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I am trying to build a registration that allows attendees to choose their own seat at a table. I would then need to close that seat to other attendees once it is chosen. What is the best way to do this? It is for a graduation banquet.

Hi Rebecca,

Hope you are well!

In regards to your request, collecting seat preference using the registration is possible, with the help of sessions and session groups. To give you a gist of it, we can create multiple session groups a table and sessions as seat with capacity of 1 for each session. Additionally, we would need to create advanced rule in the event backend to ensure that nobody is able to select more than 1 seat (session) from all of the session groups (tables). Please follow the step by step instructions below if you find the set-up suitable for your event. ( I will use an example for 100 seats, 10 per table).

1. Create 10 session groups with the name for example Table 1, Table 2 etc. 
2. You will be required to create 100 optional sessions (this can be imported as well) with a capacity of 1 in each. You may want to name the sessions in accordance with tables. 
3. Assign the respective sessions to each session group i.e. for e.g., Session 1-10 will be under session group 1, session 11-20 will be under session group 2 and so on. 
4. The create an advance rule (name it as per your discretion) select all the sessions in this rule and set the maximum value as 1. You can also make the minimum value as 1 to ensure that invitees are selecting at least one seat. Additionally, include your message in the warning section of the advanced rule to indicate how the invitees will be able to select their seats.
5. Using sessions for seat selecting will first help automate the process, second we can ensure that no one is selecting more than 1 and last but not the least once a seat (session) is selected it will either say capacity full or will not be listed anymore while making selection. 

You can later run the session registrant report to find out who selected which seat. 

Here are some helpful articles to give you more insights on the above mentioned steps:

Creating Session Groups
https://support.cvent.com/s/communityarticle/Creating-Session-Groups?is_article=true&lang=en_US&searchFor=session%20group&page=1

Importing Sessions
https://support.cvent.com/s/communityarticle/Importing-Sessions?is_article=true&lang=en_US&searchFor=session%20group&page=1

Creating Advanced Rules
https://support.cvent.com/s/communityarticle/Creating-Advanced-Rules?is_article=true&lang=en_US&searchFor=advanced%20rules&page=1

A helpful advice, just in case you already have seating preferences available with you (collected outside Cvent), you can use our 'Seating' feature available with the event. This allows to import the seating if the planner already has the information available. You can give the following article a read to know more about this feature. Note: Using this feature, invitees cannot make a selection in Cvent. 

Managing Tables
https://support.cvent.com/s/communityarticle/Managing-Tables?is_article=true&lang=en_US&searchFor=seating&page=1

Hope this helps! 

Regards,
Khushbu Gupta
Associate Quality Lead - Quality Team