An event's page is the list of its guests. It is the screen you will spend the most time on: it is where you add, filter, fix, and on the night, let people in.
Adding guests
Three routes, all legitimate.
Search multiple guests — you pick from the address book, filtering as you would on contacts, select and add in bulk. The normal route once the address book has something in it.
Add single new guest — one person at a time. If the email is not in the address book, the contact is created and stays there after the event: you are not making a throwaway duplicate.
Import guests — you upload a file straight onto this event. The right route when the list comes from the client and is not in the address book yet: see Importing and exporting contacts.
Anyone already invited is not duplicated. When you add people who are already there, you can choose not to touch their confirmation status: that is for re-running the add on a wider selection without wiping the answers already in.
The states
Every guest carries three independent pieces of information. Confusing them causes half the questions we get.
| State | Who changes it | What it says |
|---|---|---|
| Invited | The system, when a campaign goes out | At least one campaign was sent to them |
| Confirmed / Not confirmed / No answer | The guest, answering on the landing page — or you, by hand | Whether they said they are coming |
| Checked in | Whoever is on the door, on the night | Whether they actually walked in |
They really are independent: you can have someone confirmed who was never invited (you added them after a phone call) and someone checked in who never confirmed (they turned up anyway). The application does not reconcile them for you, and that is deliberate: they are different facts, and overwriting one with another would destroy information.
Companions
If you enabled them on the event, each guest declares how many people they are bringing, up to the limit you set. At the door you record how many actually came in, which rarely matches how many were announced.
Hence the distinction between the two numbers on the event:
- Guests — how many rows are in the list.
- People — guests plus companions: the number that matters for capacity, catering and safety.
The people count is the right one for every practical question about the night.
Editing a guest
Opening a row edits what belongs to this event: confirmation, companions, slot, list, notes, and the privacy consents they gave.
First name, surname and email belong to the contact, not to the guest: correcting them here corrects them in the address book and therefore everywhere. That is the right behaviour — a wrong email is wrong everywhere — but it is worth knowing before you discover it.
Guest notes are the other underrated field: allergies, access needs, "arriving late", "friend of the director". They are visible at the door too.
When you change a confirmation by hand, you can choose whether to fire the automatic confirmation or refusal email. If you are tidying up the list after a round of phone calls, you almost always want it off.
Filtering and working in bulk
The list filters by confirmation state, attendance, list and slot. With a selection active you can confirm, cancel, delete or edit in bulk: that is how you tidy up a list that arrived in a mess.
As with contacts, when results run past one page you can select everybody matching the filters, not just what you can see. And as with contacts, it is worth reading the counter before pressing anything.
Exporting
The export button produces the guests as Excel, CSV or PDF, respecting your active filters. It is the file reception, security and catering need — and the backup copy to have on the night anyway, for when the network will not cooperate.
Removing a guest
It takes the person off this event and nothing more: the contact stays in the address book, and other events notice nothing.