Cvent: Creating Department Contact Groups in the Address Book
The Contacts database or "Address Book" in Cvent is a listing of users who have received an invitation to or have registered for an event or who have been imported into the system. These users can belong to Groups in the Address Book. If your events are "open" or if you are inviting your participants in other ways, you may not need a Contact Group. But if you are hosting private events using Invitation Lists, if you are repeatedly reaching out to the same group of users, or if you have a group of users that get special considerations during event registration, you may need a Contact Group created.
Contact Groups are added to Cvent in two ways:
- They are added based on queries in the DADD system which are propagated to the Address Book.
- They are created manually by staff with appropriate permissions.
The Cvent "Address Book" is shared among all Duke Cvent users (planners). For that reason, the permission to create or modify contacts or groups within it is limited and controlled. This is necessary to minimize duplication of user records and reduce "bad entries" such as blank names. Once these groups exists in the Address Book, event planners can modify registration settings so that registrants for the event are added to a designated contact group. Planners can also use contact groups to populate Invitation Lists.
Contact groups imported from DADD
Using the Segmentation tool within DADD (Duke Alumni Development Database), you can enter a query to generate a list of users who meet your search terms. Once you have determined the query is generating the correct results, you can enable to option to propagate your group to the Cvent Address Book. If the user is not present in the Address Book, they will be added. If they are present, they will be included in your group. If they no longer meet the criteria, they will be removed from your group in Cvent but will remain present in the Address Book. Follow this process for importing contact groups from DADD.
- Verify that an existing Cvent contact groups or combination of groups will not meet your needs.
- Go to https://duke.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_afUYWimu9PXdRrv and complete the form. Your group will be created with a particular naming convention of "DEPARTMENT-groupname" (for example: "DAA_Fall Seminar" or "DAA-Fall-Seminar").
- After the query has been added to the Segmentation Tool, verify the group is being populated in Cvent.
Requesting a contact group be created
- Verify that an existing Cvent contact groups or combination of groups will not meet your needs.
- Email dukecvent@duke.edu including a descriptive name for your group (for example: "Fall Seminar"). Please limit group names to alpha-numeric characters with the exception of spaces, hyphens, and underscores.
- Your group will be created with a naming convention of "DEPARTMENT-groupname" (for example: OIT_Fall Seminar" or "OIT-Fall-Seminar").
Configure an event to add registrants to a contact group
- Go to Registration -> Registration Process and launch Site Designer.
- For each Registration Path, click the Gear icon and go to the Advanced Settings section.
- Enable the option Add registered invitees to a contact group:.
- By the field Contact Group, select the group or Create Contact Group.
- For the option If a registrant cancels their registration:, indicate what should happen if a registrant cancels. NOTE: the registrant will not be removed from the Address Book but this setting can remove them from the indicated group.
- Click the Apply button to apply your changes.
For information on how to use groups for your event, see KB0028461.
If you requested a group be created manually, please be aware you cannot manually update the membership of the group from the Cvent Address Book at this time. You can contact dukecvent@duke.edu with the listing of users who should be added.
Article number: KB0028573
Valid to: October 16, 2025