Participatory bookings: opening a time slot to participation

Book a time slot on behalf of the organization — training camp, tournament, lesson, group class — and let your users join it themselves, with or without online payment. You set the capacity, the access criteria and the deadlines, and you follow the list of participants.

Choosing who builds the participant list

Any booking carrying a label can receive participants. What changes from one time slot to another is who builds the list — you, or the users themselves.

You build the list

Book the time slot with its label and designate the participants, without enabling Participatory booking. Users cannot join by themselves: the list is yours.

It is not fixed for good, however. Reopen the booking from the calendar at any time to add or remove people in the Labels tab, where the participants already registered appear pre-selected.

This is how a training session works when you call up the group, an team lined up for a match, or a class whose participants are settled in advance.

Users join by themselves

Enable Participatory booking and the time slot opens up: it displays a seat counter on the calendar, and everyone comes and takes their own from their account.

This is how a holiday training camp works, an internal tournament, or an activity open to anyone who wants to come.

Once the option is active, managing the list moves from the booking form to the time slot details, where you have Add participants and Delete.

Switching from one to the other

The two modes are not mutually exclusive, and the choice is never final. You can build a list first, then enable Participatory booking later to open up the remaining seats: the people already designated stay registered.

The reverse also works — see closing participation, at the end of the page.

Opening a time slot to participation

1. On the calendar, click the time slot to be booked.
2. Open the Labels tab of the booking form.
3. Choose the label — training camp, tournament, lesson, training — and add a comment if you wish.
4. Enable Participatory booking, then click Configure to open the settings.
5. Optionally select the people to register automatically, then confirm.

Use Repetition to cover all the sessions of a training camp or a weekly class in a single operation: you will then choose whether a participation applies to one session or to the whole series.

On the calendar, the time slot then displays the number of participants against the capacity and an invitation to join as long as seats remain. A click leads to the time slot details, where the list and the participation button are found.

To revisit your settings later, open the time slot and use Configure in the Participants block.

Setting the capacity and the scope of a participation

The Participants block in the settings carries two numbers.

Maximum sets the number of seats. Once it is reached, the time slot displays Full and the participation button disappears.

Minimum does not block any participation: this number only serves as a quorum for automatic cancellation, described below. Its minimum value is 1. To keep the session whatever the number of participants, leave this field alone and simply leave Automatically Cancel disabled.

Scope of a participation is the most structural setting, and the one to decide on first:

• This booking — people join a single session. This is what you need for a weekly training session that people attend when they can, or for a one-off activity.
• All recurrences — people join the whole set. A single participation places the person in every session of the series, and a single withdrawal removes them from all of them. This is what you need for a five-day training camp or a cycle of consecutive classes. A series stays open as long as it has one session still to come: someone can therefore join a training camp that has already started.

With All recurrences, the time slot details list the dates of the series: everyone knows exactly what they are committing to. With This booking, only the open session is displayed.

Choosing who can join

With no setting, the time slot is open to all the users of your organization.

Enable Eligibility criteria to restrict this openness, then select the criteria. They reuse the filters of your user list, across five families: profiles, subscriptions, age categories, groups and rankings, to which gender is added.

A user who does not match still sees the button, but their click tells them that their profile does not match the criteria of this time slot. The same goes for other refusals: time slot full, participation not yet open, product unavailable. Each case has its own message — nobody is left in front of a silent button.

A few common uses: reserving a training camp for one age category, opening a group class only to holders of a given subscription, limiting an internal tournament to a team group.

Disabling the option clears the selected criteria: the time slot becomes open to everyone again.

Charging for participation

Enable Payments & Billing in the time slot settings, then choose the product to be paid for. The list offers the active products in your catalogue of the training camp, lesson and tournament types.

The participant pays online at the moment they join. Their seat is only held once the payment has been collected: as long as the order remains pending, the time slot displays "Complete payment" and the seat stays available for someone else.

Two settings fine-tune the price without touching your catalogue:

• "Customize the amount" imposes a Unit Price specific to this time slot. Without it, everyone pays the price resulting from the pricing rules configured in the selected product.
• The description entered here is displayed under the participation button, for the participant's attention.

This option only appears if your organization uses online billing. From a kiosk, a paid time slot displays a message inviting the user to pay from their account: online payment cannot be made on the kiosk.

Following and managing participants

The Participants block in the time slot details lists the registered people and indicates the remaining seats. You always see the complete list there, even if you have hidden it from users.

Add participants lets you add several people at once, Delete lets you remove someone. Both of these actions apply to the whole scope defined above.

On a paid time slot, adding someone makes you choose how to handle the amount:

1. Comp the participation — the person is registered, no order is created. This is the default choice, the one for invitations and goodwill gestures.
2. Checkout immediately — an order is created and the cash register opens straight away to collect payment on the spot. With several participants, the payment collections follow one another. This choice is only offered if your profile gives access to Administration›Dashboard›Billing›Invoices & Transactions.
3. Collect payment later — an order is created and the purchase order is sent by e-mail. The person will pay later.

The same choice is offered to you when you register people at the time of creating the time slot: it appears in the Labels tab as soon as you tick a first participant.

For each participant, the list recalls the payment status: Free if the participation was made free of charge for them, otherwise the associated order, with what you need to Checkout it or send the invoice again by e-mail.

Guests are not accepted on this type of time slot: each seat corresponds to an identified user.

Framing participation in time

Three deadlines, all optional, all expressed relative to the start of the time slot.

Opening lead time delays the opening of participation. With 48 hours, a Monday 10 a.m. time slot opens its seats on the preceding Saturday at 10 a.m. This is what prevents a training camp published three months in advance from being full on the very day it is published.

Limit unregistration closes the exit door once a certain deadline has passed. Beyond that, the participant can no longer withdraw on their own — it is up to you to do it if necessary. Without this setting, they can withdraw from the time slot up until it starts.

Automatically Cancel cancels the booking if the Minimum of participants is not reached by the chosen deadline. The participants and the creator of the time slot are notified by e-mail. A booking created when its deadline has already begun is never cancelled automatically — you can therefore open a time slot at the last minute without any risk.

On a paid time slot, this cancellation also cancels the orders left pending payment: nobody can pay any more for a session that will not take place. Participations already collected, on the other hand, are kept and are not refunded — it is up to you to handle them.

Counting participation or not

By default, joining a time slot consumes nothing: neither the quota of simultaneous bookings, nor the limits per period, nor consecutive time slots. A user can join a training camp without losing the possibility of booking a court on the same day.

Count towards quota and limits reverses this behaviour: each participation is then counted as an ordinary booking, and a person who has reached their quota can no longer join.

Enable this option when participation must have a cost for the user — a group class included in their subscription, for example. Leave it inactive for everything that adds to their usual practice without replacing it.

Notifying by e-mail

The participant always receives a confirmation when they join, and an e-mail if the time slot is cancelled automatically. These sendings cannot be disabled.

Enable Notifications concerns the creator of the time slot: they receive an alert on each participation, on each withdrawal from the time slot, and when the last seat is taken. Turn this option off on a busy time slot if you do not want to follow every movement.

Everyone's notification preferences are respected: a user who has turned off their notifications will receive nothing.

Display the list of participants decides what users see. Enabled, everyone knows who is registered. Disabled, only the counter and the remaining seats are public.

Reusing a configuration

Setting a dozen options for each training camp would be tedious. Two mechanisms avoid it.

The Template block, at the top of the settings, brings both actions together. Save as template keeps the time slot settings under the Model Name you enter. As soon as a template exists, the Choose a template... list appears above: one selection applies its settings to any other time slot.

A time slot stays attached to the template it came from. If you change its settings afterwards, you will be asked how far to apply the change: this booking alone, this booking and its recurrences, or Everywhere — that is, on all the time slots sharing this template.

Closing participation

Disabling Participatory booking on a time slot that already has registered people is possible and harmless for them: the participants stay in place, the orders issued remain valid. Only participation and withdrawal from the time slot stop, and the participants block disappears on the user's side.

Refunding a participation or removing someone afterwards remains an action on your part: closing participation does not take care of it.