If 'self-registration' is not available in the list of possible event types it means that the school has not enabled this feature. This is a global setting for the school and can only be changed by a super administrator.
Self-registration events can be used as an alternative to scheduling lectures with a predetermined list of partipants, or for one-to-one mentoring, workshops with limited capacity, or to collect expressions of interest ahead of social events.
Grouping events into categories lets students find what they want quickly, without having to go through an overwhelming list of hundreds of events per week.
Typical examples of self-registration categories could be 'wellbeing', 'academic support', 'mentoring', 'social events', 'workshops', etc.
Once an event has been created within a category, students will only be able to see this event when they click on the button corresponding to that category on their home page.
In other words, choosing the wrong category may result in students never seeing the events we have created for them (remember that students do not see self-registration events on their calendar until they actually register).
Note that self-registration categories can only be created and edited by super administrators.
Leaving this field empty means that there is no limit to how many of the invited users can register.
Any other number will cause the event to stop accepting new registrations once that number has been reached.
Note that we can still manually add users to the list of participants, and any user we add manually will count the same as a user who used the self-registration feature.
Registration policies can be created to manage how often students can register for different events.
For example, some event could be subject to a limit of two registrations per week, where others could be only one every two weeks, etc.
As with other global settings, registration policies can only be created and edited by a super administrator.
Leaving this field empty means that students can register for an event even when it has already started.
Alternatively we can set the registration to close at the exact time the event starts (entering the number zero in this field) or any other number, say 48, to close all registrations two days ahead of the scheduled event start.
Another global setting for the school can be configured to prevent students from registering too far ahead from the start date of an event. If students complain that they are unable to register for an event that is more than 20 days in the future, this may be the reason. As with all the other global settings, this can be changed by super administrators only.
One of the most common uses of self-registration events is to create a series of time slots for one-to-one sessions.
For example, we may have one afternoon per week where we make ourselves available to meet students, and we want to create a series of 30 minutes appointment slots which students can book directly without having to go through an administrator or arranging things through a series of messages.
Rather than creating multiple thirty-minute events manually, we can just create a single event, let's say from 2pm to 5pm, set a capacity of 1, and then use the time-slot input to automatically split this event into the desired number of time slots.
In this case, entering a time slot duration of 30 minute for a three-hour long event will generate six events, all with the same title, capacity, self-registration policy, room, description, etc.
As soon as these six events are created we can go and adjust them individually if necessary.
Each slot is now a completely independent event that can also be moved around or turned into a new repeating series.
Students can only see events that they have been invited to, and only if these events have still any capacity (sold-out events are not even displayed).
Within the list of events they can see, some will appear to be greyed out; they can still be clicked on, but the registration button on the event will be disabled.
Under the disabled registration button, students can see a message under the registration button explaining why it is disabled and potentially how soon this may change. The most common causes are that the registration window has not opened yet, or it has already closed, or because there are other restrictions imposed by the event's registration policy.
If students complain that they don't seem to be able to register for an event, we should remind them that all the answers they are looking for are on the event itself.
Note that we are always able to override any rules and add students directly to the participant list by editing the event ourselves.
This video demonstrates how students access and register for self-registration events using multiple self-registration categories.
Events with no participants (aside from the 'person-in-charge') appear to be slightly dimmer and darker on our caledar, so we can see at a glance that no one has signed up for the event.
As soon as at least one person registers for the event, the colour comes back to normal brightness, and we get notified by email immediately (the notification is sent to anyone who is a 'person-in-charge' for the event).
Incidentally, we also receive an immediate notification by email if the student decides to cancel their registration.