How to track attendance to your event

What is attendance tracking?

Attendance tracking is used to generate reports in Backstage that will tell event organizers whether or not their event participants attended their event.

The criteria or rules that are used to determine whether or not a participant has attended an event can be configured in Backstage, and are based on:

• Whether the participant activated the app or checked-in to the event.
  OR
• Whether the participant, attending in-person or virtually, attended the agenda sessions that are relevant to them.

Note: Even though activating the app can be used as a criteria by the system to determine whether or not an attendee has attended the event (visible via the "Attendance status" field), event organizers can still refer to the separate "Status" field (present in the users page and in the users export) in order to see whether or not an attendee has activated the app. More information on this is available in the How can I configure the attendance tracking rules and criteria for my events? section.

In this article we’ll explain in detail:

• What rules and criteria are used to determine event attendance for in-person and virtual attendees?
• How can I configure the attendance tracking rules and criteria for my events?
  • Enabling and editing the event and session attendance tracking criteria in the organization's default workspace settings
  • Configuring the criteria for in-person attendees
  • Configuring the criteria for virtual attendees
  • Enabling and editing the event and session attendance tracking criteria in the workspace settings
• What if I’m using a single live session across multiple agenda sessions?
• How to download an attendance report for my event?
• What data is included in the event attendance tracking report?
• How to refer to the Attendance status field for my audience?

What rules and criteria are used to determine event attendance for in-person and virtual attendees?

Whether an attendee has effectively attended an event or a session is based on specific rules or criteria that need to be met. 

These rules/criteria vary depending on whether the participants are attending in person or virtually, and are summarized below:

Important: The appropriate calculation method is automatically selected by the system based on the “Attending” field value selected in the user profile, using “in-person” or “virtual” attendance. For purely virtual or in-person events, this field will automatically default to either “In-person” or “Virtually” based on the selected event type. For hybrid events, it is crucial that you populate this field to determine the user experience that needs to be delivered to the attendee (if you do not select an option for this field, the system will consider that the field is set to "virtual)" in order to deliver a live stream to the attendee). More information

The above criteria and rules can be adjusted in order to allow you to determine how to track the attendance to your event. Read on below to find out how.

How can I configure the attendance tracking rules and criteria for my events?

Event and session attendance can be configured on your events:

• In the organization’s default workspace settings, to define the default attendance tracking criteria for all workspaces associated with the organization.
• In the individual workspace’s settings, to edit the exact attendance criteria for that workspace.

Note: Attendance tracking configurations within a workspace are not saved and carried over when creating and using workspace templates. Templates and workspaces created from templates will always by default use the attendance tracking configuration defined in the organization’s default workspace settings.

Enabling and editing the event and session attendance tracking criteria in the organization's default workspace settings

Access your organization in Backstage, and go to the Default workspace settings. 

Scroll down to and open the Attendance criteria section:

Configuring the criteria for in-person attendees

"Attended event if" field

An in-person attendee can be considered to have attended an event IF:

Option 1: Checked into the event or activated the app
They checked into the event (via Event check-in, with or without badge printing, if this advanced module is installed) OR they simply activated the app.
Selecting this option means that event attendance will be determined based on event check-ins, if the advanced Event check-in module is used on the workspace. If the advanced Event check-in module is not used on the workspace, then event attendance will only be determined based on whether or not attendee activates the app.

Option 2: Checked into the event or attended at least X sessions
They checked into the event (via Event check-in, with or without badge printing, but only if this advanced module is installed) OR the checked into a minimum number of sessions (via the Event check-in, with or without badge printing, but only if this advanced module is installed).

"Attended session if" field

Here session attendance is only based on whether the participant was checked-in (scanned) upon arriving at the session, using the advanced Session check-in module (if installed). No other options are available.

Configuring the criteria for virtual attendees

Attended event if

Here you can choose between:

• The participant is considered “attended” if they have activated the app.
  OR
• The participant is considered “attended” if they have attended at least X number of sessions (you can define the minimum number of sessions using the “Minimal sessions to attend” field - the default value is 1).

Attended session if

Here session attendance is based on:

• Whether the participant’s watch time for a live session is more than the specified number of minutes - for example, if the attendee has watched more than 20 minutes. The default value here is 5 minutes.
  OR
• Whether the participant’s watch time for a live session is more than the specified percentage % of the full live session duration - for example, if an attendee has watched more than 50% of the live session full duration of 1 hour, i.e. 30 minutes. The default value here is 5%.

Enabling and editing the event and session attendance tracking criteria in the workspace settings

Once you have enabled and edited the attendance tracking criteria in the organization’s default workspace settings, you can also edit the criteria for your individual workspaces based on your specific event's needs.

To do so, go to the workspace general settings, and access the Attendance criteria tab:

Here you can see the default attendance criteria that are applied to the workspace, based on the exact same settings that are present in the parent organization’s default workspace settings.

You can edit the criteria here in order to apply custom criteria to this specific workspace. Changes made here will only affect this workspace and not affect the settings made in the organization’s default workspace settings.

What if I’m using a single live session across multiple agenda sessions?

Attendees joining an agenda session remotely will access it by watching the live stream (live session) that is associated with the session agenda. Their attendance to the agenda session is tracked based on their watch time for the live stream (live session).

Often, each individual agenda session will be associated with its own unique individual live session. If so, the live session and agenda session will match-up easily and facilitate tracking the attendance.

In other scenarios, a single live session can be associated with multiple separate agenda sessions. If this is the case, Backstage will use the start and end times of each agenda session, and apply these timestamps to the attendee’s live session watch time, in order to verify (against the attendance criteria) whether the attendee has attended the agenda session or not.

Example of multiple agenda sessions that use a single live session

Let's consider that there are three agenda sessions:

Session 1: 2 PM to 3 PM.
Session 2: 3 PM to 4 PM.
Session 3: 4 PM to 5 PM.

They are associated with a single and same live session that lasts from 2 PM to 5 PM.

The attendance criteria that needs to be met for virtual attendees for the agenda sessions is set to 10 minutes of watch time.

Attendee 1 watches the live session from 2:05 to 2:10 PM:
The system tracks that attendee 1 has attended none of the agenda sessions.

Attendee 2 watches the live session from 2:05 to 2:20 PM:
The system tracks that attendee 2 has attended the agenda session 1.

Attendee 3 watches the live session from 2:05 to 4:05 PM:
The system tracks that attendee 3 has attended sessions 1 and 2.

Attendee 4 watches the live session from 2:00 to 3:05 PM and then 3:10 to 4:05 PM:
The system marks them as attended in sessions 1 and 2.

Attendee 5 watches the live session from 2:45 to 4:15 PM:
The system marks them as attended in sessions 1, 2, and 3.

Attendee 6 watches the live session from 2:00 to 5:00 PM:
The system marks them as attended in sessions 1, 2, and 3.

Note: If you are using a live session that is not associated with an agenda session, then the live session will be treated as an individual agenda session in the report, using the name of the live session.

What if I'm using virtual or hybrid live sessions that are not associated with agenda sessions?

If you're using virtual or hybrid live sessions that are not associated to any agenda sessions, the system will still be able to track how your remote audience attended the live sessions based on their watch times.

This is done by the system by automatically creating an "empty", non-used, agenda session in the workspace that corresponds to the live session.

This empty agenda session is created once the live session has passed, and only if a the live session is not associated to an existing agenda session. Its start and end dates/times will exactly match the actual live start and end dates/times of the live session (from going live to ending the live session).

Note: These empty live sessions are only used for attendance tracking purposes. If they are deleted in Backstage, please note that attendance tracking will not be possible for the associated live sessions.

While this agenda session is visible in Backstage in the Agenda module it is not visible at all by the attendees in the app. The "Appearance" of the session in the workspace is set to "Hidden":

How to download an attendance report for my event?

In your workspace dashboard, you can generate the attendance report for your event.

By clicking on Attendance report, you can select the date range for the report, the fields to export, and then Download the XLS:

Doing so will download  a .zip file that includes the report in .XLSX format.

What data is included in the event attendance tracking report?

Please note that, whether your event type is in person, virtual, or hybrid, the attendance report will always contain the same four sheets:

• Event_attendance: This sheet includes attendance data for the event as a whole.
• Day_attendance: This sheet includes attendance data for the event broken down per day.
• Session_attendance: This sheet includes attendance data for the event broken down per session. Starting August 15, 2024, this sheet will be removed from the Attendance tracking report. The information it contains will be included in the Sessions report that is available in the workspace dashboard. More information
• Session_summary: This sheet includes attendance data for the event, shown as an overview of session attendance.

Tip: If you are looking to see whether your event participants attended the event or not based on the criteria you configured, you can directly refer to the Event attended column in the Event_attendance sheet of the report, where you will find a simple YES or NO answer. If you are looking for more information on the participants’ attendance statuses in the event, you can refer to the Attendance status column in the Event_attendance sheet (more information on this field).

Event_attendance sheet

This sheet includes attendance data for the event as a whole:

First name / Last name / Email address of the participant + any other fields selected when downloading the report

Attendance status: What is the status of the participant?
Statuses range from: Not Invited / Invited / Registered / Pending / Registration not accepted / No show / Invitation Declined / No Reply / Attended / Canceled. (more information on this field)

Event attended: Did the participant attend the event based on the configured criteria? Yes or No.

Event attendance criteria: The number of sessions that the participant needs to attend for the whole event, in order to have the “Attended” status.

Number of sessions attended: This is the number of sessions that the participant has attended for the whole event, based on the configured criteria.

Event type: This is the type of event, per the event settings: in-person / virtual / hybrid

Attendee type: How is the participant attending, per the “Attending” field in the user profile.
To note, the value this field does not get modified if an attendee decides to enable or disable the stream in the app.

Day_attendance sheet

This sheet includes attendance data for the event broken down per day.

First name / Last name / Email address + any other fields selected when downloading the report

Event day date: This is the day(s) that the attendee has sessions that are relevant to them in their agenda. If the event takes place over several days, there will be a row per day for each day that has sessions that are relevant to the attendee. If there is a day that the attendee hasn't been targeted by or registered for any session, that day will not show on the report.

Day attended: Did the participant attend the specified event day date or not? An attendee is considered to have attended for the day if they attended one session or that day (based on the configured session attendance criteria).

Number of sessions attended: This is the number of sessions that the participant has attended for the whole event, based on the configured session attendance criteria.

Event type: This is the type of event, per the event settings: in-person / virtual / hybrid

Attendee type: How is the participant attending, per the “Attending” in the user profile.
To note, the value this field does not get modified if an attendee decides to enable or disable the stream in the app.

Session_attendance sheet

This sheet includes attendance data for the event broken down per session.

Important: Starting August 15, 2024, this sheet will be removed from the Attendance tracking report. The information it contains will be included in the Sessions report that is available in the workspace dashboard (More information).

First name / Last name / Email address + any other fields selected when downloading the report

Session name: The title of the session

Session ID: The ID of the session

Session date and time: The session date and the start time.

Session attended: Did the participant attend the event based on the configured criteria? Yes or No

Session watch-time threshold (in seconds): The number of seconds of watch time that the participant needs to have watched during a live session, in order to be considered to have attended a session. Only applicable if the “event type = virtual or hybrid”, and to participants who have “Attendee type = virtual”.

Session watch-time (in seconds): This is the number of seconds that the participant watched the live session. Only applicable if the “event type = virtual or hybrid”, and to participants who have “Attendee type = virtual”.

Event type: This is the type of event, per the event settings: in-person / virtual / hybrid

Session type: This is the live session type: in-person, virtual, hybrid.

Attendee type: How is the participant attending, per the value in the “Attending” field in the user profile (“In-person” or “Virtually”).
To note, the value this field does not get modified if an attendee decides to enable or disable the stream in the app.

*Targeted user: Is the attendee targeted by the session? Yes/No. 

*Registered user: Is the attendee registered to the session? Yes/No.

*Walk-in: Is the attendee a walk-in? 

*Host/Hostess: Who was the host or hostess that checked-in the attendee to the session? *Check-in type: Did the attendee: self-check via QR scan (Self: QR scan) / or self check-in via PIN code (Self: Pin code) / or get checked in by a host or hostess via QR scan (Assisted: QR scan) / or get checked in by a host or hostess via the search (Assisted: Lookup).

*Check in date and time: This is the date and time when the participant checked-in/was checked-in to the session.

*Check out type: This is the method that the attendee used to check out of the session. This can only be done when using a PIN code (Self: Pin), if enabled.

*Check out date and time: This is the date and time when the participant checked-out of the session.

*Attendance time: This is the session time that elapsed between the check-in date and time and the check-out date and time.

Columns that are marked with an asterisk (*) above are only populated if the workspace is using the advanced Session check-in module. They will be populated with N/A if the Session check-in module is not installed and enabled on the workspace. If you have not installed the Session check-in module on your workspace you can disregard the columns that are marked with an asterisk (*).

Session_summary sheet

This sheet includes attendance data for the event, shown as an overview of all session attendance.

First name / Last name / Email address + any other fields selected when downloading the report

Number of sessions attended: How many sessions did the participant attend for the event for the specified period, based on the attendance criteria?

Number of sessions not attended: (Number of sessions that attendee was targeted to or registered for but didn't attend.

Event type: This is the type of event, per the event settings: in-person / virtual / hybrid

Attendee type: How is the participant attending, per the value in the “Attending” field in the user profile (“In-person” or “Virtually”).
To note, the value this field does not get modified if an attendee decides to enable or disable the stream in the app.

How to refer to the Attendance status for my audience

The attendance status of your event audience can be found:

• In the Event attendance report, in the event attendance sheet, as explained above.
• In the users report (by clicking on Export XLS in the users list and referring to the attendance_status column).
• In the user page, by scrolling down to the bottom of the page:

Below you will find a breakdown of the attendance statuses that an attendee can have, with an indication of:

• What the status means.
• When the attendee’s status can change.
• Whether this is a temporary/transitional status for the attendee, or whether it is a final status that will no longer evolve.