Backend Booking (EN) Record DPCalendar bookings directly in the Joomla backend, without the detour through the frontend form · Version 1.0.7 · Stand 07.09.2026 Backend Booking at a glance Backend Booking adds to the booking system of DPCalendar what is often missing in everyday work: the ability to record bookings directly in the Joomla backend. If a participant phones in, if a registration arrives by email or on paper — with this plugin you enter the booking in a few clicks, without the detour through the frontend form. The screenshots in this manual were taken on a German Joomla installation. The extension follows the language of your installation, so the labels appear in English on an English backend. What the plugin can do A "New booking" button in the DPCalendar booking overview (Components → DPCalendar → Bookings). Event selection with filters: search, calendar, location and period — including occupancy display, series marker and waiting-list notice. The complete booking form: ticket types with prices, booking options, payment providers, status as well as all custom fields you have set up in DPCalendar. Guest bookings with contact details — optionally with automatic creation of a user account. Booking several users at once: pick users through a search field, then fill in all booking fields for each person individually — pre-filled from their account and user profile. Email control: send the regular DPCalendar booking emails or suppress them entirely for backend bookings. Calendar restriction: bookings are only possible for events of the calendars you have enabled in the plugin options. No interference with DPCalendar The plugin changes not a single DPCalendar file. It uses documented extension points only and saves through the same booking logic the frontend uses. Prices, ticket limits, remaining capacity, custom fields and emails therefore behave exactly as you know them from DPCalendar — and DPCalendar updates are not blocked. Backend bookings deliberately run without a payment process: no customer is redirected to PayPal and the like. For events that cost money, simply select the payment provider (bank transfer, for example) in the form; you record the incoming payment as usual through the booking status. Who is the plugin for? For clubs, organisers and agencies that do not receive registrations online only: phone registrations, registrations at the reception desk or later corrections can be recorded just as cleanly as online bookings — with the same tickets, fields and confirmation emails. Applies to version 1.0.7. Deutsche Fassung Requirements and installation Backend Booking is a single Joomla plugin. This page lists the requirements and describes what to do after the installation. Requirements Joomla 6.0 or newer PHP 8.2 or newer DPCalendar 10.11.x with the booking system enabled (DPCalendar Pro) The booking system is part of DPCalendar Pro. The free DPCalendar version has no bookings — and therefore nothing this plugin could record. Installation Download the file plg_dpcalendar_backendbooking-.zip. In the backend, open System → Install → Extensions and drag the ZIP file into the Upload Package File area. The plugin is enabled automatically during installation — you do not have to switch it on separately. The installation checks beforehand whether DPCalendar is installed. If DPCalendar is missing (or older than version 10), the installation stops with a corresponding message — install DPCalendar first in that case. The installation also sets up the template override for the DPCalendar booking overview automatically, which shows the booked date in the list — details in the chapter The date in the booking overview (override). The panel after the installation names the installed version and reports in which template the override was set up. The three cards lead to the quick start, to the download key for updates, and to the manual. After the installation: enable calendars For safety reasons the plugin starts with no calendars enabled — backend booking is thus inactive at first. Open System → Plugins, search for DPCalendar - Backend Booking and select in the option Calendars those calendars whose events are to be bookable in the backend. Subcalendars are not included automatically. If a subcalendar is to be bookable, select it explicitly as well. A first check Open Components → DPCalendar → Bookings. The toolbar now shows the button New booking. Clicking it leads to the event selection — if you see your events there, everything is set up correctly. If the button is missing, check: is the plugin enabled? Does your user have the DPCalendar permission create bookings for other people? More on this in the chapter Configuration and permissions. What is created in the database Nothing. The plugin creates no tables of its own — all bookings, tickets and field values are stored by DPCalendar itself, exactly as with a frontend booking. If the plugin is uninstalled, every recorded booking remains. Applies to version 1.0.7. Deutsche Fassung Download key and updates Backend Booking receives updates through the official Joomla update mechanism. To allow your website to fetch them, enter your personal download key once. Entering the download key Create your download key in your customer account on graup-it.de (menu item Download IDs). One key applies per website and covers all extensions obtained through it. In the backend, open System → Update → Update Sites. Open the entry DPCalendar Backend Booking Updates and enter the key into the field Download Key. Save. Make sure to paste the key without leading or trailing spaces. A space copied along with it makes the update fail with an error message ("URL rejected" or "Package download failed"). Installing updates Open System → Update → Extensions. If a new version is available, the plugin appears in the list. Select it and click Update. Joomla downloads the package using your download key, verifies the checksum and installs the new version. If Joomla finds no update although a new version exists, click Check for Updates first to refresh the cache. The manual route You can also install any version by hand: download the ZIP and install it via System → Install → Extensions, just like the first installation. An update overwrites the existing installation and keeps your settings. After DPCalendar updates The plugin uses the booking interfaces of DPCalendar. After a major DPCalendar update, a short test booking in the backend is recommended — that way you make sure both extensions still fit together. Released compatibility levels are named in the version notes. Applies to version 1.0.7. Deutsche Fassung Quick start: the first booking This is how you record your first backend booking — from the button to the success message it takes less than a minute. Step 1: choose an event Open Components → DPCalendar → Bookings and click New booking in the toolbar. You see the list of bookable events from the enabled calendars — with date, calendar and current occupancy. Use the filter bar to narrow the list down if needed. Click Book in the row of the event you want. Step 2: fill in the booking At the top, choose the number of tickets (per type if there are several ticket types) and any booking options. Enter the contact details in the card Book as guest: first name, last name and email are required. Alternatively, select one or more existing users in the card above — then the guest entry is not needed. Fill in the additional fields, if your DPCalendar installation defines any. On the right, under Booking details, adjust the booking date, the status and — for events that cost money — the payment provider if needed. Click Save booking. Step 3: check the result After saving you are back in the booking overview. The success message names the new booking including the event date and links to it directly — one click opens the booking for checking or editing. The booking goes through the same DPCalendar logic as an online booking: tickets are created, prices calculated, remaining places updated and — if enabled — the usual confirmation and notification emails sent. Where to go from here All details about the selection list: The event selection All details about the form: The booking form Several people in one go: Booking several users at once Applies to version 1.0.7. Deutsche Fassung The event selection The first step of every backend booking is the event selection. It shows only events that really are bookable — and only from the calendars you have enabled in the plugin options. What appears in the list An event appears when all of the following apply: It is in an enabled calendar (subcalendars do not count automatically). It lies in the future, within the period configured in the options (default: 365 days). Its registration window is open — DPCalendar's registration start and end apply in the backend as well. It is not fully booked — unless it has a waiting list, in which case it stays bookable and is marked accordingly. The columns Event title, supplemented where applicable by the markers series and waiting list (see below) Date date and time in the format of your DPCalendar configuration Calendar the calendar of the event Occupancy "12 of 20 taken" or unlimited if no capacity limit is set Filters Above the list you find a filter bar: Search event — full-text search in title and description. With id:123 you jump straight to an event ID. Calendar — appears only if more than one calendar is enabled. Location — filters by the DPCalendar locations. From / to — narrows the period. Recurring events How a series appears in the list is determined by the DPCalendar setting book series of the respective event: Book the whole series: the series appears as one row with the marker series. One booking covers the complete series. Individual dates bookable (default): every date appears as a row of its own — you book one specific date. Waiting list If an event is full but has a waiting list, it stays bookable and carries the marker waiting list. In the booking form the status is then preselected as waiting, so the event is not overbooked by accident. When a place frees up, simply change the status of the booking in the DPCalendar booking overview. When the list gets long The list shows at most as many entries as configured in the option max. list entries (default: 100). When the limit is reached, a notice points it out — narrow the list down using the filters instead of paging through it. Applies to version 1.0.7. Deutsche Fassung The booking form The booking form gathers everything that belongs to a booking: tickets, options, the person (guest or user account), additional fields and the booking details. The header always shows the event, the date and the current occupancy. Tickets and booking options For events with several ticket types (adult/child, say) you choose the quantity per ticket type; the prices are shown next to them. For free events there is a simple number of participants. If the event has booking options (a programme booklet, for example), you choose their quantity in a table of its own. The quantity fields are limited automatically: to the DPCalendar limit tickets per booking, to the limit of the respective ticket type and to the remaining places. If DPCalendar still trims a quantity while saving (because someone else booked at the same time, for instance), the plugin reports the difference clearly. Guest or user account? There are two clearly separated cards for the person: Book for existing users — you search users through the search field (name, username or email, from two characters on) and book for their accounts. As soon as a user is selected, the guest card is disabled automatically and the save button changes to continue to the personal data — details in the chapter Booking several users at once. Book as a guest (without a user account) — you enter the contact details by hand. First name, last name and email are required; phone and address are optional. On request the plugin creates a user account automatically — see A user account for guest bookings. Additional fields All custom fields you have set up in DPCalendar for bookings (Components → DPCalendar → Fields) appear in a card of their own — including field groups, required-field markers and the assignment to calendars. Exactly the configuration of the frontend form applies. Booking details Booking date pre-filled with the current time; freely adjustable for entries recorded after the fact Status active, pending, invited or waiting. Left empty, the default status from the plugin options applies. For full waiting-list events, waiting is preselected. Payment provider only for events that cost money; the payment plugins configured in DPCalendar (bank transfer, for example) are offered. There is no redirect to a payment service — the provider is merely assigned to the booking. The status determines what follows: only bookings with the status active count fully towards the occupancy and trigger the automatic account creation. You record the incoming payment later as usual by changing the status of the booking in DPCalendar. Saving With Save booking the booking is created through the regular DPCalendar logic. The success message links the new booking and names the booked date. Back to the event selection takes you to the list without saving, Cancel returns to the booking overview. Applies to version 1.0.7. Deutsche Fassung Booking several users at once If several people with user accounts are to be booked onto the same event — a whole training group, say — you do it in one go: select users, check the personal data per user, save. Each user gets a separate, complete booking. Step 1: select users In the card Book for existing users, type at least two characters into the search field — name, username and email are searched. Select as many users as you like; each of them gets the tickets and options set above. As soon as users are selected, the guest card is disabled (the user selection takes precedence) and the button changes to Continue to the personal data. Use the entries as defaults: by default the next step starts with the data from the user account and profile only. Tick the checkbox in the user card if the values entered in the form (guest contact details, additional fields) should instead be pre-filled for all selected users — handy when they all share the same club or the same required field, for instance. Step 2: personal data per user Next comes the intermediate step personal data per user: one card per user with all booking fields — contact details and additional fields, editable individually for every person. The fields are pre-filled as far as possible, in this order: name and email from the user account, phone and address from the Joomla user profile (profile plugin), if maintained, the form defaults, if you ticked the checkbox. Via back to the booking form you can return at any time — your entries so far, the user selection and the ticket quantities are preserved. Step 3: saving — all or nothing With Save bookings the plugin first checks every required field for every user. If something is missing, not a single booking is created; the messages name the user concerned ("Hans Testmann: field required: …") and all entries stay in place. Only when everything is complete are the bookings created — half-recorded groups cannot happen this way. For up to five users you get a linked success message per booking, for larger groups a summary ("12 of 12 user bookings were created"). Warnings — a ticket quantity trimmed by DPCalendar, for example — are always reported individually. The number of users per run is limited by the option max. users per booking run (default: 25). With very many fields the PHP limit max_input_vars can lower the limit further — the plugin points that out instead of losing entries silently. Applies to version 1.0.7. Deutsche Fassung A user account for guest bookings For guest bookings the plugin can create a Joomla user account automatically and link it to the booking. The participant can log in later and see their bookings in the frontend — without you having to create the account by hand. The option In the plugin options, create a user account for guest bookings controls the behaviour: As configured in DPCalendar Default — the DPCalendar setting registration of the booking system applies. Yes An account is always created for backend guest bookings, regardless of the DPCalendar setting. No No account is ever created. When an account is created An account is only created when all conditions are met: The booking has the status active. There is no account yet for the email address. (If there is one, the booking stays a guest booking — nothing is linked silently.) The backend user doing this is allowed to create users in Joomla (permission of the user manager). Without that permission the booking is saved normally and a warning is shown. The account receives the guest's full name, the email address as the username, a random password with a forced password change, and the default user group configured in Joomla. With or without sending email Send emails = yes: Joomla sends the usual registration email. Depending on the settings of the Joomla user manager it contains an activation link. Send emails = no: the account is created silently — active, but without any email. The participant gets access later via forgot password. A notice in the backend confirms the silent account creation. So the account creation does not fail just because sending email is switched off — a deliberate difference from Joomla's standard behaviour, which discards accounts when sending the email fails. Privacy Only create accounts when the participant agrees — because they asked for access on the phone, for instance. No account is required for merely recording a booking; the option can be set to no at any time. Applies to version 1.0.7. Deutsche Fassung The date in the booking overview (override) DPCalendar's booking overview shows only the title in the event column. For series booked by individual date you therefore cannot see which date was booked — that information sits in the tickets. The plugin brings a template override for this, which adds the booked date below every event link. Set up automatically There is nothing to do: the plugin installation places the override in the active administrator template — administrator/templates//html/com_dpcalendar/bookings/default_bookings.php — and keeps it current: every plugin update refreshes the file, uninstalling the plugin removes it again (from all admin templates). After the installation simply open Components → DPCalendar → Bookings: the booked date now appears below every event title; several tickets for the same event are combined into one entry. Your own customisations are safe: the plugin recognises its file by a marker in the file header. If an override of the booking list of your own (without that marker) is already in place at the target position, it is neither overwritten nor deleted — you merely get a notice. If you then want to adopt the date, compare it by hand with the version shipped in the plugin folder plugins/dpcalendar/backendbooking/overrides/. Further admin templates What gets equipped automatically is the active admin template. If you use several administrator templates or switch templates later, simply copy the file from the plugin folder there as well — or install the plugin again, which equips whichever template is then active. After DPCalendar updates An override is a copy of the original view. If a DPCalendar update changes the booking list, your copy still shows the old state. The override is deliberately kept minimal — only the event cell differs from the original — but still: after a DPCalendar update, briefly check that the booking list still looks as expected. For every released DPCalendar level a plugin update ships the matching override version and refreshes it automatically. Switching the override off You would rather have the standard booking list without the date line? Delete the file from the template folder — DPCalendar immediately shows its original view again. Note that the next plugin update will place the file there once more; alternatively, replace it with your own copy of the DPCalendar original view (without the plugin marker), which the plugin then leaves alone permanently. Applies to version 1.0.7. Deutsche Fassung Configuration and permissions All settings are found under System → Plugins → DPCalendar - Backend Booking. This chapter explains every option and the permissions required. Options Option Default Meaning Calendars — Only events of these calendars are bookable in the backend. Subcalendars have to be selected explicitly. With no selection, backend booking is disabled. Default status Active Status a new booking receives when the status field is left empty (active, waiting or invited). Create a user account for guest bookings As configured in DPCalendar Automatic account creation for guest bookings — details in the chapter A user account for guest bookings. Send emails Yes With no, all DPCalendar booking emails are suppressed for backend bookings (confirmation, notification, invoice) — including the registration email of any account creation. Period (days) 365 How many days ahead events are offered in the selection. Max. list entries 100 Upper limit of the event selection. When it is reached a notice appears; narrow the list down with the filters then. Max. users per booking run 25 Upper limit of the multi-user booking. Additionally limited by the PHP setting max_input_vars. Permissions The button and the booking pages are available only to backend users who hold the following rights: Create bookings for other people — the DPCalendar action dpcalendar.admin.book. You grant it to the user group you want under Components → DPCalendar → Options → Permissions. Super users have it automatically. Book in the respective calendar — DPCalendar's calendar permission. It applies per calendar and is checked in addition. For the automatic account creation, also the Joomla right to create users (permissions of the user manager). Without it, the booking is saved without an account and a warning is shown. Users without these rights do not even see the New booking button; calling the booking pages directly is refused as well. Privacy The plugin stores no data of its own — all recorded bookings live in the regular DPCalendar tables and are subject to their deletion and export mechanisms. The user search of the multi-user booking is available only to authorised backend users and returns name, username and email — the details the Joomla user manager shows anyway. Applies to version 1.0.7. Deutsche Fassung Common questions and troubleshooting The "New booking" button is missing Check in this order: Is the plugin enabled under System → Plugins? Are you in the view Components → DPCalendar → Bookings? The button appears only there. Does your user group have the DPCalendar permission create bookings for other people? (See Configuration and permissions.) An event is missing from the selection Is it in an enabled calendar? Subcalendars do not count automatically. Is the date in the past or outside the configured period? Is the registration window of the event closed (registration deadline passed or registration start not reached yet)? Is the event fully booked with no waiting list? Is the list limit reached? Then narrow it down with the filters — the event is there, just not on the first page of the truncated list. The field "payment provider" is empty or missing For free events there is no payment provider — that is normal. For events that cost money the selection is fed by the configured DPCalendar payment plugins: a provider appears only once its plugin is enabled and fully configured. No confirmation emails arrive Is the plugin option send emails set to yes? Is Joomla's mail sending active globally (System → Global Configuration → Server → Send Email)? Are the recipient and template settings in the DPCalendar booking system correct? The plugin uses exactly the DPCalendar emails — whatever is disabled there is not sent from the backend either. No user account was created Account creation only applies with the status active, an unknown email address and sufficient rights of the backend user — details in the chapter A user account for guest bookings. The most common cause is an email address that already has an account. "Only N of M requested tickets were booked" DPCalendar trimmed the quantity while saving — to the limit tickets per booking, the limit of the ticket type or the remaining capacity. The booking is valid; check the tickets created through the link in the message and book the rest if needed. Nothing was created when saving several users That is the intended all-or-nothing behaviour: as long as a required field is missing for any user, not a single booking is saved. The error messages name the user and the field; your entries are preserved — add what is missing and save again. The update reports a checksum error Joomla compares the downloaded package with the checksum stored on the update server. If that fails, download the update again later — or install the current ZIP from the product page manually via System → Install → Extensions. Does the plugin work with the free DPCalendar version? No. The booking system is part of DPCalendar Pro — without a booking system there is nothing to record. Applies to version 1.0.7. Deutsche Fassung Changelog This changelog lists every released version of Backend Booking, the most recent first. This page is generated automatically from the product's changelog file when a release is made. Changes made by hand are lost at the next synchronisation. Version 1.0.7 – 16 August 2026 Fixed The links in the overview panel always led to the German manual. They now follow the configured language. The panel shown after the installation named licence version 2. It now shows the GNU General Public License version 3 or later, as everywhere else. Version 1.0.6 – 12 August 2026 Changed Some of the files shipped still named licence version 2. Everything now uniformly states the GNU General Public License version 3 or later. Version 1.0.5 – 31 July 2026 Changed The extension is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3 or later. All details on licence, author and copyright are consistent. Fixed The licence file shipped named a different product and contained only a short notice instead of the full licence text. Version 1.0.4 – 31 July 2026 Added After an installation or update an overview panel appears with version, status and entry points to getting started, download key and manual. A click on "Enable updates" leads straight to the update sites, already filtered to missing download keys. The extension manager now shows the list of changes behind the version number. Changed Notices about the state of the booking overview or about DPCalendar being disabled now appear in the overview panel instead of loosely beside it. Language All messages shown during installation and update are available in German and English. Version 1.0.3 – 29 July 2026 Fixed One-click updates failed with "checksum verification failed". The download key is now passed in the form the update server expects. Version 1.0.2 – 29 July 2026 Language A consistent product name "Backend Booking" without mixed languages, in the German plugin list as well. Version 1.0.1 – 29 July 2026 Added The adjusted booking overview is managed automatically: installation and update set it up, uninstalling removes it again. An overview you adjusted yourself is never overwritten or deleted in the process, only reported. The installation checks beforehand whether DPCalendar version 10 or newer is present, and stops with a clear message otherwise. Version 1.0.0 – 29 July 2026 Added Initial release. Deutsche Fassung