What is a Collection?
A collection is a set of data grouped together based on a specific source type and for a specific purpose. Collections in GEVME are interlinked and data flows among them based on specific rules. The different collections in GEVME are the following:
- Invitees
- Attendees
- Buyers
- Contacts
Propagation of Data Among Collections
Below is an explanation of how the collections are linked to each other and how data propagates and syncs among them.
- Invitees are created and imported
It all starts with invitees being either created or imported into the Invitees collection. - Invitees pushed to Contacts
Invitees who do not exist in Contacts are pushed and created there.
Invitees who exist in Contacts are updated there (for more detailed information on this, see the article Importing Invitees). - Invitees converted to Attendees and Buyers
When registration happens, invitees who register are converted to attendees and buyers. - External registrations
There can be the case of "external registrations", e.g. participants who land directly onto your event page, without going through an invitation email to register. These participants are also created as attendees and buyers and added to the respective collections. - Attendees and Buyers pushed to Contacts
Finally, the attendees and buyers are pushed or updated in your Contacts collection.
Fields With Unique Values in Collections
GEVME allows you to specify if you want to make a particular field's value unique in a particular collection. For example, if you specify that the country field should be of unique value in Attendees, that means that you will be able to have only 1 attendee from each respective country in the country list.
GEVME uses this unique value feature especially in the case of the email address field. Thus, by default, the email address field is set as follows:
- The email address field is set to have unique values in Invitees and Contacts
This means that there can be no duplicate emails under these 2 collections. - The email address field is set not to have unique values in Attendees
This means that you can have multiple attendees with the same email address.
It is highly recommended to keep the setup this way, as it's the optimal way of using GEVME.
To learn more about how to set a field to have unique values, see the article Field Settings.