Letting crew and guests register themselves

Self-registration turns one link into a sign-up sheet. Instead of you adding every crew member and guest by hand, you publish a registration link, and anyone who opens it enters their own name and email and is emailed a personal run of show link straight away. It's the fastest way to onboard a large or open-ended group: a supplier list you don't fully know yet, a conference where attendees register themselves, a market with twenty stallholders who each need their own link.

This article covers turning self-registration on for an event, where to put the link, using it as the check-in QR at the door, the optional description, what the registrant goes through, and how re-registration and revoking work.

Turning self-registration on

Open the event in the planner. The self-registration control sits near the top of the page, above the crew list, so it's the first sharing affordance you see.

It starts Off. Click "Generate link" and 1pm mints a registration URL of the form https://yourdomain/join/abc123. The badge flips to On and three controls appear: a read-only box with the link (click to select), a copy button, and an "Open" button that previews the public form in a new tab.

That URL is the only thing you need to share. There's no separate setup, no field configuration, no per-registrant work. Anyone who opens it can register.

Where to put the link

The link is designed to be published, not emailed one to one. Common homes:

A "Register" button on your own website. "Register as a vendor", "Register your attendance", "Sign up for load-in".
A QR code on a printed flyer, a sign at a stall, a slide at a briefing. Generate a QR from the URL with any QR tool and people scan straight to the form.
A social post or group chat where you can't easily collect everyone's email yourself.

Because the link is a secret token, treat it like the crew share links: anyone who has it can register. If it leaks somewhere you didn't intend, revoke it (below) and generate a fresh one.

Using the link as the check-in QR at the door

If the event tracks check-ins, the registration link works as the one QR code at the door. Print it on a sign at the entrance. Everyone who arrives scans it and enters their name and email:

Someone already on the event gets their existing link emailed to them again.
Someone new is registered on the spot and emailed their own link.

Either way, they open the link and tap Check in at the top of their page, and your on-site roster updates live. Registering doesn't check anyone in by itself: the emailed link is what proves the person is who they say they are, so nobody can check someone else in by typing their address.

On an event that tracks check-ins, the form and the "Check your email" confirmation both tell people to check in from their link, and the email says to open it and tap Check in when they arrive.

A phone that has opened its page for this event before doesn't need the email again. When that person scans the QR code, the form shows Continue as [their name] with a button that opens their page straight away. Below it, "Not you?" removes them from that phone. Only the person's own page saves this, so a tablet at the door that only ever shows the form never holds anyone's page.

Check-in events get higher limits on the form, because a whole crowd arrives on one venue Wi-Fi network at once. See the limits below.

The optional registration description

Below the link controls is a "Registration page description" box. Whatever you type here (plain text, up to 3000 characters) shows under the "Register for: [Event]" heading on the public form. Use it to set expectations before anyone fills in the form: the process, special instructions, parking, a privacy note, who to contact with questions. Save it with the "Save description" button. Leave it blank to show just the heading.

What the registrant sees

The public form is deliberately bare. It shows your branding logo, the event name, your description if you wrote one, and three fields: first name, surname, email. Nothing else about the event leaks before they register: no date, no timeline, no other names. The branding accent color tints the Register button so it still looks like yours.

When they submit, they don't see a run of show link on the page. They see a "Check your email" confirmation, and the link is emailed to the address they entered. That email step is the verification: only the person who controls the inbox gets access. The confirmation echoes the address they typed so they can spot a typo, with a "Register again" link if they got it wrong.

The email carries a button straight to their personal run of show link, which updates in real time like any crew link. Its wording is one of your automation templates rather than something fixed: the subject starts out as "Your link for [event name]" and the body thanks them and hands over the link, and both are yours to rewrite under automations.

Self-registration is also an automation trigger in its own right. Anything you've set up to run on self-registration fires when somebody signs up, in addition to that confirmation email, so a welcome sequence, an internal notification, or a set of tasks can all start from the moment they register.

A designed page around the form

The description is plain text. For a page that looks like yours, with your logo, headings, images and a button or two, build a registration template and choose it under Registration template in the same panel. The form stays the same three fields, and sits wherever you place it on the page. While a template is in use, the logo header and the description above are not shown, because the template carries both. See Registration templates.

What gets created on your side

Each registration creates a contact (a crew member) in your address book, scoped to your account, and an active share link for this event. The contact's name is filled in from what they typed; company, role, and mobile are left blank for you to complete later if you need them. From that point they behave exactly like a crew member you'd added by hand: they appear in the crew list, you can assign them to timeline items, send them requests, and so on.

Everyone who registers counts towards your active crew. Your plan includes 25, and above that it's 5c per person per day, so a link that takes a few hundred registrations is worth turning off once it has done its job. See Your crew allowance and account usage.

The record created is a normal crew member whether or not RSVP is on for the event, so RSVP, requests, and dietaries all work for self-registered people.

Re-registering with the same email

If someone registers twice with the same email, 1pm does not create a duplicate. It finds their existing contact and re-sends their existing link (which may already be personalised with their items). The confirmation screen looks identical whether the email was new or already on file, so the form never reveals who is already registered.

This is the supported "I lost my link" path for self-registered people: tell them to register again with the same email and their link is re-sent. To stop a burst of identical emails, a resend is skipped silently if their link was emailed in the last five minutes. Someone who tries again inside that window sees the same "Check your email" confirmation and no second email arrives, so it's worth telling them to wait rather than keep resubmitting.

If you revoked someone's own run of show link on the event, registering again with that email does not give them a new one. They still see the usual "Check your email" confirmation, but no link is sent, and Email Activity shows a blocked entry saying why. To let them back in, send them a link from the event yourself.

The same goes for the booking's client. Their way in is the client portal, which you open when you're ready, so registering with the client's email gives them the usual confirmation but no link, and Email Activity says why.

Limits and abuse protection

The form both writes records and sends email, so it's protected on several fronts, all invisible to a genuine registrant:

An automatic bot check (Cloudflare Turnstile) runs on the form. Most people never see it; occasionally someone is asked to tick a box before they can register.
A per-IP rate limit of 30 submissions per minute and 200 in any 24 hours, or 1,000 in 24 hours on an event that tracks check-ins. That leaves room for a whole crew registering from one venue Wi-Fi network, and stops a script hammering the form. Past the daily limit, people on that network see a "temporarily unavailable, contact the organiser" message.
A honeypot field silently drops automated submissions.
A limit on the emails the form sends. On a paid plan, your sign-up forms can send 50 registration emails in any 24 hours, or 500 when the event tracks check-ins. These don't come out of the allowance for the emails you send yourself. On a free trial, and for the first few days of a paid plan, they count against your account's own email allowance instead.
When a limit stops the email, the registration still succeeds and the person is on your crew list, but no link is sent. You get one notification for the event saying links aren't being emailed, and Email Activity lists each person it affected. To send someone their link once the limit resets, press Email link on their row. Your self-registration automations still run for that person.
Your contact cap (the same address-book limit the planner UI enforces) applies. If a surge would push you past it, new registrants see a neutral "temporarily unavailable, contact the organiser" message instead of a broken sign-up.

Revoking the link

Click "Revoke" to turn self-registration off. The link stops accepting new registrations immediately. Anyone who already registered keeps their personal run of show link; revoking only closes the sign-up door, it doesn't remove people who came through it.

The form also closes on its own when the booking is cancelled or the portal is closed. Anyone opening the link then sees that registration is closed, and the badge on the self-registration control reads Closed instead of On, with a line saying why.

Generate a new link any time to reopen registration. The new link has a fresh token, so any old QR codes or website buttons pointing at the revoked one stop working, which is exactly what you want if the reason you revoked was a leak.

When to use it

Self-registration earns its keep when you don't want to, or can't, type everyone in yourself:

An open supplier or vendor call where you don't yet know who'll take part.
A conference or large event where attendees register themselves and each needs their own link.
A market, expo, or multi-stall event with a sign and a QR code at each point.
Check-in at the door of an event that tracks check-ins, with one QR code for everyone.
Any group big enough that hand-entering names is the slow part of getting set up.

For a small, known crew (the photographer, the DJ, two suppliers) it's usually faster to add them yourself and send each a link. Self-registration shines on volume and on groups you don't fully know in advance.