A registration process controls how someone registers for one event. It sets the web form they complete, when online registration opens and closes, whether they can edit a completed registration, how many guests they can bring, and which confirmation page and email they receive. Every event needs at least one process before anyone can register, and a registration type is available only after you link it to a process.
Prerequisites
You need access to the event in the Events Console. Before you turn on a form section, the web form for that section must already exist, whether it is the registration form, edit form, contact form, or organization form.
- A registration form that should create an order needs both a Collect Order Details component and a Confirm Order Details component. Place Collect Order Details on a form page, and place Confirm Order Details on the last page before the completion page. Without both components, the registration can look successful but still fail to create an order.
- The registration form also needs its Submit button enabled. If the button is disabled, the form can look complete but will not create the registration when a registrant tries to finish.
The web form for each section lives in your account’s shared form library, not inside one event’s Registration menu. You manage those forms from Meetings & Shows’ own overview or global settings, so if you cannot find Forms under an event’s Registration setup, that is why.
Where to Find It
Go to Setup › Registration › Processes for the event. This page shows every process set up for the event.
- Create Registration Process opens a blank process.
- Use a row’s edit or clone icon to update or copy that process. Cloning is a practical way to build a variation, such as a copy of a large conference process with guest registration or another optional step turned off.
- To make a process active or inactive, edit it and change the status in Basic Information. To do the same for a registration package, edit the package and use the same Basic Information section.
- To test a configured registration form before it goes live, open the form in the Console and select the light bulb icon next to its name to turn on test mode. Test mode lets you go through the submission or review flow from the front end without creating a real registration.
Dragging a process to a new position does not keep your dropped order. The list re-sorts alphabetically instead.
The Settings
| Setting | Options | Default | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Registration Form: | Your Rhythm account’s active registration web forms | Empty | Required. Registrants complete this form |
| Group Registration Form: | Your Rhythm account’s active registration web forms | Empty | Available only when group registration is on for your Rhythm account. Group registrations use this form |
| Allow online registration via the portal | On, off | On | Makes this process available in the Portal |
| Open Date & Time: | Date and time | Empty | Required while online registration is on. The process stays closed until this date and time |
| Close Date & Time: | Date and time | Empty | Stops online registration for this process. Rhythm does not check whether this is after the open date |
| Allow registrations to be modified after submission | On, off | Off | Available only when registration modification is on for your Rhythm account. Lets registrants change a completed registration in the Portal |
| Deadline for attendees to modify in the portal: | Date | Empty | Shown only when modification is on |
| Edit Form: | Your Rhythm account’s active registration web forms | Empty | Shown only when modification is on. Leave it blank to use the registration form above for edits |
| Change Fee: | Your Rhythm account’s registration change fees | Empty | Required while modification is on. This fee is charged for a modification |
| Maximum # of Guests: | A number | Empty | Limits how many guests a registrant can add |
| Guest Registration Types: | The event’s registration types | Every guest type | Sets which types a guest can use. Leave it blank to offer every type marked as a guest type |
| Do not create contact records for guests | On, off | Off | Keeps guests off the contact list |
| Show Contact Form / Show Organization Form (switches) | On, off, plus a form select | Off | Asks registrants to confirm their contact or organization details before completing registration |
| Custom Confirmation HTML (switch and editor) | On, off | Off | Replaces the default success message shown after registration |
| Confirmation Email (switch and editor) | On, off | Off | Sends an email when the registration is submitted |
| Override Checkout Settings (switch) | On, off | Off | Uses this process’s checkout configuration instead of the event’s registration settings. Group registration does not currently use this override; it uses the event’s own checkout and invoice template instead, even when a process has its own override configured |
You control whether registrants can add guests on the process, not on the registration type. Use Maximum # of Guests and Guest Registration Types to turn guest registration on and decide which guest types are available. If one registration type should have no guest step, assign it to a process that uses a different registration form without the Guest Registrations component, rather than looking for a guest setting on the type itself.
Warning
Close Date & Time is the setting that stops online registration after a cutoff. If you turn on Allow online registration via the portal and leave the close date blank, the process stays open indefinitely because nothing else closes it automatically.
If registrants see a message that the event is not open yet, check the process’s Open Date & Time. When the open date is in the future, the process stays closed until that date and time arrives. If registration still does not appear after the dates look right, confirm that the registration type is linked to this process, the event is visible and exposed in the Portal, and a Default Registration Process is chosen on the event’s Registration Settings page. Some setups have needed all of these in place before registration opens, even for a registration type’s normal, non-imported registrations.
To delay registration until a future date without disabling online registration, leave the process active and set its Open Date & Time, and if needed, its Close Date & Time. The process then becomes available automatically at the time you set, with no manual reactivation needed. Making a process inactive does not disturb registrations that already exist, but it can hide the process from view in the Console. If an inactive process seems to be missing, select the option to show all processes.
Registration form fields, including a terms-and-conditions field, are limited to the display options available on the chosen form component. A form field cannot show its text in a small embedded scrollable window because that display option is not supported.
If you add guest questions to the main registration flow instead of the guest’s own form, Rhythm stores those answers on the main registration, not on the guest’s registration. When you report on guest answers collected this way, cross-reference the main registration with the guest record instead of expecting the answers on the guest itself. The "is guest registration" field on a registration record tells you whether that registration is itself a guest registration. Direct self-registration by a guest is not supported, so this field does not affect that scenario.
Save and Return lets a registrant leave a multi-page registration form and come back to finish it. You control this on the form itself, not with one event-level setting. Open the registration form in the form editor, select a page, and use its Transitions tab to turn the behavior on or off for that page.
Tip
If registrants on a multi-page form get stuck with the Next button disabled, compare the required-field settings in event setup with how those fields actually appear in the Portal. A field that is marked required in setup but is missing, or not presented consistently, can stop registrants from moving forward. If the form’s Next button still stays disabled after the setup looks correct, rebuilding the form as an equivalent copy has restored the ability to proceed in some cases. The original form itself can be the problem, not only its configuration.
To require an affirmative "Yes" before a registrant can continue, make the field required and give it a single choice, such as one radio button or picklist option reading "Yes." With only one option on a required field, registrants cannot select Next until they choose it. This required-field validation is generally more reliable for gating a page than trying to create the same block with a custom error message.
A field group with conditional visibility set to show only when Guests (Form Data) is not blank appears after a guest has been added to the registration, and not before. If you want a field’s visibility to depend on Functions form data elsewhere on the registration form, that conditional-visibility pattern is not supported. Ask for the same information with a registration question instead.
Use Override Checkout Settings when you need to change which payment methods this process accepts, such as removing ACH. There is no account-wide switch for registration payment methods. Each event’s checkout options are set per event through this override, rather than in one central place. When you turn on Bill My Organization, the Check #/Reference field follows the bill-later field settings on this process. It appears when you have configured a bill-later field as optional or required, and stays hidden otherwise.
Confirmation Email
The confirmation email editor accepts merge fields for the contact, organization, registration, registration type, registration package, event, order, and session. A merge field fills only when the registration form captured and stored that data. For example, if your registration form uses separate custom fields for airfare, train, and driving instead of one combined transportation-method field, a merge token for the combined field will not populate. Function registration-question custom fields are not currently available in this merge-field list, so you cannot pull an answer to a function’s registration question directly into this email.
Merge-field behavior also depends on which confirmation email you are editing. A registration package’s own confirmation email is not meant to pull data from the registration as a whole. When you need attendee-specific detail for a group registration or for guests, use the process-level confirmation, which can iterate over the guests collected on the registration, for example {{#each guests}} ... {{name}} ... {{/each}}. If the data dictionary’s guest-related merge fields show generic names like field1 or field2, check a live preview against a registration with guest data to see what each value represents.
Use Preview to send a test email to any address you choose. The preview uses the email exactly as written and renders it against a real registration you select, so you can review it before registrants receive it. To preview, enter the ID of an existing registration. You can copy it from the registration’s Registration 360 page by opening the options menu and choosing Copy ID to Clipboard. Preview needs a registration that has an associated order. If you preview against a registration with no order, it fails with an error that no id was presented, so choose a registration that went through checkout instead of one created or imported without an order. Preview is also a useful troubleshooting tool. Send it to a valid registration ID and destination address to confirm whether a specific process can generate and send its confirmation email, then compare a working process with a nonworking one to narrow down which process is affected.
Warning
Confirmation email previews can still render blank for function- and guest-related merge fields even when the selected registration has sessions, functions, and a guest. If those fields are blank in a preview, do not assume the registration is missing the data. Check the live registration record before you conclude the content is missing.
If you add BCC addresses to the confirmation email, separate multiple addresses with a comma or semicolon. A different separator, such as a period, can prevent the confirmation email from sending at all.
Warning
Merge fields for session information can be unreliable. A session-name field has failed to insert the selected session even when the registrant chose one, and a session description field inside a repeating block for multiple sessions has sometimes rendered raw HTML instead of plain text, or produced nothing at all. To show which sessions someone selected, use a session name merge field inside a repeating block instead of a single direct field, and always preview the email against a real registration before you rely on it. The registration package’s own session-track field returns configuration data as a list of IDs, not readable session names, so it is not the field to use here.
A date merge field, such as the event’s start date, renders in raw ISO 8601 UTC format unless you format it explicitly. Use a moment expression in the template, for example {{moment event.start_date format="dddd, DD MMMM YYYY"}}, to control how the date and time appear. If a date or time already looks wrong in a sent or previewed confirmation, correct the formatting in the confirmation email template itself. Re-saving or editing the event’s scheduled time does not change how the confirmation email renders it.
Tip
To list every session a registrant chose, wrap the fields in {{#each registration.sessions}} ... {{/each}}. Inside that block, use a session’s own fields directly, such as {{name}} for the session name or {{location}} for its location, instead of the placeholders {{field1}} and {{field2}}, which never output a value. If the merge field browser shows a field with a session. prefix, drop that prefix when you use it inside this loop because you are already referring to one session at a time.
The confirmation email editor accepts merge fields for the contact, organization, registration, registration type, registration package, event, order, and session. To list the registrant’s chosen add-ons inside the email, iterate the registration’s add-ons and print each one’s name, for example {{#each registration.add_ons}}{{name}}{{/each}}. Use Preview to send a test email to any address you choose. The preview uses the email exactly as written and renders it against a real registration you select, so you can check it before registrants receive it.
The confirmation email editor accepts merge fields for the contact, organization, registration, registration type, registration package, event, order, and session. Use Preview to send a test email to any address you choose. The preview uses the email exactly as written and renders it against a real registration you select, so you can check it before registrants receive it. Some merge fields, such as a webinar’s join URL, live on the registration record itself rather than on the event. If you preview before anyone has registered, those fields are blank. If a merge field is not showing the value you expect, register someone for the event first and preview again against that registration.
Warning
A guest merge field only renders correctly if you paste it into the editor’s source-code (HTML) view instead of typing it directly in the visual editor. Pasting it into the visual view alone can leave the guest’s name out of the email. Inserting the guest collection by itself, without looping over it, can also render as an object string or produce no visible output instead of guest details.
Tip
To show guest details in a confirmation email, loop over the guest collection and reference a valid property inside the loop, for example {{#each guests}} {{name}} {{/each}}. {{#each registration.guests}} also works. The merge field for a registration package’s guest types expands into its own loop with child properties. Which of those properties return a value has been inconsistent, so preview the email against a real registration with guests before you rely on it.
Tip
When you turn on Allow registrations to be modified after submission, choose a Change Fee because it is required. Also decide whether registrants should use a different Edit Form. If you leave it blank, they use the same registration form for their edit.
The confirmation email configured on the process is sent to everyone who completes that process, regardless of which registration package they chose. If you turn it off here, no process-level confirmation goes out to anyone using this process. A registration package’s own confirmation email is separate. You configure it on the package itself, and it sends only when that specific package is purchased. If registrants are getting an outdated confirmation, check which process their registration type is linked to. The email that sends comes from that process’s configuration, so a registration type still pointed to an old or incorrect process keeps sending that process’s content even after you update the confirmation you expected it to use.
A template’s {{#if ...}} block shows its content only when the referenced field has any value. A yes/no checkbox field works well for this because unchecked is blank and checked has a value. A yes/no radio-button field does not work the same way because both options count as populated values, so the block still shows no matter which option the registrant chose.
If an image renders correctly in the email editor or preview but not in the email registrants receive, the image’s source URL in the email’s HTML is the likely cause. Downloading the image and re-uploading it, so the email points to a fresh source, has resolved this for other accounts. If confirmation emails and previews stop sending for one event process while other processes on the same account work normally, creating a new registration process, configuring its confirmation email, and setting it as the event’s default registration process has gotten confirmations sending again in similar cases.
Tip
Custom Confirmation HTML and a registration form’s own Complete page, or Success message, are separate places that control what registrants see after they submit. Custom Confirmation HTML is configured here on the process and replaces the default success message. The form’s own completion messaging is edited separately. Open the registration form, edit the Complete page, then save and publish the form so the change reaches the live registration experience. If you need to update what registrants see after registering, check both places rather than assuming one setting covers everything.
Custom Confirmation HTML does not support redirecting registrants to an external URL. Adding script to the HTML, or trying a separate redirect page after a successful registration, does not create an external redirect. If Custom Confirmation HTML is enabled but does not render after a successful registration, move the same content into the registration form’s own Complete page or Success message as a practical temporary option while you resolve why the custom HTML is not appearing.
After registration, the confirmation page’s Continue button takes the registrant to a registration details, or View Registration, page. That destination is not currently configurable.
Most events leave the checkout step labeled Review Order, but you can change that wording by editing the Collect Order Details component on the registration form. This is worth doing for a free registration, where payment-related wording can look odd when no payment is due.
Tip
To stop registrants from creating a new organization while registering, open the registration contact form assigned to this process, open its Contact Work Info component, and turn on the option that blocks entries for organizations that do not already exist.
If console staff should not have to enter an attendee’s phone number and address while registering someone, create a separate registration process just for Console use with Show Contact Form turned off.
Dependencies and Precedence
Every event needs one default process so a registration with no process of its own, such as an imported registration, has a process to use when it is modified. You choose the default on the event’s Registration Settings page, not here. If no default is chosen, modifying a registration that has no process fails.
Allow registrations to be modified after submission controls self-service changes registrants make in the Portal, and it also controls whether staff can use Modify Order for that registration in the Console. If the process does not allow registrant edits, nobody, including staff, can modify the registration from the Console. Modify Order shows modification as disabled until you turn this setting on and save it. Once it is on, staff are not bound by the Portal’s edit deadline the way registrants are, so they can still modify after that date passes. In some cases, registrants have also been unable to modify in the Portal while this setting was on if the process’s Close Date & Time was left blank. Give the process a close date if you run into that.
A registration type with no linked process is saved but never offered in the Portal registration control, even if the rest of its setup is correct.
If a registrant or staff member sees a message that a registration cannot be edited right now and to contact your organization directly, check whether this process’s Allow registrations to be modified after submission setting is off. That is the most likely cause.
To remove a page you no longer want in the registration flow, such as an add-ons page, open the process’s registration form in Web Forms setup and delete that page from the form definition.
Change Impact and How to Revert
Changes to the form a process uses, its open and close dates, or its confirmation content take effect immediately for anyone who registers after the change. They do not affect registrations that were already submitted.
Permissions
You need access to the event in the Events Console to create or edit a process, or to preview its confirmation email.
Validation and Errors
- A process needs a name, an identifier, and a registration form before you can save it.
- Rhythm will not save the process if you turn on online registration without an open date, modification without a change fee, a contact or organization form without choosing one, custom confirmation HTML without content, or the confirmation email without a subject and body.