When working with participants, either imported or collected through a registration form, these often require updates after being collected to Qondor. Participants can be edited individually by clicking their first name, but if you want to update multiple at once you can use the Bulk edit option.
Qondor supports bulk updates of Programs and Custom participant fields. The latter can be used to group participants in Qondor, for example when seating the participants at tables, grouping them for buses, activities and so on.
HOW TO GROUP PARTICIPANTS IN QONDOR
Here the Project manager is automatically distributing table numbers for guests attending a dinner:
Ensure the participant custom field is created.
Go to Participant custom fields in the Participants module.
Select type drop-down list for the Group number and add the group numbers.
Select Published on form to: "No one" ("No one" keeps the field only visible to Project Managers.)
Select all the participants you want to group.
The bulk edit option will appear to the right, when more than one participant is selected.
Click bulk edit, the following dialog will appear:
4. Select the field that needs to be updated from the choose fields to update drop down list.
5. The selected fields will then appear.
6. From here you can choose to do the following:
Distribute automatically: This will distribute the alternatives equally between the selected participants.
Select a specific alternative: E.g. 1-6 This will set the specific alternative on the selected participants.
❕ Remove alternative: This will delete the previous alternative from the selected participants.
COMMUNICATING INFORMATION TO THE PARTICIPANTS
Select all participants you want to communicate the group number to, then create an email, by clicking email to open the dialogue.
In the email you can include the group number automatically.
Merge the group number by adding the merge tag so that the participant receives the correct group number.
Select the merge tags drop down field and go to participant custom fields to find your custom field. Add this to the email.
Click send!
ANOTHER EXAMPLE SCENARIO
Let's say you have a group of 40 participants that you want to split into two groups for parallel sessions.
1. Create the field
2. Bulk update the participants to group them
Back in Participants, make your selection. In this case, I select all 40 participants and choose to allocate the "Group Number" field to distribute automatically.
This means that Qondor will evenly assign group 1 and group 2 automatically to the 40 participants. This will be updated in Qondor.
3. Add the group number into the email and send
Now I want to communicate this to the participants and I will do this by creating an email and including the Participant custom field merge tag I created - "Group number".
BEST PRACTICES
Naming of the participant custom fields and alternatives needs to make sense both for lists and where you merge in the information in emails.
Consider how the information will appear when you insert the merge tag in the email.
The field names should be clear and distinguishable.
Include the full context in the dropdown alternatives, for example "Group 1" or "Table 1" instead of just numbers such as "1".
💡GOOD TO KNOW
Save a snapshot of the participant list in Lists once you have grouped participants. This can be created in Qondor and will always be available should you need to refer to a previous grouping. This is especially handy if "remove alternative" is used or participants are assigned to different alternatives by accident.
(This applies only to participants in bookings.)