[BUG] Some attendance and registration events features don't appear until after a save

[kpecknold]

This is one of the roadmap items for this release, but I don't think it ever had a GIT ticket created. This problem is also in the web version (first noticed in the old web admin).

Some registration and attendance features aren't visible until after a user saves the event and goes back in. These features should be visible with all others at the same time.

To Reproduce

1. Start creating an event, go to the attendance section. At first, only "Scan Illini ID" and "Allow manual attendance taking" are visible.

2. Go into the registration section, see that the "guest list" feature is not visible.

3.. Back out, save the event, go into the two sections again. Now the rest of the features are there.
Attendance:

Registration:

[mihail-varbanov]

The request "These features should be visible with all others at the same time" is not possible to be fulfilled, and I will try to explain why.

There are short and long explanations:

The short explanation is that this is impossible because we cannot start attendance taking before the event is created.

The long explanation is:

For an event, we have Registration and Attendance Settings, that are part of event definition, and that are visually separated in the UI.

The Registration Settings include:

• Type: no registration / via the app / external;
• Link and Label, when the registration is external;
• Event Capacity and Registered NetIDs list, when the registration is internal (via the app);

The Attendance Settings include:

• Scan / Manual Check Enabled;
• Additional Attendance Takers list;

When we create an event we must populate the above two objects, and apply them together with the other event details. The only problem that I noticed was that the Additional Attendance Takers list did exist in the Attendance Details at creation time, which I resolved in version 6.1.62.

When we update/edit event details and settings, we have the same options for Registration and Attendance Settings, and they are all available in the update/edit event UI.

Now comes the interesting part that causes the confusion, in my opinion. Both Registration and Attendance Setting serve for the time of Attendance Taking to this event. The Attendance Taking depends strongly on the event's Registration and Attendance Settings but it is not part of these settings. It mainly includes functionality to mark users as having attended the event, as well as other auxiliary additional data like statistics (capacity / registered / attended), the current guest list, and so on. The confusion comes from the fact that Attendance Taking UI is embedded into Registration and Attendance Settings UI, while it serves for something else, but this was the design that we were implementing.

For me the right way to solve this confusion is to separate the Attendance Taking UI from Registration and Attendance Settings, for example to appear as standalone command entry in Event Admin Setting menu. What you should know is that because of the very complex UI that is currently in use, the internal implementation is quite intricately connected, and such separation would not be so quick or let's say a cosmetic task, maybe a development for a day or two, and then some mandatory testing.

@pmarkhennessy, @vburgett, please take your decision whether we should dive in this now, or put it off for some next release.

[mihail-varbanov]

Update: I just noticed that we already have "Take Attendance" option implemented under Event Admin Setting menu. This means that to remove the confusion we should just remove this duplicated functionality from the event's Registration and Attendance Settings UI, that is quick and cosmetic task. Let me know please if you want me to do this?

[kpecknold]

I think there could be a couple of options to solve this. Let's defer any changes to the next release to give us a chance to talk through the best option.
@vburgett @pmarkhennessy @mihail-varbanov

[pmarkhennessy]

@kpecknold OK