when our members register for an event and change any data (address, name, etc) please give them an option to update their profile data with the new information. At present it must be found and updated manually.

The current behavior is largely counter-intuitive. The default should be that contact information is updated. This has bitten us numerous times, and is a hassle for registrants.

When a user registers to an event, and populates the common fields on that event, those values should update the users profile, not just the users event registration profile.

If a user, who already has common fields populated, registers for an event, their common fields are pulled into the event registration, saving the user from needing to populate any existing common fields.

However, if a contact has registered for an event, completed all common fields, then goes to register for anther event, the common field answers are all blank, requiring the contact to again answer the same questions over again.

This is confusing to the contact who believe they just created/populated a user profile on the website.

To the same accord, an existing contact who already has populated their common fields changes a value on the event registration, expecting this will update their profiles common fields and later, upon registering for another event, discovers the value has been "rolled back" even though they updated it.

This defeats the purpose and use of a common field - as the field should be common across the entirely of the platform, not separate for the event record and the contact record.

WildApricot should resolve this anomaly ASAP, or at least offer the option to update the contact common fields when the event registration is completed using common fields.

John, thanks for the details and explanation.

There are different cases, in your - members update their data during the registration process, in others - members register their spouse or kids under their login and so don't need to update profile.

We will consider all comments and cases, but seems it should be optional and defined for each event separately.

Katya, Product Owner @ Wild Apricot

Yes, of course contact/member fields entered/edited during registrations should update the contact/member record, or at least provide the option. As it is, I have to import the fields for every event, so member directories show the updated info. I use these lists for event sponsors/exhibitors and they are not happy when a past event's info shows up. To have updated info all the time, I would have to do this after every registration. I'm at a loss to understand what the purpose of allowing contact/member fields entry in registrations and not using the updates. This is a glaring lack of data integrity, by allowing the same field to contain duplicate or conflicting information. I wish when WA had a design flaw, it would address it as serious bug rather than a wishlist item. :-(

Event notes should save on the contact’s profile notes

What's the point of allowing a member to input address/phone/etc. updated information on a registration form if it is not updated on their Membership record? Perhaps an option to say "Do you wish to update your membership information on file?"

Right now, if a person is in our database, when they register for an event with their email, the system populates the registration form. A lot of our members assume that if they make changes to this data, they will automatically change their profiles. They get frustrated.

I've added language to our registration system page that explains this but it would be really nice if there were a way to "click to update your profile" or something like that?

Yes, this is much needed. The competitor I transitioned from to Wild Apricot did update the user's profile with the common DB field changes. This seems like a 'no-brainer' that it is needed.

Since this might be hard to incorporate, maybe a statement on top of a registration form that says your profile is not updated or to update your profile. UPDATE HERE! Send them back after they update it. You already have the logic to check for specific entries in a User Profile. I have one question that I check. If it isn't checked, the profile isn't updated.

This would be a great feature. Our required User Profile fields and required event registration fields are exactly the same. Members insist they updated their User Profile and there is something wrong with our website since they know they entered the exact data already.

It seems to me that the interface between the profile and events should work more smoothly. When an update is made in either place, it should update that information all across the platform. It creates double and triple work to have to make those edits in every section.

I agree this should be limited to logged in members and would be quite useful for us.

If you're looking at contact fields, here's something else that would be helpful.

Now, contact (or common) fields always go at the top. This creates a poor workflow for some of our event registrations. (We need a number of common fields for some registrants, but not for most registrants. So these common fields push the required fields down the page. Then our members complain that they can't figure out how to fill out the form.)

I suggest adding another custom field type, a Common Field, that could be moved around on the form and have instructions just like any other custom field. When creating this type of custom field, the admin would get a dropdown list and could specify which Common Field to use.

Then we could lay the form out more clearly for all registrants.

A button on the registration page asking "do you want to update your contact information to reflect this?" would be great. Limiting it to registered users is fine. It's just crazy to have to go look at all of them to see if the event and contact information match. Getting the members to update their information as soon as it changes would be nice but adjusting the software is easier and more effective than trying to change members' behavior.

I like the idea but see the challenges explained below. At a minimum, a note that tells people that changes will not be saved to their profile would be nice. A password prompt would be even better.

At least from the admin side if info is changed in the contact's data it would be great if the data changed globally across all events that contact is registered for.

I merged this thread and another old thread for Genera forum to solve them together. The problem is that difference in event registration record and contact/member record may cause (and causes) a number of difficulties so we have to rethink the approach from the begginning and possibly change the background logic completely.

For now, it'll be staying here, collecting comments and waiting for its turn to get into the Roadmap http://help.wildapricot.com/display/DOC/Product+roadmap

Hello,

It seems the matter is in Privacy settings, nevertheless:

If "Organization" field privacy settings are set to "Members", this field will not be automatically filled in when registering without logging in. Other fields, e.g. First or Last name, have privacy settings set to "Anybody", thus are always filled in automatically.
Since members can change privacy settings of the fields as they want in their profile, this can differ from member to member.

There are two ways to solve the problem:

1. Change Organization field privacy settings to "Anybody". (You can do it for your whole contact base at once, see here: https://help.wildapricot.com/display/DOC/Member+privacy+settings ). To prevent further changes by members you can lock this field privacy settings.

2. Require members to log into site prior to registering. In this case all fields will be autofilled, since system knows the user and can fill fields w/o compromising anybody's privacy.

That was the first thing I checked (privacy settings). I can't make the Organization field mandatory because some people don't have an organization. It also can't be that they registered with a different email, because all the other parts of their profiles were filled in (name, email, phone, etc.).

I did a little more investigation. Out of 223 event registrants, 29 did not have the Organization field filled in on the event side. Of those 29, 13 did not have the Organization field filled in on the member profile side, so that's not a problem. That leaves 16 that have something in their Organization fields on the member profile side, but the info didn't automatically fill in on the event side. I can't see any difference in those 16 profiles. Their profiles look exactly like the 197 registrants that worked smoothly.

The only thing I can think of is they didn't choose for the rego form to automatically fill in the details from their member profile. That or they registered with an email not linked to their profile and didn't fill in the company details themselves? One way around this would be to make the "organisation" part on the rego form mandatory. This is part of the contacts common fields so can be made mandatory from editing the "common fields" assuming you use this field on the registration form.