Tracking Events Attended

Sebastian Walker-Staalkjaer

Hey all, we run different events and want to be able to search /  filter people depending on events that they have attended. We have been using a custom field (multiple options) to track when people attend our events (which has worked great for tracking, filtering and searching who has attended different events). But, we have run into a huge bottle neck with it. When we import new data it overwrites the existing entries. This means anyone who attended a second event we have to manually update their contact because if we import we lose the data for the first event.

Is there a better way of solving this problem than in custom fields? How do others track event attendance in a searchable / filterable way?

David Caldwell

I'd love to know the answer to this - as we're going to hit the same problem!

Mike van der Valk

Hi @Sebastian Walker-Staalkjaer 

I just ran some tests, and at the moment unfortunately via bulk-edit and import the multiple-option field can only be update. We can't add data to the existing data in the field. 

It's a tricky limitation and manually doing it or creating a second custom field where you store it seems like the only workaround. Nonetheless, I've passed this on internally to our team, hopefully we can improve this behaviour of the multiple-option custom field in the future.

Sebastian Walker-Staalkjaer

Hi @Mike van der Valk,

Thanks for looking into it!

I could really see the use in an event tracking / attendance feature. A way that we can track who has been invited v attended. Also, a way to see what impact different events are having on customer conversion.

@David Caldwell do you have any other method of tracking these sorts of things other than creating new custom fields or updating custom fields in excel and re-importing?

Mike van der Valk

Sebastian Walker-Staalkjaer said:

Hi @Mike van der Valk,

Thanks for looking into it!

I could really see the use in an event tracking / attendance feature. A way that we can track who has been invited v attended. Also, a way to see what impact different events are having on customer conversion.

@David Caldwell do you have any other method of tracking these sorts of things other than creating new custom fields or updating custom fields in excel and re-importing?

Yeah that's the most common workaround I've see. So export, add another column where you'd add the new entries and then use Excel functionality to add these columns together as one before importing it back in..

Daniel Vengoechea

when we update via api a custom field with checkboxes it looses the previous values. 

Mike van der Valk

Daniel Vengoechea said:

when we update via api a custom field with checkboxes it looses the previous values. 

Thanks Daniel, I'm speaking to our team about this.

Andrew Brennan [Ab]

Hello All

I am currently scoping out a CRM solution for a client  that will require capturing attendance at events and the above issue and how to solve it had already crossed my mind. I thought a zap might be the way to go, but they also clear out any existing data in the multiple option field.

@Mike van der Valk  - is there an update on this? I wonder if having this field work similar to a tag field in Asana, where if the user enters a new tag, it just automatically adds it to the column?

The concatenate work around will be too complex to give to a client.

The only way I can see is creating a new custom field for each event, but it could soon get to dozens. Is there a limit on the number of custom fields? Would having dozens affect performance? For that matter is there a limit on the number of options that you can have in a multiple option field?

Thanks
Ab

Mike van der Valk

Andrew Brennan [Ab] said:

Hello All

I am currently scoping out a CRM solution for a client  that will require capturing attendance at events and the above issue and how to solve it had already crossed my mind. I thought a zap might be the way to go, but they also clear out any existing data in the multiple option field.

@Mike van der Valk  - is there an update on this? I wonder if having this field work similar to a tag field in Asana, where if the user enters a new tag, it just automatically adds it to the column?

The concatenate work around will be too complex to give to a client.

The only way I can see is creating a new custom field for each event, but it could soon get to dozens. Is there a limit on the number of custom fields? Would having dozens affect performance? For that matter is there a limit on the number of options that you can have in a multiple option field?

Thanks
Ab

Hi @Andrew Brennan [Ab] I would advice against a custom field per event. There's no limit but at one point it would just simply be too much to work with nicely in the tool from the users perspective.

On thing you could do is create a specific activity type called event. Then you can add an activity on your contact with the event title and of course data/time. You can also add notes to it if needed.

Later you can always filter out what contacts have an activity linked to them with a specific type and title.

Daniel Taborsky

Mike van der Valk said:

Hi @Sebastian Walker-Staalkjaer 

I just ran some tests, and at the moment unfortunately via bulk-edit and import the multiple-option field can only be update. We can't add data to the existing data in the field. 

It's a tricky limitation and manually doing it or creating a second custom field where you store it seems like the only workaround. Nonetheless, I've passed this on internally to our team, hopefully we can improve this behaviour of the multiple-option custom field in the future.

Has there been any update to this behaviour?