Every attendee has a dated history: how they signed up, what they paid, when they were scanned at the door and what your team changed. You can also add private notes to it.
The activity timeline needs HappenBoard Pro. See what Pro adds.
Open an attendee’s timeline
- Go to HappenBoard → Attendees.
- Click an attendee’s name. A panel opens on the right.
- The timeline fills the lower part of the panel, under the check-in ticket.
The arrows in the panel header, or the left and right arrow keys, move to the previous or next attendee on the page. Press Escape to close the panel. The page address keeps the attendee open, so you can bookmark it or send the link to a colleague.
Anyone who can open the attendee list can read the timeline. Without Pro, the panel says the timeline is a Pro feature.
What is recorded on its own
You have nothing to switch on. Entries are written as things happen:
| Entry | Written when |
|---|---|
| Registered or Paid registration | Someone signs up, or buys a ticket through Stripe or WooCommerce. Shows the name and email given. An import from CSV writes Registered too. |
| Payment received | A paid order goes through, with the amount and currency for this attendee’s tickets. |
| Payment refunded | Money is sent back, with the amount. See refunding an order. |
| Cancelled | The attendee cancels from their email, or a refund or a cancelled WooCommerce order cancels the booking. |
| Status changed | You change the status in the list or the panel, with the old and new values. |
| Date changed | You move the attendee to another date of a recurring event. “(over capacity)” is added when the new date was full. |
| Profile updated | You edit the name, email or seats, with the values before and after. |
| Email sent | HappenBoard emails the attendee: confirmation, cancellation, date changed or date cancelled. The kind of email shows in brackets, for example Email sent (confirmation). |
| Reminder sent | The reminder email goes out before the event. |
| Checked in | A ticket is scanned at the door. Each scan, re-scans included, gets its own entry. |
| Check-in undone | Door staff undo a mistaken scan. The Checked in entry stays, and this one follows it. |
| Check-in refused | A real ticket is turned away at the door. The entry gives the reason (see below). |
| Note | You add a note, or HappenBoard flags a paid ticket that found no seat left. |
A Check-in refused entry says why the ticket was turned away:
- “Ticket not admitted”, with the status: the booking was cancelled, declined or on the waitlist.
- “Ticket is for another date”: a recurring event’s ticket scanned on the wrong day.
- “Ticket’s date no longer takes place”: its date was cancelled or removed.
- “Ticket scanned at another event”: the scanner was set to a different event.
When a paid ticket finds no seat by the time the payment goes through, HappenBoard writes a Note. It says whether the payment was refunded automatically, or what is left for you to do.
Filter the timeline
Entries are grouped by day, newest first, and each shows its time in your site’s timezone. The panel shows the 200 most recent entries.
The Show list above the timeline keeps one kind of entry, such as Registrations, Payments, Check-ins, Emails, Status changes or Notes. Check-ins includes refused and undone scans, and Emails includes reminders. When nothing matches, the panel says “No matching activity for this filter.”
Add a note
- In the attendee’s panel, type your note in the Add a note box at the bottom. For example: needs a seat near the door, arrives late, guest of the speaker.
- Click Save note. It appears at once in the timeline as a Note entry.
A note cannot be edited or deleted afterwards. Notes are internal: the attendee never sees them, and they are never sent in an email.
Adding a note needs the permission to manage attendees, which Administrators and Editors have by default. Someone who can only view the list does not see the Add a note box.
When a timeline is empty
An attendee with no history shows “No activity recorded yet for this attendee.” That is normal for people who signed up before you installed Pro, or who came from a migration from another plugin.
You can fill those timelines from the command line with WP-CLI. The command below fills in each attendee who has no entry yet. It writes a Registered (or Paid registration) entry dated from the sign-up, a Cancelled entry when it applies, and one Checked in entry per recorded scan.
wp happenboard pro attendee-events rebuild --dry-run--dry-run only shows the counts. Run the command again without it to write the entries. Add --per-event=<id> to limit it to one event.
The --force option rebuilds attendees that already have entries, and deletes their existing entries first, notes included. Those notes cannot be recovered.
Deleted attendees and personal data
Deleting an attendee for good also deletes their timeline.
A personal data request works differently. Tools → Export Personal Data includes every timeline entry, notes included. Tools → Erase Personal Data keeps the entries as a record of what happened, but blanks the name, email and note text in them and removes payment references. See GDPR, personal data and uninstalling.
Next steps
- Managing attendees: the list the panel opens from.
- QR code check-in: scans, undos and refusals all land in the timeline.
- Using WP-CLI: more commands for bulk maintenance.