Applicable packages

Applicable to all Symposium packages

This article is for event organizers. If you are an event participant, please see our Resources for Participants section.

For both public and private events, you can set up a custom registration form to collect information about your event attendees. Registration can be opened up prior to the event to allow for pre-event registration and can be left open even once your event has been launched. A separate registration page can be customized and serves as an externally-facing page for event organizers to share content prior to the launch of your event.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Setting the Registration Period
• Customizing the Registration Form
  • Conditions
• Customizing the Registration Page
  • Adding an image to your registration page
  • Registration Page message and Custom Tabs
  • Adding Sponsors 
  • Adding information about your organization
• Registration Scenarios
  • Public event, no customized registration settings
  • Public event, customized registration settings
  • Private event, no customized registration settings
  • Private event, customized registration settings

Setting the Registration Period

Under the Event Setup page of your event management dashboard, you will find the Registration tab, through which you may establish your Event Registration Period and Customize the Registration Form. You may choose any length and period of time to have your registration form open. The period during which your event registration is open can begin and end at anytime, regardless of when your event is launched.

Once you have updated your Event Registration Period, attendees will only be able to register for your event within that period. To allow attendees to register for your event at any point that they are trying to access it, simply Clear the dates listed under the registration period.

NOTE: If you set the Registration Period to end before your event ends, then attendees who try to register for your event after the period closes but while the event is still open will be unable to register for your event. This means they will be blocked from viewing any event content (if the event is private), or accessing any private live sessions and commenting under presentations (if the event is public).

You can make changes to your event registration period at any point throughout the uptime of your event, whether before or after launch. 

Customizing the Registration Form

By default, with or without a registration form, participants' names and emails will be collected when they register for your event. If there is no registration form set up, once an attendee has signed up/logged into their Symposium account, they can register for your event with the simple click of a button (name and email are collected when the attendee signs up for an account on Symposium, a pre-requisite to event registration).

NOTE: Attendees will only be able to register for your event if their email is first pre-authorized (either by individual email, email domain, or the "Allow all domains" toggle) under the event Access Settings. 

The first step to customizing your own registration form in order to collect additional information from registrants is to switch on the Customize Registration Form toggle. 

Once the toggle is switched on, you will be able to click the highlighted Customize button, which will bring you to the Registration Form Editor.  

You will first be asked to Name your registration form, and specify form Instructions.

NOTE: You may preview your registration form at any point by clicking the yellow pencil labeled "Editing Form" at the top of your Registration Form Editor. This will allow you to experience your form as a prospective registrant will.When you are done previewing, simply toggle off the preview mode by clicking the black X-pencil icon to keep making changes to your form. You may switch between these modes as many times as you like while editing your registration form. 

You are next offered 5 different options for fields that may be added to your registration form: New Short Answer Field, New Multi-Select Field, New Likert Scale Field, New File Upload Field and New Date Field.

In each case, you will be asked to provide a Field Display Name and an optional field description. You may also choose to require a response to the field for registration form submission, adjust the position of the field relative to other fields (using ☰), or remove the field from the form. 

When you add a new Short Answer Field, you are given the choice to specify the type of response: Text Editor, Number, or Plain Text. The "Text Editor" option is best if you expect longer responses or hyperlinking, and will appear to the registrant as shown below:

Setting the field type to "Number" will limit the response entries to only numerical digits, but does not limit the magnitude of the number that can be entered. Lastly, setting the field type to "Plain Text" will give registrants one line on which to enter their response.

Similarly, adding a new Multi-Select Field allows you two options for field type: Radio Buttons, or Checkboxes. You may add, remove, or edit the different field options via the controls highlighted below.

The Likert Scale Field allows you to choose your scale range (up to 100) and to label each level. These will appear to viewers as horizontally ranked buttons.

The File Upload Field allows viewers to upload a file to your Registration Form. You may restrict the file upload type via the drop down menu, through which you may either allow all file types to be uploaded, or only one of the following: Image (JPEG/PNG), PDF, CSV, Excel, Word, or Powerpoint.

Lastly, the Date Field will allow participants to enter or select from a calendar a specific date as a response. 

Conditions

Under the Conditions tab, you may add conditional logic to your registration form, so that some fields only appear if a particular response is selected in one of your Multi-Select Fields. You'll want to set conditional logic up after you've added all the questions you want to ask attendees to your Registration Form. 

Because conditions require standardized responses, you are only allowed to set conditions according to Multi-Select Field responses. No other type of field will be able to trigger a condition.

To add a condition to your registration form, navigate to the Conditions tab in your Registration Form Editor and select "Add Condition".

You will then see a condition sentence with three drop down menus. The first drop down menu allows you to select any one of the Multi-Select Fields that you created in your form, around which to set your condition. The second drop down contains all of the field options that you entered when you created the selected Multi-Select field, and will set the condition that must be met. You may only select one potential response per Form Condition. The last drop down allows you to choose which question(s) you would like to be triggered when the selected response is given. 

You may select as many questions as you would like. Once a question is selected in this third drop down menu, it will disappear from your blank Registration Form, and only appear to viewers who answer the condition question as specified.

NOTE: Your conditional questions must be ordered such that the trigger question, which leads to the conditional questions, must come first in your form, or else the conditional questions will pop up above the trigger question.

For example: If you have created fields A, B, C, D, and E in your Registration Form, and field E is the trigger question that leads to conditional field D appearing, then when you click the conditional answer in E, field D will pop up above it (rather than below). This can be resolved by ensuring E is placed above D when you're creating the form fields.

We strongly encourage organizers to preview and perform a click test with their registration form before distributing the event link to prospective attendees. You can do this via the yellow pencil icon Form Preview toggle in the upper lefthand corner on your Registration Form Editor.

Customizing the Registration Page

A customized registration page can now also be created in conjunction with your Symposium event. The registration page can be put up prior to the launch of your event so that event attendees can learn more about your event, your organization's social media, and any sponsors. Depending on your event access settings, authorized attendees will also be able to pre-register for your event. To customize your registration page, go to Event Setup > Registration and select Edit page as indicated below. 

Any changes made to your Registration Page can be saved by selecting "Save Changes" and you can preview your changes by selecting "Preview Page." 

Adding an image to your registration page

Under the Event name of your Registration Page editor, you can include an optional image that will be placed below the event name, event launch time, and event location and above your "About" information of your Registration Page. 

The event name, organizer information, event dates and times, and location will be populated from the other fields on the Event Information and Registration tabs.

Registration Page message and Custom Tabs

In the About text editor box, you can share information about your event such as a welcoming message or offer instructions about registering for the event. Custom tabs can be added by selecting the "+" icon on the right side of the text editor box. Additional tabs can serve to better organize event information, where each tab can be a specific day of the event specific information for different audiences participating, images of a venue map, or other relevant information. Images and other special content can be added in using the HTML editor, represented by the leftmost <> icon in the text formatting toolbar. 

When you've added an additional tab, you can customize the name of the tab as well as add information in the text editor box. If you would like to remove a custom tab, you can select the trash icon on the right side of the box, as indicated below. 

Similar to the Welcome Page text editor box, you can embed media into each tab. Additional content such as photos, videos, programs, and more can be included through the HTML editor, found under the leftmost icon in the text editor menu. 

Adding Sponsors 

If your event had any sponsors and you would like to include them on your registration page, select the toggle under the About text editor box. 

Once you have added a Section heading, you can create Subsection names for specific sponsors. The Subsection names will populate underneath, and you will then be able to upload logos to populate under the sponsor subsection name. If you made a mistake in adding a subsection name, you can remove it by selecting "Delete Subsection."

Adding information about your organization

On the right side of the Registration Page, you can include a promotional marketing video for your event or from your organization, share information about your organization, link any social media, and include event organizer information such as your name or email address. 

If you would like to add a video, you can include a YouTube link that will then display on your Registration Page. Information about your organization can also be included in the Text Editor box under the YouTube link, and additional media can also be included by selecting the HTML editor icon. 

Your Registration Page can also display any social media or websites by providing links to any of the above platforms. If you would like event attendees to contact you with any possible questions, you can include your name or your organization name under "Organizer Information."

Registration Scenarios

Public event, no customized registration settings

This scenario will follow the standard registration rules outlined in our Attendee Experience article. Anyone who navigates to your event via your event link or Symposium's Discover Events page before launch will be shown the following message, telling them to return once the event has launched:

Attendees will not be able to register for your event until after your event launches.

Once the event launches, anyone will be able to view your public content (Welcome Page, Presentations, public Live Sessions). When an event viewer tries to access private Live Sessions or comment under a presentation, they will be prompted to sign up for a Symposium account and confirm their registration for your event. Their name and email address will be automatically collected and will appear under the Registrants tab of your event management page, along with the date and time of their registration and a toggle for you to block them from your event. 

Public event, customized registration settings

If you have set your registration period to begin before your event launches (recommended), pre-authorized attendees will be able to register for your event before the event launches. A Register button will appear on your event thumbnail under Symposium's Discover Events page, and your event link will direct people straight to your registration page (whether it has been customized or not). 

Once your event launches, unregistered attendees will not be prompted to register until they try to comment under a presentation or access a private Live Session or Table session. At this point, they will be presented with either our default, one click registration (if you have not customized a form), or the form that you have customized. If you end the Registration Period before your event ends, attendees that have not yet registered who try to comment under a presentation or view a Live Session will be unable to register and therefore blocked from engaging in those ways at your event.

If you leave your Registration Period on your public event blank, but customize your Registration Form, attendees will only be able to register for your event once the event has launched. 

Private event, no customized registration settings

Before the event launches, attendees will be able to register for your event when they navigate to the event on Symposium (either via the Register button on the event thumbnail under Symposium's Discover Events page, or the event link). Once they've registered using a pre-authorized email (which organizers configure under their Access Settings), they will see a message telling them to return once the event has launched to access event content. 

After the event has launched, those who have not yet registered will have to register via the same process in order to enter the event, view any content, and interact. 

Private event, customized registration settings

A private event with a customized Registration Period will operate much like a private event with no customization, except that attendees will only be able to register during the registration period, regardless of when the event is launched. Customizing the registration form will simply require all viewers to first complete your customized registration form. No user will be able to access or view your event without first completing registration form, and if the registration period has closed, they will be unable to register and view your event altogether.