[Feature request] ability to restrict RSVP + email announcement to those who have previously attended another Bridgetroll event

[kmolo]

We'd like to use Bridgetroll to organize our post-workshop hack nights. We'd like to invite all students who have previously attended any MobileBridge iOS or Android workshop (attended = checked-in = actually showed up to the workshop), who still would like to receive emails from the local chapter (for example, we've had one prior attendee to a SF workshop, who now lives in NYC and would no longer like to receive such invitations from SF).

I don't think MobileBridge is alone in this request. I think @ultrasaurus thought it would be useful for the pairing workshops too.

Thoughts on this proposal + how to best implement?

[kmolo]

@tjgrathwell @lilliealbert @ultrasaurus @rachelmyers what do you think about this feature request?

Anyone else should be '@'-ed to join this conversation?

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Presently we're handling this by emailing past attendees, but the more workshops we hold, the more awkward this will get:

• must manually enter each event's Organizer Console to Email Attendees
• keep track of each group of recipients so we can delete their names when have attended or volunteered at more than 1 workshop

...unsolved problems with this way of using BridgeTroll:

• Organizer emails aren't listed individually, there is only a "CC Organizers" checkbox, so it's not possible to email workshop organizers + prevent them from receiving duplicate announcement emails
• doesn't exclude past workshop attendees who have move from the local areas, who no longer wish to receive announcement emails from that region (I don't think users of BridgeTroll have no way of seeing these user notification preferences)

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I recognize that this could be a complex feature request, but I think it would be broadly useful across many *bridges. I think the overall goal for the *bridges is to be part of attendees learning their technology, and advanced workshops that build on skills learned at prior events can be part of that.

[kmolo]

From an Event Organizer perspective, I imagine this could be implemented a few ways, but the way I had imagined this:

1. add new "Event Level" radio buttons to https://www.bridgetroll.org/events/new
   • "No prerequisites required" -- this would selected by default
   • "Prerequisites required"
     • If the "Prerequisites required" radio button where selected, then a multi-select dropdown (or other selector tools) would become active / un-grayed out / appear, allowing organizers to select all the BridgeTroll Courses that could satisfy the prerequisite requirement
2. When viewing the Event page, there would be a new "Prerequisites" section between "Workshop Description" and "Sponsors"
   • possible text for "No prerequisites required"
     • "Anyone can sign up for this event. There are no prerequisites."
   • possible text for "Prerequisites required"

     • "This event builds on the skills learned during one of the following prerequisite events:
       [Event Title]
       [Event Title]

       Please attend one of these first!"

3. The event would be listed for all to see on the main Events page, but, if signed-in users haven't attended the necessary prerequisites, possibly:
   • when they click the 'Attend as a student' button, instead of the "new RSVP" page, these users could see a "prerequisite" page, using the same prerequisite boilerplate text that is used in the "Prerequisite" section of the Event page
4. If the Event has "Prerequisites required", when an Announcement Email is sent, it will only be sent to BridgeTroll users who:
   • have the local Region checked on their profile as well as the "Allow Bridge Troll to send you an email when a new event is posted in one of those regions" checkbox
   • have attended the prerequisite events (attended = checked-in = actually showed up)
     • both as Students and as Volunteers
       • fyi, select from 'All Students' not from 'Accepted Students' and then filter to remove "No-Shows" (these are categories that I see within the 'Email Attendees' functionality)
       • because of the traditional attendance rate of 50%, we encourage many folks from the Waitlist to attend our events, and have never had a problem with too many attending, so we don't want to exclude students who attended / check-in without ever having come off the Waitlist
       • additional note: as an organizer, I've always invited waitlisted student who have put in childcare requests to attend, since it takes too long to arrange childcare to wait to do this when they come off the Waitlist the day before the event

Of course, this is coming from someone who isn't familiar with how BridgeTroll is actually implemented, so this may not be the way to go.

Your thoughts?

[lilliealbert]

@kmolo A few questions/comments — if you think it would make more sense to schedule a time to chat (perhaps with Jaya, too?), let me know!

• How important is it that the prereqs be course-specific? An easier MVP of this feature would be to only allow people who have checked in to any MobileBridge event attend, and then later add options for specific courses.
• Do you only want volunteers who have also checked in to MobileBridge events be able to RSVP as well?
• I'm not sure what you mean by this re: email announcements, can you clarify?

fyi, select from 'All Students' not from 'Accepted Students' and then filter to remove "No-Shows" (these are categories that I see within the 'Email Attendees' functionality)

Is this just an explanation of how you would do this using the Email Attendees tool? (We wouldn't need to be limited to the options in that tool when coding for this feature; we'd write something custom specific to prerequisites.)

RSVP Buttons
I think replacing the 'Attend' button for people who don't meet the requirement and showing them text that the event is only for MobileBridge alums would make more sense than showing them the button and then not letting them RSVP. Ostensibly, once they are logged in the app knows whether or not they meet the criteria. For logged out users, we could keep the same functionality, which is that if they click the "Attend" button, it prompts them to log in, and then takes them to the event show page (and then they have to click Attend again).

Event Details
For point 2 above — rather than coding any words in the description initially, I'd start off having the organizer explain their pre-requisites in the event description, since depending on the event they might have something specific or interesting way of explaining the restriction.

Email Announcement
Announcement emails should be scoped to the Region it's being held in, which is the default behavior of Bridge Troll email announcements. I think the only change we'd need to make for this would be to only send the email to MobileBridge students who have checked into a past MobileBridge workshop. (Or, if/when we implement course-specific prerequisites, only email the students who have checked into a workshop with a specific course.)