Recording and managing attendance over a multi-day event?

[Vince_ERAC]

Hey all,

I'm about to start on a S123 project to support a multi-day event (two days) and one of the components I don't have a solid workflow yet is for recording and managing attendance between the two days. 

Overview

The first day will consist of an in-class training session. In the form, day one attendance can be represented as a repeat. No problem!

The second day will be practical training from day one learnings. The catch here is that the attendance list for day two has potential to be slightly different. Either some folks from day 1 may not be able to attend, or new folks will attend for day two. 

Additionally, one of the later workflows is to create certificates for attendees on the second day that passed assessment, so being able to query folks present on day two is essential.

Current Thoughts

My current thoughts are to set up a repeat (thus a related table) for day one attendance.

For day two however, I'm thinking a potential method could be adding in another repeat for day two (so a second related table), then having the questions in the repeat be selection questions that pull information from the day one attendance table via autocomplete search() while also offering the option to add new attendees. 

The main issue I can see with that however is if the full list of attendees from day 1 is presented for every repeat via pulldata(), attendees could potentially be recorded twice as I don't think the list would filter out those who have already been recorded. Maybe a select_multiple and just have names as comma separated values would be the way to go?

Questions

Essentially, the overall question I have is: what's the best practice to go about managing attendance for multiple days where the majority of attendees for day two would likely be the same, though could be different? 

Could I maybe have just one related table and then add fields for each day with a value of "Yes" or "No" based on attendance (e.g., field of day_1 with domain Yes/No; field of day_2 with domain Yes/No)? If so, what would that workflow look like? Alternative ideas? 

Thanks in advance! 

[JenniferAcunto · Accepted solution]

I think you're over complicating it with repeats. From what you've described I would set up a simple survey based on the attendees and not the event:

• Attendee Name
• Attended First Day Y/N
• Attended Second Day Y/N
• Passed Assessment Y/N (only relevant if they attended the second day)

Then I would set up a dashboard to facilitate an editing workflow as explained here. 

The dashboard would have a list of attendees from day one, if they are there day two, you would click on their name to edit their survey submission to indicate they are there on day two. If they are not on the list you would simply fill in a new survey. Same process for recording their assessment status. Filters on the dashboard will let you view by day attended and assessment status. If you are on ArcGIS Online, you can export from a table in the dashboard. If not, you can always create hosted feature layer views on any of those filter fields and export from the item details. 

[Vince_ERAC]

Thank you for your response Jen! Always helps getting a fresh set of eyes. You're right - I believe I was over-complicating things as your workflow seems like it will do the trick.

The one design feature I'm hoping to implement with this is to have every survey related to the event (there will be about 6), all be related tables from the parent spatial point. Thus, anytime survey data for that specific event needs to be pulled, all can be accessed by selecting the point for the event on a map in a dashboard or experience. 

As such, I believe having the initial attendance as a repeat to create a related table, then having a dashboard facilitate editing for day two and assessment values could be the way to go. 

Though again, if I'm overcomplicating things and making more work than necessary, I would really appreciate your insight 🙂

Thanks again.