Salesforce Event Registration and CRM Modernization for The Art Of

The Art Of needed a Salesforce platform capable of supporting business conferences, website registrations, ticket purchases, customer records, additional attendees, promotional pricing, event reporting, marketing integrations, and long-term customer-data management.

WebSolo supported the Canadian business-conference, executive-education, and professional-training organization through a long-term Salesforce implementation, integration, migration, enhancement, and production-support engagement documented from 2011 through 2023.

Over the course of the engagement, Salesforce evolved from a core customer relationship management system into a connected event-registration and conference-operations platform. Website registrations were transformed into structured Salesforce Leads, Accounts, Contacts, Campaigns, Opportunities, ticket Products, Opportunity Line Items, and attendee records.

Success Story

Connected Salesforce Event Registration

Website registration, ticket Products, event Campaigns, customer data, automated Lead conversion, additional attendees, marketing integration, custom APIs, migration, and long-term support.

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Client Profile

Business Challenge

The Art Of produces business conferences, executive-education programs, professional training, and related content for business professionals and organizations.

The company operated multiple event microsites and required Salesforce to connect website registrations with customer, event, ticket, purchase, attendee, marketing, and reporting processes.

The solution needed to support more than basic Lead capture. Salesforce had to recognize returning customers, associate registrations with the correct event, apply the appropriate ticket and price, create structured purchase records, support additional attendees, and preserve reliable customer information over many years.

• Consolidate historical customer, company, event, attendee, and purchase information.
• Capture registrations from multiple event websites and forms.
• Associate each registration with the correct conference or event.
• Automatically convert qualifying website Leads into Salesforce customer and purchase records.
• Avoid unnecessary duplicate Accounts and Contacts.
• Support several ticket categories and pricing combinations.
• Handle promotional, group, VIP, General, and Platinum ticket scenarios.
• Create structured Opportunities and Opportunity Line Items for purchases.
• Process additional conference attendees.
• Make purchase and ticket information available for marketing segmentation.
• Support changing website and integration architecture.
• Control historical Salesforce storage and obsolete activity records.
• Restore registration processes when in-person conferences resumed.
• Provide long-term troubleshooting for custom automation and integrations.

Key Requirements

• Implement Salesforce as a central customer and event-registration platform.
• Migrate historical Accounts, Contacts, registrations, events, attendees, and purchase records.
• Capture website registration information through Salesforce Web-to-Lead.
• Create a structured event model using Salesforce Campaigns and Event Codes.
• Connect each event Campaign with the appropriate Salesforce Price Book.
• Represent ticket options through Salesforce Products and Price Book Entries.
• Support General, VIP, Group, Promotional, Group plus Promotional, and Platinum ticket scenarios.
• Automatically convert qualifying website Leads into Accounts, Contacts, and Opportunities.
• Reuse existing Accounts and Contacts when reliable matches were found.
• Preserve conflicting incoming information for staff review.
• Create Opportunity Line Items representing purchased tickets.
• Associate the resulting purchase with the correct event Campaign.
• Support additional-attendee creation and updates.
• Provide event, purchase, ticket, sales, and financial reporting.
• Build, enhance, and support Salesforce-HubSpot processes.
• Modernize website integration through a custom Salesforce REST API.
• Support several website-form types through structured JSON requests.
• Test integrations independently using Postman.
• Clean up historical integration Tasks and manage Salesforce data storage.
• Support event-registration relaunch, production troubleshooting, and ongoing enhancements.

Delivered Solution

Salesforce Foundation and Event Data Model

WebSolo helped establish the Salesforce architecture used to manage customers, events, registrations, ticket products, purchases, and attendees.

The solution combined standard Salesforce objects with custom fields, automation, validation, and Apex logic to represent The Art Of event-registration process.

• Salesforce Leads for incoming registrations and enquiries.
• Accounts and Contacts for companies and individual customers.
• Campaigns representing conferences and events.
• Event Codes connecting website registrations to Campaigns.
• Primary Price Books associated with event Campaigns.
• Products and Price Book Entries representing ticket options.
• Opportunities representing completed purchases or registrations.
• Opportunity Line Items representing purchased tickets.
• Contact Roles connecting customers with purchases.
• Campaign relationships connecting purchases with events.

Historical Salesforce Data Migration

WebSolo migrated and normalized thousands of historical Account, Contact, registration, event, attendee, and purchase records from existing business data sources.

The migration included extraction, review, transformation, duplicate analysis, event mapping, Salesforce loading, and post-load validation.

• Historical Account and Contact migration.
• Event and Campaign creation.
• Registration and attendee migration.
• Historical purchase and transaction processing.
• Event Code mapping.
• Customer and company assignment.
• Duplicate-data review.
• Data cleanup and normalization.
• Salesforce Data Loader and ETL support.
• Post-migration validation and correction.

Website Registration Through Web-to-Lead

The original integration used Salesforce Web-to-Lead to capture registrations from The Art Of event and promotional websites.

After a customer completed a qualifying ticket purchase or registration, the website generated a Salesforce Lead containing customer, event, ticket, source, pricing, and promotional information.

• Registration capture from multiple event microsites.
• Customer and company information.
• Event and Event Code information.
• Ticket category and quantity.
• Promotional-code information.
• Lead Source and website-source tracking.
• Sales representative and campaign information.
• Purchase and registration details.

Automated Lead Conversion

WebSolo developed custom Apex automation that converted qualifying website Leads into structured Salesforce customer and purchase records.

The automation matched the registration to the appropriate event, searched for existing customer records, performed Salesforce Lead conversion, and updated the resulting purchase Opportunity.

• Processing of website-generated Leads.
• Campaign matching through Event Codes.
• Primary Price Book validation.
• Existing Contact matching by email.
• Existing Account matching by company name.
• Salesforce Lead conversion.
• Account, Contact, and Opportunity creation or reuse.
• Opportunity record-type assignment.
• Closed Won purchase processing.
• Lead Source retention.
• Contact Role creation.
• Campaign and event association.

Duplicate Prevention and Customer Data Protection

The registration process needed to recognize existing customers instead of creating a new Account and Contact for every event purchase.

WebSolo implemented matching logic that searched for existing Contacts by email and Accounts by company name. When appropriate, the existing Salesforce records were reused during conversion.

When incoming registration information conflicted with established customer data, the automation could preserve the new details in a Salesforce Task for staff review rather than silently overwriting trusted information.

• Existing Contact matching.
• Existing Account matching.
• Reduced unnecessary duplicate creation.
• Preservation of established customer information.
• Staff-review Tasks for conflicting information.
• Improved visibility into registration-data differences.

Event Campaigns and Event Codes

Salesforce Campaigns represented The Art Of conferences and events.

Each event used an Event Code that allowed the registration automation to identify the correct Campaign when a website submission arrived.

• Conference and event Campaigns.
• Unique Event Codes.
• Website-to-Campaign matching.
• Campaign Influence and purchase association.
• Event-specific registration reporting.
• Paid and complimentary event configurations.

Price Books, Ticket Products, and Pricing

Salesforce Products and Price Books were configured to represent conference ticket options and pricing rules.

Each event Campaign referenced a Primary Price Book containing the ticket options available for that event.

• General tickets.
• VIP tickets.
• Group General tickets.
• Group VIP tickets.
• Promotional ticket variants.
• Combined Group and Promotional pricing.
• Platinum ticket support.
• Regular and discounted prices.
• Event-specific Price Books.
• Product and Price Book Entry configuration.

Automated Ticket Selection

Custom Apex logic selected the appropriate Salesforce Price Book Entry based on the ticket type, quantity, promotional-code presence, and event configuration.

This allowed the resulting Salesforce purchase Opportunity to contain the appropriate Product, price, discount, and quantity information.

• Ticket-type evaluation.
• Quantity-based group pricing.
• Promotional-code handling.
• Group plus Promotional pricing.
• General, VIP, and Platinum ticket selection.
• Appropriate Price Book Entry assignment.

Purchase Opportunities and Opportunity Line Items

Completed event registrations were represented through Salesforce Opportunities and Opportunity Line Items.

The purchase Opportunity was connected to the customer and event, while Opportunity Line Items represented the individual ticket Products included in the order.

• Closed Won event Opportunities.
• Event-specific Opportunity record types.
• Customer and company association.
• Campaign and event association.
• Ticket Product assignment.
• Ticket quantity and pricing.
• Promotional and group discounts.
• Contact Roles.
• Lead Source tracking.
• Purchase and revenue reporting.

Additional Attendee Processing

The event-registration process needed to support cases where the buyer registered additional people for the same conference.

WebSolo implemented and supported functionality for processing additional attendees and connecting them with the appropriate event and purchase information.

• Additional-attendee data capture.
• Creation or update of attendee Contacts.
• Account matching and assignment.
• Event and registration association.
• Ticket and purchase context.
• Support for attendee arrays in later API requests.
• Attendee-related troubleshooting and data correction.

Multiple Promotional Codes

The registration platform was enhanced to support evolving promotional requirements, including multiple promotional codes associated with events and ticket purchases.

This allowed The Art Of to manage a wider range of conference promotions while continuing to create structured Salesforce ticket and purchase records.

• Multiple promotional codes per event.
• Promotional ticket-product selection.
• Promotional pricing validation.
• Website registration data handling.
• Salesforce reporting by promotion and event.

Contact Roles and Customer Relationships

WebSolo enhanced the connection between customers and event-purchase Opportunities using Salesforce Contact Roles and related automation.

This helped identify the buyer and preserve the relationship between Contacts, Accounts, purchases, registrations, and events.

• Opportunity Contact Role creation.
• Buyer identification.
• Account and Contact relationships.
• Event-purchase association.
• Customer-history visibility.

Salesforce and HubSpot Support

WebSolo built, enhanced, and supported Salesforce-HubSpot processes used for marketing data, segmentation, and customer communication.

The work included making event-purchase and ticket-revenue information available for marketing use, supporting Contact and Account synchronization, troubleshooting integration callbacks, and maintaining data quality.

• Salesforce-HubSpot synchronization support.
• Contact and Account information.
• Event-purchase visibility.
• Ticket-revenue information.
• Marketing segmentation support.
• Territory and Account assignment adjustments.
• Integration callback troubleshooting.
• Historical integration-activity cleanup.
• Endpoint and security updates.

Custom Website Form REST API

In 2020, WebSolo modernized website-to-Salesforce processing through a custom Apex REST service that accepted structured JSON submissions.

The new integration supported several website-form types and provided a more flexible architecture than the original registration process.

The reviewed implementation included support for:

1. Ticket Registration
2. Sponsorship Download
3. Event Brochure
4. Contact Us
5. Newsletter Sign Up
6. Magazine Subscription
7. Magazine Download
8. Group Rate or Group Form

Structured JSON Registration Processing

The custom REST service accepted registration and enquiry data through structured JSON requests.

Depending on the form type, the submitted information could include:

• First and last name.
• Email and company.
• Job title and phone number.
• Address information.
• Seniority.
• Lead Source.
• Referral or discovery source.
• Event and Event Code.
• Order or transaction reference.
• Ticket document URL.
• Ticket type, price, and quantity.
• Additional attendee information.

Existing-Record Matching Through the API

The custom website integration extended the existing Salesforce customer-matching approach.

The API could search for existing Leads or Contacts using submitted email information, match or create the appropriate Account, and update or create relevant Salesforce records according to the form and registration scenario.

• Existing Lead matching.
• Existing Contact matching.
• Account matching and creation.
• Customer-information updates.
• Registration and purchase creation.
• Ticket and attendee processing.
• Duplicate-control logic.

Postman Testing and API Hardening

WebSolo used Postman and independent endpoint testing to validate the custom Salesforce REST integration.

The API was iteratively tested and refined to address differences between sandbox and production, unsupported field values, matching conditions, escaped characters, URL fields, order information, and other integration scenarios.

• Postman collections and test requests.
• Sandbox API testing.
• Production endpoint verification.
• JSON request and response validation.
• Field-value validation.
• Escaped-character handling.
• URL-field handling.
• Existing-record matching tests.
• Order and registration troubleshooting.
• Apex test coverage and deployment support.

Reports and Event Analytics

WebSolo created and supported Salesforce reporting used to review event registrations, ticket purchases, revenue, Lead sources, promotional activity, sales performance, and customer history.

• Event registration reports.
• Ticket purchase reports.
• Financial and revenue reporting.
• Sales-representative activity reporting.
• Lead Source reporting.
• Promotional-code reporting.
• Event and Campaign reporting.
• Customer and company purchase history.

Historical Task Cleanup and Storage Management

Long-term HubSpot and Salesforce processing created large volumes of historical activity records.

WebSolo implemented and supported cleanup processes to remove obsolete integration Tasks, reduce Salesforce storage pressure, and improve the maintainability of the environment.

• Identification of obsolete activity records.
• Historical HubSpot Task cleanup.
• Batch and scheduled processing.
• Large-volume record deletion.
• Salesforce storage remediation.
• Cleanup monitoring and troubleshooting.

Data Quality and Assignment Maintenance

WebSolo continued supporting data quality as customer, registration, integration, and event information accumulated over time.

• Lead, Contact, and Account assignment corrections.
• Territory and Account-assignment updates.
• Duplicate-record review.
• Historical-data cleanup.
• Integration-related data correction.
• Customer and company information maintenance.

Conference Registration Relaunch

After an approximately two-year pause in conferences, WebSolo helped The Art Of restore and test its Salesforce registration processes as events resumed in 2022.

The relaunch required validation of both the custom Salesforce automation and the business configuration used for each new event.

• Website registration testing.
• Paid registration testing.
• Complimentary registration testing.
• Lead-creation verification.
• Account and Contact processing.
• Additional-attendee processing.
• Campaign Event Code validation.
• Primary Price Book validation.
• Opportunity and order creation.
• Support for multiple Canadian event locations.

Event Configuration Support

The automated registration process depended on accurate Salesforce Campaign and Price Book configuration.

WebSolo helped verify that newly created event Campaigns had the correct Event Codes and Primary Price Books before registrations were processed.

• New event Campaign configuration.
• Event Code verification.
• Primary Price Book verification.
• Ticket Product availability.
• Registration testing.
• Configuration troubleshooting.

Training, Documentation, and Administrator Guidance

The engagement included documentation and guidance covering Salesforce registration, Lead conversion, duplicate management, customer-record reuse, reporting, and administrator responsibilities.

• Salesforce Lead-conversion guidance.
• Duplicate-management recommendations.
• Existing Account and Contact reuse.
• Data-quality considerations.
• Reporting implications.
• Administrator documentation.
• User training and implementation support.

Long-Term Production Support

WebSolo provided recurring support as the Salesforce platform, event processes, websites, integrations, ticket offerings, and business requirements changed.

The support included investigation of Apex errors, trigger conflicts, integration callbacks, missing records, data-quality issues, storage limits, production configuration, API submissions, and event-registration failures.

• Apex trigger troubleshooting.
• Custom class maintenance.
• Integration-error analysis.
• HubSpot support.
• Website-form troubleshooting.
• Missing-order investigation.
• Debug logging.
• Independent endpoint testing.
• Minor code corrections.
• Sandbox and production validation.
• Ongoing support through 2023.

Engagement Period

The Art Of Salesforce engagement is documented from 2011 through 2023. During this period, Salesforce progressed from an initial CRM and historical-data migration into a connected event-registration platform supporting ticket purchases, attendees, event Campaigns, marketing integration, custom APIs, data maintenance, and long-term production operations.

Results and Benefits

The engagement helped The Art Of develop Salesforce into a central platform for managing customers, conferences, registrations, ticket purchases, attendees, marketing data, and event-related business operations.

• Centralized customer, company, event, registration, ticket, attendee, and purchase information.
• Connected multiple event websites and registration forms with Salesforce.
• Automatically transformed qualifying website registrations into structured Salesforce customer and purchase records.
• Connected registrations with the correct event through Campaigns and Event Codes.
• Used Salesforce Price Books and Products to manage event-specific ticket offerings.
• Supported General, VIP, Group, Promotional, combined Group and Promotional, and Platinum ticket scenarios.
• Created structured purchase Opportunities and Opportunity Line Items.
• Reduced unnecessary Account and Contact duplication through matching logic.
• Preserved conflicting incoming customer information for staff review.
• Supported the creation and update of additional attendee records.
• Made event-purchase and ticket information available for marketing and segmentation processes.
• Modernized website integration through a custom JSON-based Salesforce REST API.
• Supported eight distinct website-form types through a reusable integration service.
• Improved Salesforce storage management through historical Task cleanup and batch processing.
• Maintained the platform across website, Salesforce, integration, and business-process changes.
• Helped restore Salesforce registration processing when conferences resumed.
• Provided long-term production troubleshooting and continuity through 2023.

Platform and Technologies

• Salesforce Sales Cloud
• Salesforce Leads
• Salesforce Accounts and Contacts
• Salesforce Opportunities
• Salesforce Campaigns
• Salesforce Campaign Influence
• Salesforce Products
• Salesforce Price Books and Price Book Entries
• Salesforce Opportunity Products and Line Items
• Salesforce Contact Roles
• Salesforce Tasks
• Custom Salesforce fields and objects
• Salesforce record types and page layouts
• Salesforce Web-to-Lead
• Apex triggers and custom classes
• Custom Apex REST services
• Batch and Scheduled Apex
• Salesforce workflows and formulas
• Validation and assignment rules
• Automated Lead conversion
• Duplicate detection and customer matching
• Event Codes and Campaign matching
• Ticket and promotional-pricing automation
• Additional-attendee processing
• JSON website integration
• Postman API testing
• HubSpot integration support
• Salesforce Reports and Dashboards
• Data Loader and ETL
• Historical data migration
• Data cleanup and storage management
• Sandbox testing and production deployment
• Administrator documentation and training
• Long-term Salesforce production support

WebSolo Services Provided

• Salesforce Consulting
• Salesforce Implementation and Enhancements
• Custom Salesforce Development
• Salesforce Integration and Data Migration
• Salesforce Support and Training

Frequently Asked Questions

What type of Salesforce work did WebSolo perform for The Art Of?

WebSolo supported Salesforce implementation, historical data migration, website registration, automated Lead conversion, event Campaigns, Price Books, ticket Products, promotional pricing, additional attendees, HubSpot processes, custom Apex development, REST APIs, data cleanup, reporting, training, and long-term production support.

How were conferences represented in Salesforce?

Salesforce Campaigns represented conferences and events. Event Codes submitted by the website allowed the automation to identify the appropriate Campaign and its Primary Price Book.

How were event tickets represented?

Salesforce Products and Price Book Entries represented available ticket options. The implementation supported General, VIP, Group, Promotional, combined Group and Promotional, and Platinum ticket scenarios.

How were website registrations processed?

The original process used Salesforce Web-to-Lead. Qualifying website Leads were automatically matched to the correct event, checked against existing customer records, converted into Accounts, Contacts, and Opportunities, and assigned the appropriate ticket Products and prices.

Did the solution prevent duplicate customer records?

The automation searched for existing Contacts by email and Accounts by company name. Existing records could be reused where appropriate, reducing unnecessary duplicate creation.

What happened when incoming customer information differed from Salesforce?

The solution could retain conflicting registration information in a Salesforce Task for staff review instead of automatically overwriting established customer data.

Did the platform support additional attendees?

Yes. The project included dedicated additional-attendee processing and later supported arrays of attendee information submitted through the custom website API.

Did WebSolo support HubSpot?

Yes. WebSolo built, enhanced, and supported Salesforce-HubSpot processes involving customer records, event purchases, ticket revenue, marketing segmentation, assignment, integration troubleshooting, and historical activity cleanup.

Did WebSolo build a custom Salesforce API?

Yes. WebSolo developed a custom Apex REST service that accepted structured JSON submissions for ticket registration, sponsorship downloads, event brochures, contact forms, newsletters, magazine forms, and group-rate requests.

Did the project include Salesforce data migration?

Yes. WebSolo migrated and normalized thousands of historical Account, Contact, registration, event, attendee, and purchase records using data transformation, duplicate review, Salesforce loading, and post-migration validation.

Did WebSolo support the return of in-person conferences?

Yes. In 2022, WebSolo helped test and restore paid and complimentary registration processes, event configuration, attendee processing, and Opportunity creation as conferences resumed.

Can WebSolo support similar Salesforce event-registration projects?

Yes. WebSolo can help conference, training, education, association, and event organizations connect website forms with Salesforce, automate registration processing, manage event Campaigns and ticket Products, integrate marketing platforms, migrate historical data, develop custom APIs, and provide long-term production support.