Run waitlists and booking automation in Drecha Events Pro

What Pro automation provides

Events Pro adds waitlists for full events and unavailable appointment dates plus a durable notification queue. It can send booking reminders, cancellation and rescheduling notices, waitlist offers and expiry notices, pass expiry and low-credit notices, and membership expiry notices.

WordPress still sends the messages through its configured mail transport. A sent log means WordPress accepted the message for sending; it is not proof that the recipient's provider delivered it.

Enable a waitlist

1. Edit a published event or appointment service.
2. In the Waitlist panel, select Enable the Pro waitlist.
3. Set the Offer deadline in minutes, from 5 through 10,080.
4. Update the event or service.

For an event, the public form appears only when booking availability is full. A visitor enters name, email, and requested places. For a service, the form asks for a preferred date and appears when no suitable slot is available. Verified customers can optionally retain an eligible pass or membership choice for later validation. Duplicate active requests for the same target, date, and email are rejected.

Offer a released place

Open Events > Waitlists & automation. The Waitlists tab shows customer, target, state, and offer deadline.

1. Find a waiting customer.
2. For an appointment request, enter the local appointment start.
3. Select Offer place.
4. Confirm that the state becomes offered and an offer email is queued or sent.

The offer creates an ordinary pending Free booking, so the place is held by the same capacity and allocation controls as other bookings. The customer opens the signed email link before its deadline. Acceptance rechecks availability, license access, membership or pass eligibility, and current limits before confirming the booking.

When an offer expires, its pending hold is cancelled and the next eligible customer can be promoted. Cancelling an unrelated confirmed booking can also queue promotion automatically.

Configure reminders and templates

1. Open Waitlists & automation > Settings & templates.
2. Enter comma-separated reminder hours, such as 24,2.
3. Set the pass-expiry lead, low-credit threshold, and membership-expiry lead.
4. Review the subject and message for each notification type.
5. Use only the displayed placeholders: customer name, title, time, reference, acceptance URL, expiry, and balance.
6. Save automation settings.

Automation is discovered and processed by a WordPress cron event scheduled every five minutes. Due work is bounded per run and uses unique job keys to avoid uncontrolled duplicate messages.

Monitor and recover

Use the Activity log tab to inspect the latest activity type, recipient, and outcome. Failed jobs are retried a bounded number of times; a stale processing lock is returned to the queue after 15 minutes.

If work remains pending:

1. Confirm Pro access is active.
2. Check Tools > Site Health for loopback or scheduled-event problems.
3. Run the WordPress cron endpoint through the normal site request path or configure a real server cron according to your host's documentation.
4. Check the Activity log and the site's mail plugin logs.
5. Avoid repeatedly cancelling and restoring the same booking while diagnosing the queue.

Free and Pro boundaries

Waitlist entry, promotion, automated discovery, templates, and new notification jobs require Pro. Pending offer bookings use the Free booking records. If Pro becomes inactive, existing waitlists and activity remain visible, expired holds are released safely, and no new offers or notifications are created until access returns. Free bookings and appointment management continue to work.

Continue with Troubleshoot missing Drecha emails and delayed notifications for deeper WordPress cron and mail diagnostics.