Website Integration Guide – Setting up Sumac for online Course Registration
Before you are able to start using your Courses web page, you need to tell Sumac which payment processor to use when charging fees for registrations. To do this go to Sumac Console/Utilities/Customize Database/Preferences/Payments. In the Payments area you are required to enter information about your merchant account. For more information about setting this area up, see our How-to Video.
The course registrations web page allows you to show your courses online. On this page, your contacts can sign up for courses, complete forms, and check on their course history.
Before you are able to see any courses on the Course Registration web page, you must build them into your Sumac database. This is largely done in the Field Values area of Sumac found in Sumac Console/Utilities/ Customize Database/Field Values then select Areas: Course Registrations. As you work through setting up your courses and sessions, notice that many areas have a checkbox that has something to do with “show on web”. Keep Web Integration in mind when you are setting up this area. For more information see our Users Guide or How-to Videos.
On the Course Registration page, a user is taken through a series of screens while they sign up for a course. As you can see in the image below, a bar on the left side of the screen indicates which page the user is interacting with. In the screenshot below, the user is looking at the Catalog screen, but they can only see that screen once they have logged in. After they select a course, Sumac takes them to the registrant page.
Allow Users to Register Dependents
The Course Registration page is unique in that it allows a contact to register someone other than themselves into a course. For example, when a parent logs on to the page, Sumac asks if they are registering themselves or their child. At this time, if they wish to register someone else, Sumac both shows them a list of contacts that they are able to sign up for courses, and allows them to create a new contact that is from now on linked to their file for all future course sign ups.
In order to have this work on your web pages, you need to provide Sumac with information. If the user already has contacts linked to them in your Sumac database through relations, you need to tell Sumac which relationship type indicates students the user is eligible to register. So for example, if you set “Parent of” your user is able to register their children, but will not be able to register their other related contacts, such as contacts with the relationship type “Works for” or “Referred”.
If your user does not have contacts related to their record as people they are able to register for a course, then they are able to create that new contact record from within their Course Registration profile on your website. Sumac must know two things for this to happen. First, it needs to know fields that you would like to record for this new contact, such as Name, Birthday, etc. It also needs to know the relationship type. The relationship type is taken care of in the same way as the “show related contacts” indication. To set the fields you need to create a form, and map it to the appropriate contact record fields.
To set this up, you must be logged in to Sumac as an administrative user. For instructions of setting up this whole process, please see below:
- Write a list of contact fields that you would like to be included in the New Registrant form. This list of fields will be shown when a user logs in to your Course Registration page and selects the option to create a new registrant. These fields could include First Name, Last name, Gender, and others.
- Open Sumac Console/Contacts/Mailing/Mail Merge Codes and write down the mail merge codes that correspond to the contact fields you would like to see in your form. When this is done, close the contact list.
- Open Sumac Console/Utilities/Customize Database/Field Values, then select Area: Forms and Field Values: Form Definitions. Click New in the upper left corner of the list.
- Name the Form “New Registrant Form”, and set the Show On Web checkbox.
- Click Add at the bottom of your form definition window to add a new field. Create the fields that you included in your list in step one. In the Variable Name in another record type field, include the mail merge code for this field in a contact record. Make sure you do not include the brackets, only type in the text of the mail merge code. See one of our fields below as an example:
- Continue to add fields in this way until you have added all the fields from your list. Click OK to save and close your Form Definition.
- Open Sumac Console/Utilities/Customize Database/Preferences/Course Registration Tab.
- Set the Relationship Type whose forward direction means “can see course information for” preference. Here you are provided with a drop down menu that lists all the options you have as relationship types in your database. Select the relationship type that causes children to show in their parent’s record. In your Database, this may be a relationship type like “Parent Of”, or “Registrant For”. Note that you can only specify one relationship type here, so we suggest using one that encompasses your desired group.
- If you are a parent registering your child for a course, you are able to create your child’s profile once you are already signed in. When you create this profile, Sumac needs to know how to “relate” your two records. The value that you indicate here is the relationship type that Sumac will use when creating and linking your child. This is also the relationship type that Sumac will search for when showing you a list of registrants that you are able to sign up for a course form your account.
- Next, in the Website Integration area of the Course Registration Preferences tab, set the Register Others checkbox. This allows users to register contacts other than themselves for courses. This uses the relationship type you specified in Step 2.
- Specify the form you created in step 3-5 as the option for Form for adding new registrants. Click OK to save and close Preferences.
Web Page Appearance
Registrant page
You may have noticed in the screen shot above that a user has the possibility to see quite a few different pages in relation to the course registration web package. From the main page they are able to view:
- Course Catalog
- On this page, the user is able to:
- Select a course.
- Select a specific set of courses from a drop down
- Click the course to see Course details or
- View the forms and materials required for any course you are registered for.
- Select supplementary materials
- Choose Options: Here you display your question
- Select Registrant
- Once they click register, Sumac allows you to select your registrant. In the case that a parent is registering their child, the parent can select the child from the available list at the top or if the child does not exist yet in the database, the parent can use the Add a New Registrant fields to add their child. Sumac makes a new contact record with this.
- Fill in Forms
- In Sumac you are able to specify forms that are required with your course.
- View Course History
- Account Transactions
- Payment
- You can customize your payment options where a registrant is able to pay in full, or pay a minimum. You specify this in your Sumac database and this information populates into a payment record that is then linked to a contact record and the course registration.
Fields Available
Many of the fields a user sees in your course registration pages are not entry fields. These are areas where information from your Sumac database is shown on the web page for the user. You can change what Sumac displays here by making changes to your database. In the table below, fields of this nature have a Data Entry Format of None, and the information in the Corresponding Field in Sumac column tells you where to change what the contact sees on the page.
Customization
Certain areas of your Web page can be customized to either look or perform differently, please see the options listed in the sections below.
Course Selection: Select a Set of Courses
Selection does not enter information into Sumac. But rather changes what the user sees. To change the options offered here go to Sumac Console/Utilities/Customize Database/Field Values select Area: Course Registration and Field Values: Course Types to create Course Types for Sumac to Show in this list. Then in the Course Registration area, navigate to the Courses Field Values and use the check boxes along the bottom to indicate which courses belong to which course types. Then, if you have active sessions that are available online they appear on your page.
Course Selection: Course List URL
In Sumac Console/Utilities/Customize Database/Field Values select Area: Course Registration and Field Values: Session. Here you can enter a URL for Sumac to direct to when a student clicks a course title for more information.
Registrant Page: Enter a New Registrant
When you choose to enter a new registrant, Sumac creates a contact record for the new registrant, and links them to the user record as a Child.
Payment Page: Pay in Full & Pay Minimum
Set these in the Course Registration Field Values Sessions. If you do not have “minimum deposit” set then the radio buttons are not made available.
Maximum Students (Web)
If you want to set a maximum number of students allowed to register for a particular course, put that number in this field. Sumac Console/Utilities/Customize Database/Field Values select Area: Course Registration and Field Values: Session
Troubleshooting
Unwanted Courses Showing Online
If you seeing a course on the web that you do not want to appear there? Then go to Sumac Console/Utilities/Customize Database/Field Values select Area: Course Registration and Field Values: Session and set the checkbox “Do not show on web.”
Issue with Payment Processing
If you are experiencing an error related to payments or credit card processing, you should consider the following:
You may need to tell Sumac which payment processor to use when charging a payment. To do this go to Sumac Console/Utilities/Customize Database/Preferences/Payments. In the Payments area you are required to enter information about your merchant account. For more information about setting this area up, see our How-to Video.
In the same Field Values as step one, ensure that any payment type you would like to see online has the checkbox “Show On Web” set. To access this, double click the payment type you are concerned about.
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