Decline an Invitation in One Click

Give invitees a way to say "I can't make it" without logging in, filling out a form, or replying to an email. When you add a Decline button to your invitation email, an invitee clicks it once and lands on a simple confirmation page — and their Attendee record is marked Declined automatically, so your active counts stay accurate.

How it works

Every Attendee has a personal Decline Link — a no-login URL built from their existing AttendeeLink. Drop that link onto a button in your invitation email, and any invitee can decline straight from their inbox:

1. The invitee clicks Decline in the email.
2. They land on a lightweight confirmation page ("Invitation Declined — You've declined your invitation to {Event}").
3. Their Attendee's Registration Status is set to Declined.

No account, no password, no app to load.

Setting it up

The Decline Link ships on every Attendee, but it is not added to your invitation emails automatically — you place it once on the template:

1. Open your invitation email in the email editor.
2. Add a button (or link) — for example, labeled "Can't attend? Decline."
3. Set the button's URL to the Decline Link merge field:

   {!conference360__Attendee__c.conference360__Decline_Link__c}
   

   It appears in the merge-tag picker automatically, so you can insert it without any extra setup.
4. Send or schedule the invitation as usual. Each recipient's button resolves to their own personal decline URL.

That's the whole setup — once the button is on the template, every invitation carries a working one-click decline.

What the invitee sees

• Declining — a brief "Declining Invitation…" page, then "Invitation Declined — You've declined your invitation to {Event}. We're sorry you can't make it."
• Already declined or cancelled — the same confirmation page (clicking again does nothing harmful).
• Can't decline (for example, they're already Registered or checked in) — "Unable to Decline — This decline link is no longer valid. Your registration status does not allow this action." Their status is left unchanged.
• Expired or broken link — "Link Expired — This link is invalid or has expired."

Good to know

• Decline works only before someone registers. Only invitees whose status is Invited or Pending can decline. Someone who has already Registered, been Waitlisted, or checked in gets the "Unable to Decline" page — decline is not a cancellation tool for confirmed attendees.
• The confirmation-page wording is customizable and localizable. The headings and messages come from the Data Dictionary, so admins can rebrand or translate them (see the admin reference below). By default the page shows in the invitee's locale when translations are configured.
• The button must be on the template. Nothing is pre-wired — if invitees can't find a decline option, check that the merge-field button was added to the invitation email you actually sent.

For Salesforce admins — technical reference

Package: Ships in Events 5.59.

Field

Permissions: Decline_Link__c has read field-level security across all six Blackthorn Events permission sets (Organizer, Admin, Community/Platform User, Limited Access, Lite User, Read Only).

Merge tag for the email button: {!conference360__Attendee__c.conference360__Decline_Link__c}

Status behavior: declining sets Registration_Status__c = Declined — never Cancelled, which stays reserved for real cancellations. The action is idempotent (a second click on an already-declined link is a no-op) and only transitions from Invited or Pending.

Customizing the confirmation page — override these Data Dictionary keys for branded or translated copy:

Notes

• The decline page is served by the event webapp, not Salesforce; the link works without authentication by design.
• For deliverability, the click is processed so that email security scanners (which pre-fetch links) don't accidentally decline invitees — the actual status change happens when a real browser loads the page. To the invitee it's still a single click.
• Repeated rapid clicks on one link are rate-limited and may show a generic error page; this is expected and not a configuration problem.