Higher Education User Group

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  • 1.  Cvent CONNECT Sessions for You!

    Posted 08-15-2023 12:44

    Hi everyone! Thank you so much for being a member of the Higher Education User Group. We are so happy you are here!

    Even though Cvent CONNECT 2023 has ended, the conversations, networking, and learning are here to stay. I have included some sessions below from Cvent CONNECT that I want to make sure you didn't miss. These are available on-demand for your convenience.  If there are other sessions that stood out for you, please add them in the comments below to share with the other members.

    How USC Transformed Orientation to Deliver a Seamless & Interactive Student Experience

    Boosting Event Engagement and Efficiency: The Education Perspective

    Higher Ed Events: Insights for Getting the Right Event Results

    Whether you are new to this user group or have been here for a while, please introduce yourself and let us know what you are most interested in learning about or something interesting you have recently learned.



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    Megan Clark
    Assistant Team Lead, Online Community Marketing
    Cvent
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  • 2.  RE: Cvent CONNECT Sessions for You!

    Posted 08-16-2023 10:39

    Good Morning,

    Thank you for sharing this information with us and the prompt, Megan! I certainly agree that CventConnect was amazing! My name is Jeremy Houser and I work for Duke Alumni Engagement and Development. We have a Cvent team that I lead to manage all of our events, from board meetings and receptions to educational webinars and reunions. In addition, I serve as the point-person at the university for our other school's/department's alumni & development offices that use Cvent within our shared account. 

    I am most interested in learning how other Higher Ed clients use Cvent to manage their guest registrations. We have many events in which our guests are our primary audience as well, just like the primary registrants, but we do not have the same reporting/badging/editing functionality and are always having to implement work-arounds. Do you use guest vs group reg.? Do you use Custom Contact Fields for primary registrants and want these available for guests as well? Thanks!



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    Jeremy Houser
    Projects Coordinator
    Duke University
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    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: Cvent CONNECT Sessions for You!

    Posted 11-07-2023 14:26

    Hi Jeremy, I know this many months late but I have been meaning to respond to your question about guest registrants. We use guest registration. Students are the invitee and they can add others (i.e. parents) as guests (not group registration). We don't currently use custom contact fields for guests. I change the registration settings so that a contact record is created for the guest and saved to a contact group as that seems to help a bit with functionality. In general, we are able to meet our  reporting and badging needs with the guest reservations. The main thing I've had a hard time with is getting reporting on information for emails sent to guests. I also have to be mindful of data tags and the like. For example, the My Event Website button to Attendee Hub didn't work for the guests, so I had to create a custom button. Things like that to look out for. Happy to chat more about how we use guest registration!



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    Christine D'Arcy
    Cvent Administrator | Office of Orientation Programs
    University of Southern California
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    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: Cvent CONNECT Sessions for You!

    Posted 11-10-2023 17:24

    Hi Christine!

    Thanks for your response! It's certainly no later than some of mine have been this crazy semester.

    Ok, yes guest registration has been working well for us, until we get into Custom Contact fields--which is where our ID #s for engagement purposes at Duke reside within Cvent and the contact records. Because Custom Contact Fields don't travel with the guest, it is very time-consuming to find/match them up and then also to ensure they get something on their badge that resembles what primary registrants have. That is why we are going to need to look at Group Reg. for at least a few of our events that give us the most trouble. Yes, we also allow guests to get added to the Address Book, so when a contact with the same first/last/email exists, in links up--but that doesn't help you in the event reporting/badging. Perhaps a chat with you and any others working through the items that we describe here could be beneficial.

    Jeremy



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    Jeremy Houser
    Projects Coordinator
    Duke University
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    Original Message


  • 5.  RE: Cvent CONNECT Sessions for You!

    Posted 11-14-2023 14:43

    Hi Megan,

    Thanks for reaching out! I also apologize for my late reply, but (like Jeremy) would love to hear more about how to handle guests, particularly for Cvent instances integrated with core databases (via APIs). We spend a lot of time manually cleaning up data and records related to Guest registrations in order to sync properly with our core system. 

    Currently, some of our key challenges are:

    • both spouses are invited and one spouse registers the other, thereby creating two records for the same person on the event in Cvent throwing off reporting, means the person who registered as a guest could still get an invitation reminder since their invitee record is unregistered.
    • guest email seems to be the only way to match a guest record to our core system. Since email is the unique identifier in Cvent but people are associated with multiple emails manual matching has to happen when a non-primary email is used for the guest.
    • we could automate some of our cleanup, but there is no way to remove an unregistered invitee via API which is required for the cleanup.
    • group registration does not work for us since our events are private (which means you cannot add people not on the invitation list) and, last I knew, there isn't a way for the main registrants to edit the registrations for their "guests" thereby possibly leaving "orphaned" guest records and us wondering if they are really coming or not.
    • we depend on information from our core system for name badges so need to sync with our core system prior to the event (we can't wait and do all cleanup after)

    We are currently undergoing a major shift in our integration and business process to try to better handle guests, but will still be required to manually cleanup hundreds of records over the course of the year.

    Thanks again and I look forward to talking more with you and with this great community!



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    Kirsten Derrickson-Boice
    Business Analyst/IT Project Manager
    MIT Office of Resource Development
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    Original Message


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