Hello James,
Since I didn't work at the conference I'm only guessing that the way the data is displayed makes it "unusual" for regular folks to find information. They are used to "manual" labor in these situations, so typing the name or part of it is not "ideal". There is also no way in the OCS the "check" that the person attended the conference, although they may have payed.
Again, they are "forced" to use the system which has never been taught to them. I myself don't use it, so I don't know some of it's features or how to use them fully, in order to provide better support.
The registration page lists the user (full name it seems, registration type, date registered, date paid, and editing/deleting options, but it doesn't allow me to select everything and generate a table with the necessary data for an attendance list (no e-mail, for example).
Since I haven't upgraded, I haven't checked the result of the Registration
report available in the Stats & Reports page, but the traditional .CSV reports bring too much information (not configurable), requiring manual clean-up (merging user's name to one cell, removing unnecessary data, formatting, re-organizing, etc).
Having that said, these seem the features they would like available, and seem unavailable yet as far as I could tell (please check with other people, especially those who manage and conference staff members, if these are a general consensus, to make sure these would help more than one conference):
- print a listing to sign in attendance (not available; needs quite a bit of work to produce manually, although the data is there to automate this)
- listing with full name and mailing address to print self-adhesive labels to mail certificates, receipts, etc (same as above)
- I just checked the workings of the registration page and although it doesn't have an alphabetic listing, the search can do it by typing the starting letter. However, this brings any of the name's parts that start with the letter, which is somewhat confusing (either first, middle or last name starts with B, but the page is ordered by first name). Maybe reduce the option "starts with" to the first name, instead. You'll need to discuss this further. Also, the page could have a specific item counter, so we don't have to navigate through 2 or 3 pages when filtering by low-precision parameters (part of name, letter, etc), bringing a subset of data that may be manageable but still has over 25 items.
Also, although the listing is interesting, there may be locations where the Registrar's desk doesn't have Internet connection, which would require a printed list for fast reference (blackouts are also quite common in certain locations and times of year).
- Another list would be the author's full name and title to produce certificates of participation. This one is tricky because of multiple author issues. Do you generate an individual or group certificate? If grouped, which seems the most adequate personally, you should generate as many as there are authors, in the order listed, to guarantee a complete record. This may/should/NOT be made available to authors, enabling them a self-made certificate or copy? This could be "ported" to reviewers, as some institutions view that type of work as part of research activities, counts for ratings at work or resumé, etc...
