/child/grandchild hierarchy for breakouts: Conference at Parent level, Breakout session 1 at child level (and parent to), concurrent session 1 options at the grandchild level. I realize this is not supported by Ethos. I ran into an issue - I get a red banner indicating " requires you to choose your activities after purchase" - even though I chose prior to enrolling. So I went back in and selected all the other options, but I am still getting that error and am not allowed to enter into the parent (conference) course.

So if anyone has other ways they are doing this, or has a better way of using or managing attributes/options, I’m all ears!

Here is an example of a conference that has: paid attributes/options (pre conference), free attributes/options (breakouts), and our standard enrollment questions:
https://ce.icep.wisc.edu/2019-WI-Health-Literacy#group-tabs-node-course-default6

Thanks!
JAM

[gmartinez]

Hi Julie!

We have the same issues with setting up registration. I created a votable thread about alot of this here (back in 2017): Additional Attribute Features/Support for Complex Courses

I have one course which is a standard conference with 20 workshops all of which have fees. They HAVE to be capped so I’ve been forced to use a regular course page for the standard conference fees and then another course page where all 20 workshops are child courses. With this method, I’ve been able to cap workshops and also accommodate workshop changes. But it’s alot of a manual work since I’m manually changing orders and making sure enrollments are updated when those changes have to be made.

I also had to modify the course marketing feature in order for the ordering process to make sense. Users would sign up for the main conference and at checkout they would see the workshop page.

It’s quite a bit of off-label use and manual work, but it’s the only solution I’ve found to provide the kind of flexibility I think you’re looking for. If you come across a better solution though or advice on doing this kind of thing better I’d also love to know!