Setting up an open day registration form without over-booking the rooms

Plan the sessions and the numbers

Start from the rooms, not the form. If the head's talk is in a hall that seats 120, and families bring two adults and a child on average, each talk session holds about 40 families. Decide the sessions (for example a 10:00 and a 14:00 talk with tours after each), the cap for each, and who in the office watches the numbers. Write those caps down before the page goes live; they decide when you say "full".

Choose how families register

For a single open day with group sessions, the registration form is the better fit. The calendar is useful for something different: private visits with an admissions officer through the term, one family at a time, if those six times work for you.

Build the page and the form

1. Describe the page: "an open day page for a secondary school with the date, programme, parking and directions, accessibility information and a registration form".
2. Write the programme as a short list: arrival, talks, tours, subject rooms, questions.
3. Add the form. The built-in contact form takes a name, email and message; put a clear prompt above it: "Which session (10:00 or 14:00), how many adults and children, and the year group your child would join." For separate fields, a custom form tied to a site function can carry up to 30 plain-text fields; test where its entries arrive.
4. Connect Google Sheets so each registration becomes a row the office can see. Add columns for session and party size if they're in the message.
5. Edit the thank-you text. Make it say what really happens next, for example "The office will email you to confirm your place." Anticode doesn't email the family.
6. Publish and test with a real registration, then delete the test row.

The office's job in the run-up

• Daily: check new rows, total each session, and send each family a confirmation from the school's email.
• When a session reaches its cap: change the page to say so ("10:00 session full: please choose 14:00"), by editing the text and publishing. The form itself keeps accepting entries until you change the page or remove it.
• Two days before: email every registered family a reminder with parking, the entrance to use and the session time.
• On the day: print the sheet as the sign-in list.
• Afterwards: send a thank-you with how to apply, then delete registrations once your data policy says so. Set the project's "Keep submissions" period to match.

Families' data

Registrations include names, contact details and sometimes children's year groups. The account owner and whoever at the school publishes the page need two-factor sign-in before it can be published. Keep the sheet in a school account, share it only with the admissions team, and read the generated Privacy Policy to make sure it says what the school does with the information.

Limits

No automatic capacity limit or waiting list, no confirmation or reminder emails to families, no tickets or QR check-in, no calendar files for families to save, and the booking calendar's times and days can't be changed. For events with fixed numbers see collecting event RSVPs; for the calendar's behaviour, booking calendar; for school sites, private schools.

Questions people ask

Can the open day registration form close itself when a session is full?

No. The office watches the sheet and changes the page to say a session is full.

Will families get a confirmation email?

Not from Anticode. The office confirms each registration from the school's own email.

Can I use the booking calendar for open day time slots?

Only for one-family visits: each slot takes one booking per service, at six fixed times. Group sessions need the registration form.