When an alumni looks on the list of people attending reunion , it doesn't actually reflect those that have paid, and yet have not answered that on their profile. Is there any way to include those that have paid.
or to put a disclaimer on the list? i.e..
the actually total of attendees, may not include those that have actually registered and/or paid for their reservations for the reunion. This number just represents those that have actually answered the question on their profile that they intend to attend the reunion

Many Admins here begin planning reunions far in advance. Sometimes a couple years or so. This is the reason we keyed the "attending reunion" icon into the Profile Question "Attending Reunion?" -- because Admins want Classmates to indicate far in advance that they plan to attend the reunion in order to get the buzz going and encourage others to express their intent to attend (the more who show as attending, the more who will also express their intent to attend). Most Classmates aren't willing to pay significantly in advance of the reunion though.

Of course, while this school of thought may hold true for reunions being planned for in advance, it may not hold true for reunions that are being planned just a few months out.

The easiest solution to please both camps is to change the system so that if an Admin goes into Profile Generator and deactivates the "Attending Reunion" question, then the system no longer includes people who answered that question "Yes" in the mix. It would only leave the "attending reunion" icon next to those Classmates who have actually filled out the official registration form and paid.

I can easily see scenarios where the same reunion falls into both camps over time, i.e. somebody begins planning 2 years out, so the Admin wants Classmates to have the ability to express their intent to attend early on, and as the reunion gets closer, they may want to deactivate the "Attending Reunion" question in Profile Generator, thus only leaving the names of those Classmates who've registered and paid to attend the event.

Why not have both "I will attend" and "Registration & Tickets Paid" status fields? Then you could email (more selection criteria for the "email to class" page), generate status reports, and so on?

Well, just my two cents, but I think it starts getting overly complicated if we do that. Now there'd be 2 different entries in the key, two different reunion icons, Bill thinks he's coming to the reunion but he hasn't paid his money yet, Amy is coming to the reunion and she's paid in full, etc. I think we allow it to be done one way or the other and keep it simple?

Another concern is specifically indicating whether somebody has paid their money or not may be offensive to some people. If it's a year and a half before the reunion and I indicate I'd like to come, and now I get an icon next to my name that shows I haven't paid, I'm not sure I'd like that. I bet that could cause at least some complaints. And then, I could be wrong.

I think both pieces of information would be valuable to the admin for sure (I'd like it anyways). If it's a problem to show classmates who paid and who didn't, then we just don't display everyone paid status to everyone, keep it just viewable by the admin, and to the classmate as a means to remind them maybe.

No worries if it isn't there, I've been tracking the same info on a spreadsheet, dump the CC database, and I normalize the names as a key so I can lookup on a separate table I set up with info the reunion committee sent me on who paid to date. But of course, we only just started doing that because we're having our reunion this summer.

BTW, we post a periodic list of this exact info on our reunion groups User Forum. If someone complains about it then we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

People who have actually registered, paid, etc. are all in your own Admin area of course. It's in the Reunion Attendee Management Area and on the reports and exports.

True, but we're not using that module for our reunion, it's all old fashioned snail mail registration & payment (the committee's choice, not mine). Oh well.

Brad Switzer wrote:

Brad, Has the above solution been put into the system? In the Profile Generator, I deactivated the "Attending Reunion" question. When I open Classmate Profiles, it still shows 377 attending the reunion. It's confusing my classmates, because I'm posting a spreadsheet with only people who have registered and paid for reunion tickets. Do I need to do anything more on my end?

No, unfortunately I just entered that comment last week. For the sake of efficiency I group tasks together now rather than having the programmers peace meal tasks every day. It's far more efficient for them to open up a section of the web site, like the Reunion Planner, and make all pending revisions at one time. So we won't hit this until the next time we're updating the Reunion Planner. Based on the current outstanding tasks I estimate we'll be making several suggested revisions to that portion of the system in May.

Brad wrote:

The problem which I have tried to explain to Brad is that displaying a list of those classmates who have paid for the event deters others from doing so, if that number is too low. We are 3 months from our reunion and only have 16 out of 514 who have paid, though we do increase our price as it gets closer (but that doesn't matter if no one signs up). And I have sent at least 3 emails each month trying to convice them that it is better to pay early, a waisted cause. When the reunion committee has spoken to classmates they have told us that they don't want to sign up until they see more people on that list. This is why we strongly believe that this list should be able to be removed completely, even if a classmate pays for the reunion. We would rather post a new manually entered page with "Who is Attending", which can be controlled by the admin.

The only thing we can do now is after each classmate registers, to enable the Attending Reunion question on the Profile Generator, go to that classmates profile, change their Attending Reunion question to no, go back to the Profile Generator and disable the Attending Reunion. This still does not keep that option of Attending from being displayed on the Classmate Profiles page, though ours has no names under it since we have manually spent the time to go through this described procedure and make sure that every classmate has the Attending Reunion question in their profile set to no. But now with this option still displayed on the Classmate Profiles page and not showing anyone becasue we have manually turned that question to no for everyone, classmates may think that no one is attending. A NO-WIN situation.

It would be feasible to allow the admins a choice on the Classmate Profiles page on what links to display in the list, and to be able to shut ones off that we really don't want to be shown.

I just hope that we can convince classmates into attending and paying by not displaying any list and lying to them and tell them we have a couple hundred attending.

Normally the exact opposite happens... I.E. when people start showing up as "attending reunion" it encourages more people to also sign up. Of course if you're getting a really low turnout, then I can see how the opposite mindset could apply, e.g. "gee, we're only a few weeks from the reunion and only 16 people are going, I guess I won't bother." I can totally see that.

What we'll do is just remove the "Attending Reunion" link in the Classmate Profiles page key and all corresponding icons if the "Attending Reunion" question is deactivated in Profile Generator. A simple enough fix for this scenario I think, yes?

Thanks Brad, as long as we can remove the item from the Classmate Profiles page so no one can see it if we choose to. I guess I come from an abnormal school that I can't figure out why people just want to see who is going to show up before committing themselves (or maybe they need to be committed). Removing this option takes that guess work out of their equation. Once we get a good number of attendees then we will show a custom page on the site on who will be showing up for each of the functions we have planned. Kind of reminds me of Mel Brooks Young Frankenstein, and the "Abby Normal" brain.....

Will your fix remove the link also on the Classmate Profiles page or will that still show with no one attending??

If you deactivate the "Attending Reunion" question in Profile Generator, then yes, it will remove the "Attending Reunion" entry from they Classmate Profiles page key, as well as any "attending reunion" icons next to the Classmate names.

Although I understand the scenario you are in, for anyone else reading this thread I would definitely not recommend doing this. Those icons are the key to getting a great turnout. At least the vast majority of times, anyway. If you're in a scenario where very few people are coming to your reunion and you don't want to publicize that (or at least until more people have signed up) then you now have the option of clicking Profile Generator and deactivating the "Attending Reunion" default question. Doing so will hide everywhere on the site who is planning to attend your reunion.

Unfortuantely Brad, unless I am doing something wrong, deactivating that question DOES NOT remove it from the Classmate Profiles page. And this is what I have been describing to you for many weeks now. And thought I had explained that it doesn't get removed. I have myself turned on for attending the Reunion, I have now gone back and disabled that option in the profile generator, but the line still appears on the Classmate profiles page, along with the icon next to my name.

Don't get me wrong, this is a great feature to show who is attending, but we don't want it shown until a greater number of classmates are attending and have paid. Many web sites also mention that people won't sign up if you only show a few individuals, and I have found that to be true so far. I will turn this back on once more classmates make that commitment.

But for now, your description of disabling it does not work at this time. Or it isn't on our site.

Ahh, I see 5 minutes after posting my previous reply that this link is not there anymore. Was there an issue with our site that I could not turn it off??

Heh, no. I had the programmer change it for you.

Okay. I had this idea that seem to fit into the theme of this topic thread...

How about a reunion planner option you could turn on if desied. It would change the display of the icon for Attending Reunion ( the square sillouette). If the option is set ON then for each paid member the icon would be green (or some user chosen color) in the center and there would be a second or "shadowed" icon to indicate 2 people, both with green centers when paid. You could take this further to set the unpaid to another color (user defined color) if they are paying at the door at a higher rate. The Admin might wait until a good number of people have paid to avoid the downside risk when only a few have paid.

Although not that exactly, we have a similar option slated so Admins have more control over what they're displaying and what it means. People have several needs here based on the situation so we're going to create the options to accommodate those needs.