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v1.5.1 — Room Layouts, Programme Codes, Billing Pre-fill & Registration Fixes

Released: 2026-10-18 | Version: v1.5.1

What Changed For Your Team​

This release connects the physical set-up of your venue to the programme. Rooms can carry several layouts, each with its own capacity, and a session can follow the capacity of the layout chosen for its scheduled room. Programme teams can also give talks, posters and sessions readable codes such as T001, and every new talk submission receives a fixed Submission ID for correspondence.

Schedule builders can now set Q&A time on an individual talk slot. Registration teams get more control over checkout through configurable billing address pre-fill, and attendees or forwarded recipients can pay an invoice from its secure link without signing in. A large set of corrections covers transfers, waitlists, cancellations, failed card payments and registration reports.

v1.5.1 is a cumulative release. It contains everything described in the v1.4.0 and v1.5.0 notes, so read it as the complete picture if your event is moving up from an earlier version. Beyond those, it adds no new customer-facing workflows.

Highlights​

Plan Rooms with Layouts and Let Sessions Follow Them​

Open a room and use Layouts to add the arrangements your event needs, such as Theatre at 300 or Classroom at 120. Each layout has a capacity and an optional changeover time. A session can then use Link to room layout so its capacity follows the layout chosen for its scheduled room.

If a smaller layout would put a linked session's limit below its existing bookings, ema keeps the current limit and flags the change so you can review the bookings first. Existing bookings are preserved. Unrelated edits and imports no longer cause unnecessary contention, and genuine capacity changes protect checkout.

Room layout reports keep the default layout capacity and leave out unrelated floor-plan objects, and the AI assistant can summarise rooms and answer questions about their set-up for people who have access to that information. See Rooms and Layouts and AI Assistant.

Give Talks and Sessions Readable Programme Codes​

Set up a numbering scheme under Project > Schedule > Programme numbering, review the proposed codes, then apply them. Saving or previewing a scheme assigns nothing, and existing codes stay stable until someone explicitly assigns, regenerates or edits them. Previews and error messages show duplicate codes and overlapping formats.

Saved codes now appear in more places:

  • Staff and speaker pages show codes you can copy, and filtered downloads keep them.
  • Visitors can find a published talk or session by entering its complete code in the public schedule, on web or mobile. Public cards and details show the programme code, not the private Submission ID.
  • Email templates and the standard fallback subjects can include Submission IDs and programme codes. If a talk has no saved code, the field stays empty rather than inventing a number.
  • Signage shows a session's or talk's saved code and removes it when cleared.
  • Programme codes imported from a connected Capstan submissions account appear on the same screens, and Submission IDs stay stable. A later re-sync respects codes your team has changed or deleted.

See Programme Numbering, Submission IDs, Public Schedule and Data-Driven Slides.

Set Q&A Minutes for Each Talk Slot​

In the schedule builder you can set Q&A minutes for an individual talk slot. Q&A time is included in the slot's duration, so the editor shows how much time remains for the talk and warns you when the Q&A no longer fits. Venue appliances keep the saved Q&A allowance, including an explicit zero. See Schedule Builder.

Choose Where Billing Details Come From​

On the Registration Config page, the Billing address pre-fill card lets you choose, for each billing field, whether checkout copies it from a registration answer, a specific form field, the buyer's account, or nothing. Guests now get pre-fill from their registration answers, and pre-fill works from dropdown answers and from every registration form.

Buyers see a Same as my registration details checkbox and can still edit any field before paying. Events that do not change the card keep their existing behaviour. See Registration Settings.

Pay an Invoice Without Signing In​

Buyers, attendees and forwarded recipients can pay from the secure link on an invoice without signing in or requesting a verification code. The link allows payment only; editing the account and downloading the invoice PDF stay protected. See Invoices.

Detailed Changes​

Programme and Schedule​

  • The public schedule's room filter follows the venue order your team configured and keeps the chosen room after a reload. The mobile agenda Room filter follows the same order, including when cached room choices were saved before the order was set.
  • Signage room pickers, saved wayfinding routes and screen-marker choices follow the programme room order.
  • Schedule warnings refresh after you change allocation-type rules, including when an earlier refresh is still processing.
  • Answers on speaker and submission forms that are mapped to a talk or its presenting speaker now save together, including on the initial call-for-papers submission. If a save is refused, nothing is partly updated, and a stale presenter link is rejected. A submission that fails validation does not consume a Submission ID.
  • When mapping form answers, form authors can find compatible speaker fields and create a new speaker field from the mapping picker. Fields a person is not allowed to see stay hidden.
  • Admin form pickers offer only forms that suit the item you are attaching them to.
  • The participant's confirmation page after a new talk submission shows the new Submission ID.

Registration, Transfers and Waitlists​

  • Transfers, waitlists and cancellations received a broad set of corrections, including staff-claimed transfers, joining a waitlist on someone's behalf or after it closes, force-promoted waitlist checkouts, and group cancellations with cash-refund choices.
  • A cancelled place that was transferred and later reinstated for the same recipient can be cancelled correctly. Staff can find incoming transfer recipients separately from older pending transfers.
  • Card declines, payment notification opt-outs and failed-payment reporting preserve the correct registration and payment states. After a declined card, checkout keeps the original payment form and your final edits.
  • Registration groups can cancel and restart without stale cart state. Access-code changes show the correct choices, and cloned custom fields reach checkout.
  • Zero-price add-ons are retained in bulk add-on destinations. Group intake is retained after an attendee declines add-ons, and owned add-on purchases and group labels are preserved. Existing registrants can buy permitted add-ons even when their registration type is no longer offered.
  • A resumed cart attempt stays bound to the person it belongs to.
  • Checkout conflict messages are clearer, and the add-on Attending hint no longer includes a misleading sentence about resetting.
  • Registration changes and cancellations separate credits, proposed refunds and remaining charges more clearly, and long registration dialogs keep their heading and actions visible on desktop and mobile.
  • Deleting a registration group clears it from every list, including paginated and filtered views, and deleting one that is already removed no longer shows an error.

See Change Requests and Transfers, Waitlist and Group Registrations.

Reports and Invoices​

  • Registration lists can be rebuilt as saved reports with richer report definitions, and saved reports keep customised answer columns and their ordering. Category headings and PDF continuation pages show unique live-registration counts. See Report Builder.
  • Excel exports no longer show a stray leading apostrophe, report definitions have size limits, and filters on notes respect field-level visibility.
  • Invoice headers use a cleaner side-by-side layout, and saved invoice PDFs can be regenerated after a template correction. Administrators can search all invoice-preview records and keep their selected record. See Invoices.

Event Pages​

  • Registration buttons and other content can be placed over event hero artwork, the full image is preserved on mobile, and navigation and event titles display completely.

Notifications​

  • SMS unsubscribe links keep their confirmation destination for English and French visitors.
  • Not-found page headings have readable contrast against the page background.

At the Venue​

  • Venue crews using an on-site appliance can select authorized rooms, see each room's current set-up (including a capacity of zero), and pick from rooms in the programme order. Temporary refresh problems keep the last known set-up visible with an alert.
  • Appliances keep a talk's saved Q&A allowance and show saved programme codes. Appliances refresh unchanged programme rows after updating.
  • Appliance management uses the same navigation and design as the other ema web products. Operators can reach every Q&A and poll record, with clearer validation and acknowledged saves, and pausing and adjusting a room timer keeps its duration and remaining time.

Whether a venue appliance or the mobile app has received these updates depends on the device release and your event's rollout; a hosted release alone does not confirm it. See On-site and Mobile app.

What You Need to Do​

No action is required for existing events to keep working. To use the new capabilities:

  • Rooms: review each room's layouts and default layout before switching sessions to Link to room layout, and check any capacity warnings before accepting an override.
  • Programme codes: if you want codes on the public programme, in emails or on signage, create and apply a numbering scheme. Nothing is numbered until you apply it. If your pattern uses track or format codes, enter their Short code first.
  • Billing pre-fill: if your event collects billing details from a registration answer or form field, open the Billing address pre-fill card and choose the source for each field. Events that leave it unchanged keep their current behaviour.
  • Email templates: if you want Submission IDs or programme codes in an organizer-written subject or body, add them to your templates.
  • Q&A time: review slots in the schedule builder if you want Q&A minutes set per talk.
  • Saved reports and invoices: review any saved registration reports you rely on, and regenerate saved invoice PDFs if you want them to use the corrected header.

Additional Improvements and Fixes​

  • Checkout, invoice and registration report validation received further corrections from event-training reviews.
  • Staff can review bookings that include only included items without an incorrect category exception.
  • Admin payment completion and refresh actions show updated financial documents and registration summaries, and zero capacity displays as zero.
  • Admin Public View opens the published event route.
  • Report templates that cannot be scoped to a project are no longer synced into projects.
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