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Capacity and available seats

Capacity caps how many seats an event can hand out. You set it in the event editor, and the sign-up form enforces it for you.

Setting a capacity

Open the event and find the Capacity panel in the editor sidebar. Maximum attendees is a slider that runs from 0 to 1000.

  • 0 means no cap. Sign-ups are unlimited. This is the default for a new event.
  • Any value above 0 turns the cap on. A notice appears confirming that the sign-up form switches to a sold-out message once the cap is reached.

What capacity actually counts

Capacity counts seats, not people. HappenBoard adds up the seat quantity on every sign-up currently in the going status, and compares that total to your cap.

So on an event capped at 50: one sign-up for 4 seats uses 4 of the 50, and twelve more single sign-ups leave 34 free. A sign-up that gets cancelled stops counting, and its seats return to the pool.

The count is per event, not per date. On a recurring event built from a repeat rule, every sign-up counts against the same total, whichever date it was made for.

What the visitor sees

Capacity is surfaced by the RSVP Form block, which you place on the event page as described in the guide to setting up a sign-up form. Three block options matter here:

  • Show remaining seats, on by default. The form prints how many seats are left, but only when a capacity has actually been set.
  • Allow multi-seat RSVP, off by default. Turning it on adds a Number of seats field so one person can book for several.
  • Maximum seats per RSVP, which appears once multi-seat is on. It defaults to 4 and cannot go above 20.

When no seats remain, the form is not shown at all. The block replaces it with a sold-out message before the visitor can type anything.

What happens at the boundary

The server checks capacity again when the form is submitted, not just when the page is rendered. If the requested seats would push the total past the cap, the sign-up is refused and the visitor is told exactly how many seats are still available. That is what protects you when two people submit within the same second.

Two other rules apply on submission: one active sign-up per email address per event, and a hard ceiling of 20 seats in a single submission.

There is no automatic waitlist

HappenBoard does not queue people when an event fills up. The form simply reports that it is sold out.

Attendee records do have a waitlist status, but nothing sets it on its own. It is applied by hand from the Attendees screen, or by an import. Nobody is promoted automatically when a seat frees up, so if you want a waiting list you have to run it yourself.

Watching how full an event is

  • On the Events screen, the Capacity column shows seats taken against the cap, with a small fill bar that changes tone as the event approaches full. Uncapped events show the count against an infinity sign.
  • On the admin calendar, month and week chips carry a thin fill bar, and day and agenda rows carry a count pill. Neither appears when capacity is 0.
  • Clicking an event on the calendar opens a preview showing Attendees going.

Venue capacity is a different thing

Venue records have their own capacity field, described in the guide to venues. It documents how many people the room holds. It does not limit sign-ups. Only the event’s own Maximum attendees does that, so a 200 seat hall can still host an event capped at 40.

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