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Process Improvement Philanthropy

Event Attendance Data Collection

40%
of a worker's week is spent on manual repetitive tasks like data collection
0
manual downloads, compiles, or handoffs needed to get attendance data into reports
Challenge

The platform had no API or webhook for attendance data. The only path to get it was opening each event manually and downloading the list one at a time.

Solution

Built a browser script that loops through every event, extracts attendance data, and sends it via webhook to be processed and loaded into the database.

Outcome

Attendance data that used to require hours of manual work is now complete, current, and feeding the engagement reports used in every quarterly client review.

The Problem

Over 40% of the average worker’s week is spent on manual, repetitive tasks. Data collection and entry top the list. When that data lives inside a platform that offers no way to extract it programmatically, the only option is doing it by hand.

The platform used to host nonprofit community events had no API. No webhook. No bulk export. To find out who attended any given event, you had to navigate into that event, download the attendee list, and repeat for every other event on the platform. A platform with dozens of events meant dozens of separate downloads. Someone then had to compile all of those lists and hand the result to the data team, who uploaded everything into the database so it could be used in engagement reports.

The process worked, in the sense that the data eventually got in. But it required someone to sit through every event one at a time, which meant it happened inconsistently. Events got skipped. The data was always behind. And the engagement reports that depended on this data were only as good as the last time someone had time to do the collection.

What I Built

A browser script that handles the entire collection process without any manual steps.

The script runs in the browser and navigates through the event list automatically. For each event, it extracts the attendee data and sends it via webhook to a processing tool, which loads the records into the platform database. What previously required someone clicking through event after event, downloading separate files, compiling them into one list, and handing them off now runs as a single end-to-end process.

The platform still has no API. This script works around that constraint by replicating what a person would do manually, just without the person.

How It Works

  1. The script runs in the browser and begins looping through the event list
  2. For each event, it opens the attendee view and extracts the attendance data
  3. A webhook fires with the extracted data and sends it to Retool
  4. Retool processes the records and loads them into the platform database
  5. Attendance data is available for reporting and engagement scoring
The events platform has no API or webhook for attendance data. This script is the only way to get that data out at scale, and it handles the entire process without anyone touching a single file.

The Outcome

Attendance data that previously required significant manual effort to collect is now complete and current in the platform database. Every event is captured, not just the ones someone had time to process.

That data feeds directly into the engagement scoring used in quarterly client reviews, where nonprofit participation across the platform is ranked and surfaced for CS teams. Without it, those reports would be built on partial data or not at all. With it, the data is always there when it is needed.

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