Integrating your Dynamic Forms or Dynamic Registration with PayPal is not hard but it does have some areas that often cause errors with Completion Events.

So, here you are:  All your form fields are set up, the PayPal gateway is enabled, got your parameters right and your PayPal Sandbox account is all ready to go.  You run a test, make a PayPal payment, return to your merchant site then – NOTHING!  Your email events don’t go out and your roles are not added.  What’s wrong?

Here are the Top 5 areas to check:

1. Make sure the View permissions for your page and module are set to All Users.  This is critical so PayPal can “talk” back to the page without having to log in.
2. Check if your events are properly set to fire for “any field response” or for a specific user response.   Many times, this is left at ‘Select Dynamic Field’ and causes the problem.
3. In Module Configuration, PayPal Gateway, verify that your event is linked to the correct PayPal Payment Status.  In most cases, you want your events to be linked to Completed (Standard) or Completed (Subscription Payment) and Completed (Subscription Signup) depending on your set up.  Dynamic Registration has a built-in event that also needs to be linked to one of the Completed options.  Remember, only a redirection event can be linked to “Redirect Successfully.”  
4. Check your PayPal Sandbox account and make sure that Payment Review is disabled for all your test accounts.  This feature requires an extra manual step from the Test Buyer/Seller accounts and can hold up a Completed Status even though it appeared like the transaction went through during your test.
5. Again in your PayPal Sandbox, make sure that your test buyer account has the necessary (fake) bank information and funds to make the purchase.

There you go!  Most issues are resolved by these 5 points. 

Email events still not firing?  Check these 3 things to help narrow it down:

•    Go to Admin, Newsletters and send yourself a test email from here.  Our modules use the DNN email functions so if this works, then the module email should also be working.  If you do not receive this test email, go to Host, Host Settings and check your SMTP settings.  
•    If you disable PayPal, does the event fire?
•    Enable Debug Mode (located at the top middle section of the module under Quick Help) and verify that your string is passing the right field values after a submission.

Do you have any other tips? Please feel free to comment. 

Showing 1 Comment

  Bert 13 years ago

Great! this helps a lot.
The only problem I see with point 2 is that you cannot set different events to occur based on the content of the form fields, for example add a subscription role for one or three months based on the selection (and payment!) made by the user.