How SquadNote Handles Attendance, Waitlists, and Proxy Input in One Data Model

Developer Yuki (writing for DEV Community) explains the data architecture behind SquadNote's attendance management system, which handles capacity limits, waitlists, guests, and admin proxy input. Rather than adding a 'waitlisted' status to the attendance record, the system computes waitlist position dynamically by sorting all attendees — members and guests combined — by their 'attendingSince' timestamp against the event capacity. A separate 'updatedByAdmin' flag distinguishes responses changed by an administrator from those made by the user, aiding display logic and audit trails. Guest entries, which lack user accounts and are entered by admins, are merged into the same capacity queue as members using 'createdAt' as a fallback timestamp. The article also notes that capacity increases, not just cancellations, must trigger waitlist promotion checks — handled by comparing computed waitlists before and after any capacity change.