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In this chapter

Participants

A registration can bring one person or several: a solo rider, a duo, a relay team, a family. Plantains needs to know which parts of your form describe each person. You tell it by marking those sections as participants.

What a participant is

A participant is one person in a registration. In the builder, you mark the section of the form that one person fills in as One participant. Every participant section that's shown is one person, and in a repeating section, every entry is one person.

A solo race needs one participant section. A duo race needs two (Rider 1 and Rider 2), or one repeating section with an entry per rider.

What depends on it

Almost everything Plantains does person by person. Without a participant section, each registration counts as one person and none of this works per person:

Maximum people

A form's "People" maximum (Settings → Accepting entries) counts participants: a duo is 2.

Transfers

Each participant's spot can be transferred to someone else on its own.

Teammates finish their part

The person registering can hand a teammate their spot: the teammate gets a link to fill in their details, sign and pay their share.

Waivers

A waiver in a participant section is signed by that participant (by a parent or guardian for a minor).

Check-in

Each person gets their own heading in the registration, with their tags (like Minor) and anything still missing.

Sharing the cost

Charges outside participant sections are split evenly; anything priced inside a participant's section is theirs.

Reports

Ages, gender, where people come from and team sizes are counted person by person.

Exports

Each participant's answers stay together, and headcounts are right.

Marking a section

  1. Open your form's Build tab and click the title of the section one person fills in.
  2. In the panel on the right, tick One participant.
  3. The section now has a Participant badge on the canvas. Repeat for each person's section.
Build → click a section's title

Rider 1

Participant

Name *

First name
Last name

Email *

Primary email
name@example.com

Birthdate *

MM/DD/YYYY

This section has the primary email, so it's the person registering's own spot: they always fill it in. The other participant section (Rider 2) can be handed to the teammate to finish.

  1. The Participant badge: this section is one person.
  2. One participant: the switch, in the panel on the right when the section is selected.
  3. Their name and their email: Plantains picks the section's Name and Email fields by itself (Automatic). Choose others here if the section has more than one.
  4. In the section with the primary email, this note says it's the person registering's own spot. In a teammate's section, the same place has Teammate can finish this themselves.

Their name and email

Every participant section needs a Name field. It's how each person is told apart: in the registration, at check-in, in transfers and in exports. Plantains uses the section's Name field (or, failing that, its first Short text).

An Email field lets Plantains reach that person: for their own waiver link, to finish their part, or to accept a transfer. The section holding the form's Primary email (the star badge) is the person registering's own spot, so it doesn't need another. Each teammate's section should have its own Email field.

Build → a duo form's two rider sections

Rider 1

Participant

Name *

First name
Last name

Email *

Primary email
name@example.com

Rider 2

Participant

Name *

First name
Last name

Email *

name@example.com
  1. The primary email: the person registering. They get the confirmation and receipts, and Rider 1 is their spot.
  2. Rider 2's own email: Rider 2 can get their own links (waiver, finishing their part, transfers).

Teams

There are two ways to ask for several people:

  • A section per person (Rider 1, Rider 2), each marked One participant. Best when the team has a fixed size, or when the second person only appears for some categories (with a show/hide rule on the section).
  • One repeating section marked One participant: every entry is a person, and the badge reads Participant per rider. Best when teams can be different sizes.
Build → two ways to set up a team

Rider 2

ParticipantRevealed

Name *

First name
Last name

Email *

name@example.com

Riders

Repeats · Rider ×1–4Participant per rider

Name *

First name
Last name

Birthdate *

MM/DD/YYYY
  1. A section per person. The violet Revealed badge means a show/hide rule controls it: here Rider 2 shows only when the Category is Duo, so a Solo registration is one person.
  2. A repeating section: each rider added is one participant.

Teammates finish their own part

Tick Teammate can finish this themselves on a teammate's section (Rider 2), and the person registering gets a choice on the form: They'll finish their own part. They enter just the teammate's name and email. The teammate gets an email with a link to fill in the rest, sign their waivers and, if the form takes payments, pay their share. Until they do, the registration is marked Waiting for teammates.

Try it: pick Duo, then look under Rider 2.

The registration form (what registrants see)Try it

What to ask each participant

Name and email are the essentials. A few more fields, asked of each participant, unlock the rest of Plantains. The ones made for this are in the builder's Specific fields: they know what they're asking, so Plantains can count, check and report on the answers.

Build → Add a field (the left column)

Simple

NameShort textLong textEmailPhoneNumberDateAddressText blockHidden value

Specific

BirthdateGenderNationalityMilitary serviceEmergency contact
  1. Simple fields: plain inputs. Use Name and Email in each participant section.
  2. Specific fields: Birthdate, Gender, Nationality, Military service and Emergency contact, each made for one kind of answer.
Field Where What it unlocks
NameEvery participant section (needed)Telling people apart everywhere.
EmailEach teammate's sectionTheir own waiver link, finishing their part, transfers.
BirthdateEvery participant sectionAges in Reports; a minimum age to register; minors on waivers (a guardian signs); age rules and age discounts; the Minor tag at check-in.
GenderEvery participant sectionGender in Reports, and the age-and-gender pyramid.
AddressThe registration, or each participantThe Reports map, states and cities, and travel distances.

Birthdate

Add the Birthdate field (in Specific, with the cake icon) to each participant section. It's a date that Plantains knows is a birthdate. Ages are measured on the event day: set the Event date in the builder's form settings (click an empty part of the canvas).

Minimum age: for an event that's 18+ or 21+, set Minimum age in the same form settings. Anyone younger on event day can't register: the form tells them so as soon as they enter their birthdate.

Build → click an empty part of the canvas (form settings)

Birthdate *

Participants must be 21 or older on event day (May 15, 2027).

  1. The event date: ages are measured on this day.
  2. Minimum age: participants younger than this on event day can't register. Leave it empty for no minimum.
  3. What a registrant sees with a birthdate that's too young (on the registration form).

Gender

Add the Gender field (in the builder's Specific fields) to each participant section. It offers Female, Male and Non-binary. Prefer not to say and Prefer to self-describe (with a box to type in) are off until you tick them, and you can switch off any answer you don't want, in the field's Answers.

Address

One Address field for the whole registration places everyone in it; an Address in each participant section places each person on their own. US ZIP codes go on the Reports map. To see how far people travel, set the venue's ZIP code in Settings → Event location.

After people register

Open a registration from Submissions and each participant has their own heading, with their check-in tags and anything still missing from them, which is what the check-in desk works from.

Submissions → click a registration

#12 · Duo

Rider 1 · Ana Rivera

Birthdate
May 1, 1990
Gender
Female

Rider 2 · Ben Rivera Minor

Missing: Release of liability (not signed)

Birthdate
Jan 1, 2012
  1. Each participant's heading: their section and name.
  2. Their check-in tags: Minor comes from a waiver that asks a guardian to come to check-in, for a participant under 18.
  3. What's still missing from this person, like a waiver to sign.

And in the form's Reports tab, people are counted one by one: ages, gender, where they're from and team sizes.

Reports → Participants

Age and gender

WomenMenOther
55–59
50–54
45–49
40–44
35–391
30–34
25–291
18–24

Gender

115answered
  • Female4640%
  • Male6758%
  • Non-binary22%

The setup marker

When a form's participants aren't fully set up, its header says so, next to its status. Click it to see what's missing, why it matters, Learn how (this page) and, for a particular section, Show me (it selects that section in the builder).

  • An amber marker (Set up participants, or "2 to fix") means something needed is missing: no participant section, or one without a Name field.
  • A quiet tips marker means only details are missing, like a birthdate, the Gender field or an address. Your form works without them; Reports and teammates work better with them.
Any of your form's pages → the header
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