Items You Need to Check for Your In-Person Event

As an event administrator, you play a crucial role in ensuring the success of your in-person events. To help you navigate the intricacies of event preparation seamlessly, we have a comprehensive guide to empower you with the knowledge and tools needed to orchestrate memorable and successful in-person events. Our goal is to equip you with the knowledge and insights to meet and exceed your attendees' expectations.

Ensure you do this before adding your tickets or sessions so all your tickets and sessions are in the same in-person format. Whether you're using Accelevents only for event ticketing or other features such as badging, the kiosk, or the attendee app, your event format should be In-Person if the event is at an actual venue and not virtual.

With the In-Person format, attendees will have no access to the virtual hub - where virtual sessions can be viewed.

If you're using the Attendee App for your event, attendees will have access to the app when the event format is In-Person.

Publishing an event is required for any ticketed event. If the event is not published, you will be limited to only the first 25 attendees to check in or access the attendee app. To publish an event, you'll need a paid plan. If you've already purchased a plan and it's not allowing you to publish, don't hesitate to contact our support team through chat.

Since the event will be held in a venue, ensure the address is indicated on your event landing page. You can even add a Venue Map so that it's easy to find. It would also be helpful if you could give them more information about the location, such as nearby hotels, restaurants, parking provisions, and accessibility.

If you want attendees to be able to explore your event through the attendee app before the event begins, you can adjust the pre-event access time. This will give them enough time to familiarize themselves with the app, update their profile, take a look at the exhibitor booth information, check downloadable files from sessions, and more.

The PDF file will have the attendees' QR codes. While this code is available in the attendee app after they log in, some attendees may still prefer printing a document to present upon check-in. To include the ticket, go to the Advanced Settings of each ticket type and tick the box for Include PDF Ticket.

Most event admins miss checking whether the order form field is showing up on the checkout page. And if it's not showing up, the field was not made available for the ticket type. To avoid registrants not answering one of the required fields, click the edit button next to the field to see which ticket types can see the field.

Upon registering for your event, the order confirmation will be the first message attendees will see. Please give them clear instructions on what they need to do on the event day, where they need to proceed when they arrive, and let them know if they need to prepare anything beforehand.

If you're using the attendee app for the event, it's important to give them instructions on downloading and using it. We have several Attendee App Knowledge Base articles; you may send the links to your attendees or customize your how-to guide.

Send test emails to yourself so you'll know what it would look like, and test if all the links attached to the email are working. This way, you can make adjustments before you open the registration.

If you're using the badge feature, make sure that you test-print it to see if the design looks good on paper. There may be some sizing and margin issues, so addressing this before the event is important. Note that printing from a regular printer through your computer differs from printing on a Zebra printer connected to your iPad.

You may encounter issues connecting your printer, so it's good practice to test it before the event to know how to troubleshoot if it happens again. If you're renting your printer and can only test on the day of the event, ensure to arrive early to test it.

If sessions will be held in different conference rooms, ensure this is indicated in the session details to avoid any confusion.

When speakers are added to a session, they automatically receive the invite email. When they click the link in the email, they will be redirected to the My Speaking Schedule tab in the virtual hub, where they can view their sessions and upload files that attendees can download during the event. Since the event is in-person, this is the only tab they can access in the virtual hub.

If you don't want your speakers to receive this email, you can turn off that setting.

Like speakers, exhibitors also automatically receive an email when they are added to the booth. This gives them access to the My Booth tab to add content to the booth. Since the event is in-person, this is the only tab they can access in the virtual hub.

If you don't want your exhibitors to receive this email immediately or have no plans to allow them to customize their booth, you can turn off that setting.

Ensure you check what gamification challenges apply to in-person events and how attendees can earn points. Note that a networking standard challenge will not work for in-person events as networking sessions are only available for virtual events access through a browser (not available in the app).

Review the session and expo triggers once more before the event. You might forget to include newly created sessions or booths in an existing challenge. Click all the dropdowns in the challenge settings to see what's included.

Check how push notifications look when you send them, if the links work, and know exactly how they will be received through a browser or mobile.

Duplicate your event so that you can do a dry run on the duplicate. Play with the duplicated event and use all the functionality that attendees will use so that you have an idea of what they will experience and know what adjustments you need to make.

To know exactly what your attendees go through when registering, you can try it out yourself. Try different scenarios like trying to register as a new attendee, signing in first before registering, or buying a ticket for another person. You can use an email address that is not your admin email address since you may have different permissions as an admin.

Determining how you want your attendees to check in to the event is important. Do they do it on their own, or should they be assisted by your staff? Should your staff check in attendees through the Staff Portal or use the app? Should they check in using the QR code or a simple search? There are many options, and it's up to you to determine which works best. If you've added some ticket restrictions, please ensure to test that they work, too.

It's important to test every aspect so that you can report any issues you find and have them fixed before the event opens. Ensure that you have the latest version installed. Learning more about the app will help you respond faster to your attendees when they have questions. Here are the key features you need to test:

Testing whether the admin app is working is important to ensure that attendees can check in smoothly. Here are the key features you need to test: