"Auto-cancellation" of registrations and other oddities

Hi,

I'm working on a site with J! 3.9.10 under PHP 7.2, where a previous dev had installed EB 3.10.3 (last he could be reached, which is a while ago, he said his EB update license had expired). Events posted on the site are fairly simple, free, and without user account registration, so I didn't foresee too much trouble, also as I've been working with EB before... older version, but anyway.

However, a few things are weird, despite using Protostar without any overrides, and despite the former dev having sworn that he had not hacked any EB core code. And I don't see any of this mentioned as fixed or improved here , so I guess these are valid issues, still:

1. "Auto-cancellation" of registrations:
A short while after a new event registration happened, it's automatically cancelled: the registrant's (and all group members', if group registration) goes from "pending" to "cancelled" without any human interaction, and the registrant receives an email telling him this -- as if the admin had cancelled the registration. Of course, the admin does not receive any notification mail, but only finds out when looking up the list of registrants. Really bad surprise for everyone!

See attached screenshots for enabled plugins, EB configuration and event setup. I've tried changing one or the other thing, but it's always the same trouble. Could it be that the combo of event "Price" = 0.00 and "Free events registration status" = pending causes this? Why? Due to limited spaces and other reasons, the client requires that new registrations are "pending" at first, then to be confirmed by an admin. Nowhere it says that this won't work, and it should be possible, anyway.

2. "Cancelled" -> "confirmed" = no email notification:
Worse, when considering the above problem, if admin changes these wrongly cancelled registrations to "confirmed" (in frontend), no email is being sent to the registrant. So, he still thinks he's been cancelled... not good.
Even worse, if admin selects the registrant and clicks "resend email", the registrant receives multiple copies of each, the original "new registration" plus the "confirmed" emails.
Guess what any registrant must be thinking by now... "do these guys know what thet're doing... worst experience ever!"

3. If an admin cancels a registration (in frontend) -- this time because he decides so correctly, not the system wrongly -- the registrant receives multiple copies of the "cancelled" email notification... I've had a case where it was four copies of the same email!

4. If a new registration is made after the due dates for reminder emails, the registrant receives two or three emails: "new registration", "first reminder" and, if also past its due date, "second reminder". It makes no sense and rather looks silly to send him the (past) reminder mails as at this point in time he's perfectly aware of when the event is: he has just registered for it. Can this be made so the registrant receives only future reminders, not the past ones?


As mentioned, it seems all of the above are issues still present in 3.10.4, so I see no reason to pay for a new license now... not to mention that it'll be a hard sell to the client/site owner anyway, as one would expect the above points to be no issues, or?

Thanks for some help with this. Especially above points #1 and #4 are urgent.

Hello Thomas

1. Go to Extensions -> Plugins, find and disable the plugin Events Booking - Offline Payment Handle if it's enabled and the issue should be gone

2. There should be registration approved email sent.

3. Honestly, I have no clue about this error and have no other customers reported that same kind of issue. So maybe it's just something special on your site

4. This is to make sure that reminder email is sent from the system for all registrants (in case you have too many registrants). Note that the system allow sending reminder emails after events, too, so this is still expected behavior

As you are using old version of the extension, I would suggest you to purchase and update to latest version. Then we can help with checking #2 and #3, for #4, we can help modifying code to prevent sending this kind of email, too

Tuan

Many thanks Tuan!

1. Indeed, disabling that plugin fixed it, pheeew... thanks for the hint.
When searching the documentation for "cancel", there's no result pointing into that direction. Maybe I was the first one to run into it (didn't find anything here on the forum, either), but perhaps it's worth considering mentioning it somewhere.

2a. Nope, negative: once a registration is cancelled but then set to confirmed (again), the registrant will not receive an email.

2b. Just tried "resend email" again, and the results are strange... hard to predict what might happen:
In some cases the admin receives the notification email once again, and the registrant also receives the most recent status email once again.
In other cases the admin receives the registration notification twice again, and the registrant also receives themost recent status email twice again.
In case of the registrant, at least it's now only for the current registration status (perhaps the initial registration email resent again previously was also a result of the Offline Payment Handle plugin?), but there's still a good chance for multiple identical mails per recipient. May be depending on status, but not sure.

By the way, IMHO the admin does not at all require his initial registration resent... after all he's triggering the resending -- surely with the intention of only the registrant(s) getting those mail(s).

3. Ditto: now, when admin cancels a registration, some registrants are getting a single notification email, some others are getting two identical ones. Again, it may be depending on status previous to cancellation, but not sure.

4. Sorry, but I still believe it looks just silly if a new registrant receives one or even two reminder emails at the same time as he registers. If it were me, I'd wonder if this system is actually "knowing" what's going on.


Yes, I think I can justify spending $40 for a new license if the points # 2 and #3 will not be issues anymore; so, please look into it again, it should be easy to reproduce, and I can't see how something else on this site here would cause it. And if there can be at least an option for preventing past reminders being sent out along with a brand-new registration (#4).
So, I'll keep an eye on the changelog

While I have you, one more question re. reminder mails:
5. Most (shared) servers have a limitation on how many emails can be sent within a second/minute/hour. What if there's a number of reminder mails to be sent out which is exceeding the limit? I don't see an option for limiting the max number of mails within a timeframe, or a queue or so.

Thanks again,
Thomas

Thank you for the solution to #1! I've been looking for this as well.