Priority Waitlist User Guide
Table of Contents
- Definitions
- What is a Priority Waitlist
- Summary
- Key Features
- How it Works
- Configuration Options
- Important Behaviours
- Best Practices
- Troubleshooting
Definitions
Pending Offers: Waitlist signups that have not had an offer sent to them
Active Offers: Offers that have been sent to a user and are not declined, accepted, or expired
Demand: The total amount of pending offers + active offers
Backfill: offering an open spot to the next person in line when someone ahead declines or drops out
What is a Priority Waitlist?
A Priority Waitlist is an enhanced waitlist system that gives you better control over how spots are offered to people on your waitlist. Instead of sending a notification to everyone on the waitlist, the system sends "offers" in a customizable queue that people can accept or decline, with optional time limits.
Summary
A Priority Waitlist gives you sophisticated control over how waitlist spots are managed. Key points to remember:
First-come, first-served: People are queued in the order they joined
Offers reserve spots: Active offers count toward the total capacity
Three notification triggers: Cancellations/increases trigger immediate notification, backfill (declines), and scheduled (interval-based)
Configurable timing: Set your own interval and optional expiry
Program signup locking: Prevents direct signups when demand exceeds capacity, ensuring only waitlist offers can sign up
Clear tracking: Know exactly who has offers and who's still waiting
This system balances fairness, efficiency, and control to help you manage waitlists effectively.
Key Features
Offer-Based System
When a spot opens up, people on the waitlist receive a specific offer with a unique link. They can either accept the offer to sign up, or decline it. This gives you clear tracking of who has been offered spots and who is still waiting.
Time-Delayed Notifications
You can configure how long to wait between sending offers. For example, if you set a 60-minute interval, the system will wait 60 minutes after sending one offer before sending the next one. This helps prevent overwhelming people with notifications and gives each person time to respond.
Automatic Backfill
If someone declines an offer and there are still spots available, the system immediately sends an offer to the next person in line. This "backfill" feature ensures spots don't sit empty while people are waiting. It aims to try and keep a 1:1 ratio between spots available for the registration opportunity and active offers.
Smart Capacity Management
The system tracks how many people have active offers and reserves spots for them. This means if you have 2 spots available and 2 people have active offers, those spots are effectively reserved until those people respond or the offer expires. Note that periodic sending of offers will send offers to other people in the queue, to prevent someone from sitting on an offer and stopping other people from signing up indefinitely. This could end up in 5 active offers for 2 spots, in which case it's a "first-come first-served" between those 5 people.
Program Signup Locking
When the number of people waiting (plus those with active offers) equals or exceeds available spots, the system prevents new people from signing up for the program directly. Only people with active waitlist offers can sign up. This protects against over-subscription while still allowing people to join the waitlist.
Optional Offer Expiry
You can set offers to expire after a certain number of hours. If someone doesn't respond in time, their offer expires and they're removed from the waitlist. They can re-join if they want, but they'll go to the back of the queue.
How It Works
Queue Order
People are served on a first-come, first-served basis. The person who joined the waitlist first gets the first offer when a spot opens.
When Offers Are Sent
Offers are sent in three situations:
1. Immediately when a spot opens: If someone cancels their signup or you increase the class size, the next person in line gets an offer right away.
2. When someone declines: If someone declines an offer and there are more spots available than active offers, the next person gets an offer immediately (backfill).
3. On a schedule: A background process runs periodically and sends offers to the next person in line, but only if enough time has passed since the last offer (based on your interval setting). This sends offers as long as a single spot is available for the program. This can result in 2+ offers with a single available spot for example.
What Happens When Someone Gets an Offer
1. They receive an email with a unique link to accept or decline the offer
2. The system marks them as having received an offer (they're removed from the active queue)
3. The offer "reserves" a spot in the program capacity such that only people with waitlist offers can sign up unless the open spots exceeds the amount of waitlist signups
4. They have time to respond (or until expiry, if configured)
What Happens When Someone Accepts
- They complete the normal signup process
- The spot is filled
- They're removed from the waitlist
What Happens When Someone Declines
- The offer is marked as declined
- If there are more spots available than active offers, the next person gets an offer immediately
- The person who declined is removed from the waitlist (they can re-join if they want by manually cancelling the waitlist signup itself and re-joining)
What Happens When an Offer Expires
- If you've set an expiry time and the person doesn't respond, the offer expires
- Both the offer and their waitlist entry are deleted
- They must re-join the waitlist if they want another chance (they'll go to the back of the queue)
Configuration Options
Enable/Disable Priority Waitlist
You can turn the priority waitlist system on or off for your organization. When disabled, the system uses the legacy waitlist behaviour.
Notification Interval
Set how many minutes to wait between sending offers. The default is 60 minutes. This interval is only used for scheduled notifications - immediate offers (from cancellations or declines) bypass this setting.
Offer Expiry Time
Optionally set how many hours an offer remains valid. If not set, offers never expire. When set, offers automatically expire after this time if not accepted or declined.
Common Scenarios
Scenario 1: Someone Cancels
Your program is full with 5 people on the waitlist. Someone cancels their signup.
1. The system immediately sends an offer to the first person on the waitlist
2. That person receives an email with an accept/decline link
3. If they accept: They sign up and the program is full again
4. If they decline: The next person gets an offer immediately (if spots are still available)
Scenario 2: You Increase Class Size
Your program has a capacity of 10. You increase it to 12, opening 2 new spots. There are 3 people on the waitlist.
1. The system sends offers to the first 2 people on the waitlist simultaneously
2. Both receive emails at the same time
3. If both accept, your program now has 12 signups
Scenario 3: Time-Delayed Notifications
Your program has 1 spot available and 3 people on the waitlist. Your interval is set to 60 minutes.
1. First person gets an offer immediately
2. 30 minutes later: No new offer (interval hasn't elapsed)
3. 60+ minutes later: Second person gets an offer (interval has elapsed)
4. If the first person hasn't responded yet, you now have 2 active offers for 1 spot
Scenario 4: Offers Expire
You've set offers to expire after 24 hours. Someone receives an offer but doesn't respond.
1. They receive the offer
2. 24 hours pass without a response
3. The offer expires and they're removed from the waitlist
4. The next person in line can now receive an offer
5. If they want another chance, they must re-join the waitlist (back of the queue)
Scenario 5: Program Signup Gets Locked
Your program has 5 spots total with 3 current signups (2 spots remaining). You have 3 people on the waitlist and 2 people with active offers.
Note that this also happens for the above scenarios
1. Total demand: 3 waiting + 2 with offers = 5 people
2. Available spots: 2
3. Since demand (5) exceeds capacity (2), the program signup locks
4. Only those with an active offer are able to sign up
5. When someone accepts or an offer expires, demand decreases
6. When demand drops below available spots, the program signup unlocks
Important Behaviours
People Are Removed When They Receive an Offer
Once someone receives an offer, they're effectively removed from the active waitlist queue, even if they haven't responded yet. This means:
- They can't receive another offer unless they re-join
- They will need to manually cancel their signup and re-join
- The system moves on to the next person in line
- If their offer expires, they must re-join to get another chance
Active Offers Reserve Spots
When someone has an active offer, that spot is considered "reserved" in the program capacity. This means:
- The system locks signup to waitlist offers when the demand exceeds the available spots
- You might see multiple active offers for limited spots (this is normal)
- Spots are held until people respond or offers expire
Backfill Only Works When Appropriate
Backfill (immediate offer after decline) only happens when there are more spots available than active offers. This prevents sending too many offers when capacity is already fully reserved.
Interval Applies to Scheduled Notifications Only
The time interval you set only applies to the scheduled background process. Immediate offers (from cancellations, class limit increases, or declines) bypass the interval to fill spots quickly.
Re-joining the Waitlist
If someone declines an offer or their offer expires, they can create a new waitlist entry. However:
- They go to the back of the queue (new timestamp)
- They're treated as a completely new waitlist entry
- No special priority is given
Best Practices
Setting Your Interval
Short intervals (15-30 minutes): Good for time-sensitive programs or when you want fast turnover
Medium intervals (60 minutes): Balanced approach, gives people time to respond
Long intervals (2+ hours): Good for programs with longer decision times or to reduce notification volume
Setting Offer Expiry
No expiry: Best when you want to give people maximum time to respond
Short expiry (12-24 hours): Good for time-sensitive programs or to encourage quick responses
Long expiry (48+ hours): Balances giving people time while preventing indefinite holds
Monitoring Active Offers
Keep an eye on how many active offers you have relative to available spots. If you consistently have many more active offers than spots, consider:
- Shortening your interval to process the queue faster
- Setting offer expiry to free up spots more quickly
- Increasing class capacity if possible
Understanding Program Signup Locking
Program signup locking automatically activates when demand meets or exceeds capacity. This means:
- People can always join the waitlist (unless waitlist is disabled for the program)
- When locked, only people with active waitlist offers can sign up for the program
- Direct program signups are blocked to ensure fairness (first-come, first-served)
- This prevents over-subscription while maintaining the waitlist queue
Troubleshooting
"Why aren't people getting offers even though spots are available?"
- Check if the interval has elapsed since the last offer
- Verify that priority waitlist is enabled
- Check if there are eligible people on the waitlist (some may have already received offers)
- Look for any system errors in job processing
"Why do I have more active offers than available spots?"
This is normal! The backfill system tries to ensure there's at least 1 active offer for each available spot until the waitlist is exhausted. The interval system continuously sends offers as long as there is a single spot available, which can result in more offers than there are spots available.
"Someone declined but the next person didn't get an offer immediately"
Backfill only works when `available spots > active offers`. If you have 2 spots and 3 active offers, declining one still leaves 2 active offers, so the condition isn't met. The next person will get an offer when the interval elapses or when another spot opens.
"Program signups are locked but I have spots available"
Program signup locking considers both people waiting AND people with active offers. Even if you have open spots, if total demand (waiting + active offers) equals or exceeds capacity, program signups are locked. Only people with active waitlist offers can sign up. This prevents over-subscription. Note that people can still join the waitlist - only direct program signups are blocked.
"Offers aren't expiring"
Check that you've configured an expiry time. If not set, offers never expire.