Creating and Managing Events

The Event Lifecycle

Every event in CompleteEvent moves through a simple lifecycle: Draft → Published → Completed, and you can archive an event when you no longer need it. Understanding these states helps you plan your work and avoid accidentally exposing an event before it is ready.

• Draft — the event exists in your dashboard but the registration page is not publicly accessible. Use this state while you are building out the event details, setting up ticket tiers, and getting internal approvals.
• Published — the registration page is live and accepting registrations. Attendees can find and register for the event.
• Completed — the event end date has passed. Registration closes automatically. Existing registrations and all data are still fully accessible.
• Archived — the event is hidden from your dashboard and from attendees. To restore an archived event, contact support.

Creating an Event

From your organization dashboard, click Create Event. The creation form asks for:

• Name — appears on the registration page, confirmation emails, and the mobile event guide.
• Start and end date/time — always set the timezone to your venue's local timezone. CompleteEvent stores times in UTC and converts on display.
• Location — venue name and address for in-person events, or a video URL for virtual events.
• Description — supports plain text. The first 160 characters are used in page meta descriptions and Open Graph previews.
• Cover image — recommended 1200 × 630 px. Appears at the top of the registration page and in social share cards.
• Registration deadline — optional. If set, registration closes at this date/time even if capacity is not reached.

Editing an Event

You can edit any event field at any time, even after publishing. Open the event and go to Event Settings → Settings. Changes save when you click Save changes.

Important: Changing the date, time, or location of a published event does not automatically notify registered attendees. After making such changes, use Communications → Notifications to send an update to all attendees via push notification, SMS, and/or email.

Duplicating an Event

Duplicating is the fastest way to create a recurring event or reuse your setup for a similar event. Open the event's Event Settings → Settings page and click Duplicate, or click Create Event and choose the Copy past event tab.

Duplicating copies:

• Event name (with “(Copy)” added), description, and cover image
• Dates, time zone, venue, and capacity
• All ticket tiers (names, prices, capacities)
• Registration form settings and custom registration questions, including questions shown only for one ticket tier
• Rooms and tracks

Duplicating does not copy:

• Registrations or attendee data
• Sessions, speakers, and abstract submissions
• Sponsors and the run-of-show
• Promo codes

The duplicate starts as a draft with the original dates. Update the date and location, then publish when ready.

Publishing and Unpublishing

Click Publish on the event overview page to make the event live. A confirmation prompt will appear — confirm to proceed.

You can unpublish a live event by clicking Move back to draft on the event's Settings page. This hides the registration page from the public. Existing registrations are not affected — registered attendees retain their registrations and QR codes. Use unpublish if you need to make major changes and do not want new registrations coming in while you work.

Event Settings and Options

Each event has a Settings tab with these options:

• Registration form fields — enable or disable optional fields (company, job title, dietary requirements, t-shirt size, referral source). See Managing Registrations for full details.
• Waitlist — enable to automatically offer the waitlist when a ticket tier sells out.
• Event visibility — control whether the event appears in your public organization profile page.
• Venue floor plan — upload a floor plan image (JPG or PNG) under Program → Floorplan. It is accessible in the mobile event guide.
• Certificate of attendance — enable and customize via the Certificates page in the event sidebar. Organizers can set the title, intro phrase, action verb, a details paragraph, signatory, and eligibility (check-in required or all registered). Attendees can download a PDF and add the credential to LinkedIn.
• Post-event survey — enable to send a survey link in the post-event email. You can customize the survey questions.

Archiving Events

Archiving hides the event from your dashboard and from attendees. To archive, go to Event Settings → Settings, scroll to the Danger Zone, type the event title to confirm, and click Archive event. To restore an archived event, contact support.

Sponsor Management

Sponsors are managed per-event from Sponsors → Sponsors. Upload a sponsor logo (PNG or SVG with transparent background works best) and optionally add a website URL. Sponsor logos appear on the public event page and in the mobile guide.

Venue Floor Plan

Upload a venue floor plan from Program → Floorplan. JPG and PNG images up to 10 MB are supported. The floor plan is accessible to attendees through the mobile event guide at completeevent.app/[org]/[event]/guide.

For multi-room conferences, upload a single consolidated floor plan image that shows all rooms with labels. CompleteEvent does not support PDF or multi-page floor plan documents.

Run-of-Show Checklist

The run-of-show checklist is a live checklist for your event day. Access it from the event dashboard under Program → Event Rundown. Add items with time labels (e.g., “8:00 AM — Open registration desk”) and mark them complete on the day of the event.

All team members with access to the event can see and update the checklist. See Event Rundown for details.