Is there a way to email a link inviting people to sign up for an event that will be connect to their contact ID?

Question

I have a list of people who I want to encourage to sign up for an event. I can send a link that allows them to update their contact information, using the contact hash. What I would like to do is send them a similar link that would create a new event registration for their contact ID. This would solve a couple problems:

• Avoid duplicate contact entries from being created.
• Auto-populate contact fields make the user experience more pleasant.

Am I missing a way to do this, or is there a way to implement it short of a new core feature?

Answer 1

The contact checksum works equally well for a CiviEvent registration as it does for updating their contact info via a profile. The tokens page of the wiki has a section at the bottom that shows how to format the URL based on your CMS:

Checksum for Event Registration Pages: To send people to an event registration page use this path where N is the ID of your event:

Drupal: http://www.myorganization.org/civicrm/event/register?reset=1&id=N&{contact.checksum}&cid={contact.contact_id}
Joomla!: http://www.myorganization.org/index.php?option=com_civicrm&task=civicrm/event/register&reset=1&id=N&{contact.checksum}&cid={contact.contact_id}
WordPress: http://www.myorganization.org/?page=CiviCRM&q=civicrm/event/register&reset=1&id=N&{contact.checksum}&cid={contact.contact_id}

Alternate approach: Using checksums is a little complicated for some folks, especially end users! To make your life simpler, consider installing the Fancy Tokens extension. This gives you drop-in tokens for your next several events that include the checksum automatically.