Allowing your attendees to provide a secondary contact email associated with their user profile

The below feature will be available starting May 7, 2025

In some cases, your attendee may need to have a "secondary contact person", or an assistant, to help them read and respond to emails that are sent by the event and provide any necessary input on their behalf.

This can include answering the event invitation or registration emails, providing responses to logistical questions asked by the event team, clicking on a magic link to confirm a registration/invitation, etc.

This can be achieved by creating a dedicated "CC (Carbon Copy) email address" user field (metadata) in the workspace, where an email address for this "secondary contact person" can be added to the main attendee's user profile.

Doing this will mean that the email address entered into the "CC email address" user field will receive copies of ALL the emails sent by the event/workspace to the main attendee.

What emails are sent to the secondary contact person / CC email address?

This includes any and all emails that are sent from the event/workspace, whether they are sent:

• Manually by a Backstage user via the Users module (for example event invitations, reminder emails to access the event, custom targeted emails, etc.).
  OR
• Automatically, as part of a process or functionality related to the event or a module (event registration, registration retrieval, meetings emails, agenda waitlists, user password resets, etc.).

What can the secondary contact person / CC email address do with these emails?

The "secondary contact person" who receives the emails destined to the main attendee will be able to to act on these emails without having access to the main user's email inbox, as well as perform certain actions such as:

• Clicking on magic links and accessing the app.
• Clicking on the “Unsubscribe” button in an email, which will unsubscribe the main attendee address from receiving emails from the event, as well as all the related "CC email addresses".

All actions that are performed in the app by the main attendee OR by the "CC email address" recipient is considered as performed by the main recipient.

For example if the CC email address recipient accesses the app via a sent magic link and writes on the home feed, it will be on behalf of the main user. The same rule applies to reports: all actions performed by the "CC email address" recipient is tracked as performed by the main attendee.

Note: Multiple secondary email addresses can be added to a user profile, should you need to provide the options for your attendees to have multiple different secondary email addresses.

Important: By adding an additional email address to receive copies of their event communications, the main attendee must acknowledge that they are sharing their event-related information with that person. Depending on the features enabled, that person may also be able to access or act on their behalf in connection with the event. This information is by default added to the user field in order to inform the attendee.

How can a "CC email address" field be added to a user profile?

There are three ways that the "CC email address" field can be populated:

• Directly in Backstage, by populating the "CC email address" user field. This can be done manually, via an upload of user info, or via an integration.
• Via a registration page, by adding the "CC email address" field to a registration form that can be completed as part of the main attendee's registration process.
• Via the app, by adding the "CC email address" field to the user profile.

In this article we'll explain what steps need to be performed in order to set this up:

• Creating the "CC email address" user metadata with the correct configuration
• Populating the "CC email address" field in the user profile in Backstage
• Adding the "CC email address" field to a registration page form
• Adding the "CC email address" field to the app user's profile in the app by adjusting the display template.

Creating the "CC email address" user metadata

In the workspace where you want to use the "CC email address" user field:

Go to the Metadata manager, in the User metadata, click on Add field (1), and then create the "CC email address" metadata (2) as follows:

From left to right:

• Set the Field name to "CC_email".
  
  
• Set Field kind to "email".
  
  
• Set the Field label to "CC email address"
  
  
• In the options, enable the Use as CC email toggle.
  This will add the below description and tooltip texts, that are very important to ensure that users know how this type of field will work. You can adjust these texts if needed:
  • Description (visible in the app only) field:
    "By adding an additional email address to receive copies of your event communications, you acknowledge that you are sharing your event-related information with that person. Depending on the features enabled, they may also be able to access or act on your behalf in connection with the event."
  • Tooltip (visible in Backstage only) field:
    “By adding an additional email address to receive copies of event communications, you acknowledge that you are sharing the main attendee's event-related information with that person. Depending on the features enabled, they may also be able to access or act on the attendee’s behalf in connection with the event.”

Once this is done, click on Save changes (3).

The metadata is now created and will be visible in the User page in Backstage.

You can move the "CC email address" up or down in the user metadata to adjust where it will show in the user page. Here we have moved it up the list so that it is located below the user's main email address:

Note: Should you need to collect multiple “secondary email addresses” for your attendees, you can create multiple CC_email metadata as described above. You will simply need to give them distinct field names, such as “CC_email1” / “CC_email2” / “CC_email3”, etc.

Populating the "CC email address" field in the user profile in Backstage

Once you have created the "CC email address" user metadata, and optionally moved it to the appropriate location, you will see it in the user page in Backstage.

To see it, go to Content > Users, and click on a user name in the user list:

The "CC email address" field can now be populated manually here by entering a "secondary contact person" email address, and hitting Save.

The field can also be populated by doing an export and import of the user list. The field is present here in the Excel report where it can be populated and re-uploaded:

Other ways to populate this field can be to add it to a registration page form, or to make it an editable field in the user profile directly in the app.

Adding the "CC email address" field to a registration page form

If you are using a registration page for your event, you can allow your attendees to provide a "secondary contact person" email address when they go through the registration process.

This can be done by adding the "CC email address" user metadata to the registration page form. This can be added to the main form or any additional form.

Note: Any access limitations that are applied to the registration page based on the email domain that is used by the registrant will also be applied to the "CC email address" address.

To add the field to the workspace registration page form, go to the registration page and open the Form fields tab. Here you can click on the Field + button for the form you want to add the field to, and select the CC email address field in the dropdown:

The field is now added, and you can choose to make it mandatory or not:

Now, in the actual registration page, when an attendee goes through their registration, they will have the option to provide a CC email address:

As you can see above, the CC email address description text
is also added here to inform registrants of how this field works.

After the registration is completed with the CC email address provided, the CC email address will be updated accordingly in the user profile in Backstage:

Adding the "CC email address" field to an app user's profile in the app by adjusting the display template

The "CC email address" field can also be added as an editable field to the app, for example in the app user's profile page. This will allow app users to provide their "secondary contact email address" through their profile in the app:

To do so, you will need to adjust the display template of the page. To add this field to the editable user profile in the app, you will need to adjust the display template as follows:

In Backstage, go to Content > Users > Display template, and make sure you have selected the "profile" page (not the "person" one). In the left panel, open the Form elements, and drag and drop a Text input component (1) into the center of the page template:

In the right panel, for the text input details, add "CC email address" to the Question field (2).

Next, further down in the right panel, open the Advanced options (3) for the text input component.

Here, in the Value key (4), enter "CC_email" (so that the value here fully matches the value used in the created metadata), and in the Validate format (5) dropdown, select "Email address" (to make sure that app users enter a valid email address):

Once you are done with the above, click Save (6) to confirm the changes.

How does it look in the emails that are sent to the main attendee and the secondary email address?

If an attendee has a secondary email address associated to their user profile using the CC_email metadata, all the emails that are sent to the main attendee will also be sent to the secondary email address.

In the email that is received, the recipients will clearly be able to see what is the main recipient email address and what is the secondary email address:

SpotMe partners with two email providers, AWS SES and Mailchimp Transactional (previously known as Mandrill), to deliver emails.

If your organization is using (the recommended) AWS SES as their email provider, in the email, all the recipients (“to:” and “cc:”) will be visible to all the recipients (like in the example above).

If your organization is using Mailchimp Transactional (Mandrill), then the recipients of the email (“to:” or “cc:”) will not be able to see any of the other recipients of the email (they will only see their own email address).

FAQ

Can I distinguish the actions of the main attendee from those of a CC email address recipient (  e.g. accept RSVP invitation?
No, all actions are tracked as actions taken by the attendee. The cc person is not a real user on the event and acts on behalf of the attendee.

Can I provide more than one CC email address on an attendee profile?
Yes, you can add as many as you need. Simply add the metadata again.

Can I prevent certain email addresses from being added as a CC email address?
Yes, but only when using the a registration page. The same domain limitations that are placed on the attendee are applied to the CC email recipient.

Can I choose which specific emails to send to the CC email address recipient?
No, the CC email recipient will receive a copy of ALL emails sent to the main attendee.

How can I see a quick overview of all CC email recipients for my event?
You can download the Registrations dashboard report and select the CC email metadata so that it is included in the report.