CONGO has a very powerful mechanism called "Properties" that lets an administrator set up special purchase items, flags, and additional information to be stored on a registrant. The mechanism is extremely powerful and flexible, but can be a bit confusing to work with.
Overview
Properties are basically a small piece of information associated with a registrant. It could be a flag ("This person is allergic to nuts") some detail ("This person wears a size "medium" t-shirt), etc. The definitions for properties are created by the CONGO administrator in the Maintenance screen, and values for specific registrants are set in the registrant screen.
Special properties
There are two properties that all CONGO installations have by default:
- Administrator (Global)
An administrator can do full maintenance on CONGO - adding or deleting events, modifying registrants, setting or editing properties, etc. The number of administrators should be kept to a minimum. A registrant flagged as an Administrator can administer any event.
- Operator (Event)
An Operator is a registrant who is allowed to log into Coconut and work in a specific event. They canlook up, register, and maintain other registrants data. Operators are scoped to a specific event (IE, if a user is made an operator for one event, they can not necessarily maintain data from other events).
Configuration
The first step to working with Properties is to navigate to Maintenance->Edit Registrant Properties. In this screen the configurations for the properties is maintained.
The field value are:
- Name
The property name. This is an internal key field that must be unique to the event (in the case of a property scoped to "Event". If a property is scoped to Global, it must be unique across all events. See 'Scope' below for details on property scoping.
- Scope
This field defines where this property is used. An 'event' scope means that the property is only available for a specific event. A Global property is one that defines a value that is used across all the events for the same person. Examples of each scope type:
- Local: Some good Local properties would be "Attending gala dinner", "Staff", "Needs pickup at Airport"
- Global: Some good Global properties are "Requires handicapped access", "Do Not Contact", etc
- Default Value
If a registrant doesn't have a value set, this is the value that will be used.
- Type
What type of property is this? Types are boolean, string, numeric, and picker. A picker is a list of available values that will be shown in a pulldown, using the format specified in the "Format" field
- Format
Only used for Picker types. The values to be presented via a pulldown menu. The format is "value:prompt,value:prompt,value:prompt". For other "Type"s, this field is ignored.
- Prompt during Registration
When a user is registering on the public interface, should this property be presented to the user to fill out or select?
- Cost
When registering someone, if they check this option, should they be charged, and how much? This is used for add-on things for registrations, like a T-shirt, tickets to a big common dinner, things like that.
- Description
The text to be shown next to the property in forms and reports
- Sequence
What order should this property be shown in when grouped with others. This is handy when setting up the public registration screens. Properties are displayed in 'sequence' order, lowest to highest. The numbers don't have to be sequential, it's simply a sort order.
Usage
Setting properties on registrants is pretty simple:
- Look up the registrant via normal mechanisms
- Click on Properties (to the right of the registrant data)
- Make any changes necessary (there's no 'save' for this screen. If you change a property, it changes it immidately).
Note: You can override a 'global' property by setting a 'local' value for a registrant. For example, if a global boolean property is defined for "Okay to Contact" with a default value of "Yes" (checked), if a registrant requests not to be contacted, an operator can create a local value by clicking 'toggle', which will create a local Property for this registrant, with a value of "No". This registrant is now flagged as 'do not contact'. Clicking 'Remove local value' will return this registrant to the default value specified in the global property.