confusing interface for staff registering contacts for events

Question

When staff (at a client org) go to register people for paid events there is a difference in the interface and the ability to actually take/process a payment depending on what path is taken to the registration form.

If they start from the event admin page and click "Event Links" -> "Register Participant" they get a form that only allows for entering the last 4 digits of the credit card number (which of course is not enough data to actually charge the person the fee) If they start at a contact record, click the Events tab and then Submit Credit Card Event Registration, once they select the event and the price from the price set, they get a form that allows for entering all necessary payment information which does allow them to charge the user the fee. Why is there a difference? Is this a bug, or intentional for some reason?

Answer 1

This is an inconsistency in the CiviCRM interface that others have noticed before as well.

This inconsistency does NOT exist for the "New Contribution" screen - because that screen has a "submit credit card contribution" link to bring you to the live entry screen.

For kicks, I added &mode=live to the "New Event Registration" URL - and it APPEARS to work.

I would recommend:

• Append &mode=live to the "New Event Registration" URL and confirm that it works correctly.
• If it does, it should be a simple matter to submit a patch to generate the "submit credit card registration" link to the appropriate template.

Answer 2

Another approach for them would be to use the public facing 'event registration' form, and when logged in they should see a "want to register as someone else".