Event Reminder Email Settings

Hi
Could the settings around the reminder emails for events be explained please.
The "System - Events Booking Reminder" plugin is enabled, with the following settings:
Cache Time: 20
Time Ranges: 8,20
Number of Registrants: 50
Send to Group Billing: Yes
Send to Group Members: Yes
All others are off, and we have set a Trigger Reminder Code and use a cron job that runs every 5 minutes.

We set reminder emails to go out 48, 24 and 2 hour in advance of the event.  But we have found that the reminder emails are being sent out early, eg a 2pm event start the emails were being sent out at 8am for the 48/24 hour and 11am for the 2 hour reminder.

We've also noticed that if someone signs up within 2 hour prior to a event, they got all 3 reminder emails in one go.

Is this what would be expected and we have misunderstood it, or have we got a setting wrong somewhere causing the emails to go out at the wrong times.


Thanks
Ewan

Hi Ewan

By default, the extension uses a system plugin to trigger sending reminder. A system plugin requires someone to access to your site to trigger it, so the time is not reliable. If you want to have more reliable time, please setup cron job to send reminder, see docs.joomdonation.com/eventsbooking/basi...eminder#use-cron-job

Regards,

Tuan

We are using a cronjob, runs every 5 minutes which has been the case for the past few years.
It's only been more highlighted recently as we've had more events starting later in the day, but the emails were still going out at 8am.

I changed the time range to 7,20
and the emails this morning went out at 7am, when was expecting 10am for the first two reminders. Yesterdays email went out at 8am.

Reminders for the event tomorrow (10am start time) are set to:
Send First Reminder 2 Days Before Event Started
Send Second Reminder 1 Days Before Event Started
Send Third Reminder 2 Hours Before Event Started

We'd expect first and second reminders to be sent 10am, and the third reminder at 8am.

We're on Joomla 6.01 and 5.3.1 of Event Bookings.

Hello

The system uses Joomla time zone for configuring the time. So please go to System -> Global Configuration, check and make sure Website Time Zone config option set to your time zone. Maybe it is set to UTC time zone and that's the reason causing this issue ?

Tuan

I had previously checked that and yes it was on UTC, but changed it before checking when emails were sent out for tomorrows event.

One thing that's came to mind, what's the difference between 1 day and 24 hours before? Is it the same thing? Or is 1 day before any time from midnight the day before (depending on the time range set in the reminder plugin)?

Hello

In short, 1 day is not the same with 24 hours. When you uses date, the system will only compare the date part of the current time with event date to send reminder.

For example event_date = 2025-12-10 23:59:00,now = 2025-12-11 00:01:00 , the actual difference is only 2 minutes, but it is still treated as 1 day (time is ignore while calculate the number days)

So if you need exact, use 24 hours will be better than 1 day

Regards,

Tuan