Blog
The latest upgrade has many event managers jumping for joy
22 May 2018
The latest upgrade here! It feels like it has been a long time coming, but it is a biggie so it needed a lot of testing. As well as adding new features there are a lot of changes ‘under the hood,’ in this upgrade to keep the platform current and high functioning. Here’s what the latest upgrade means for people using Events Pronto and Business Axis.
New Features and Obvious Upgrades
Group tickets
You now have the option of adding a group ticket, made up of several individual tickets. This is a great option for creating a family pass, advertising a flat rate price for a table at a dinner or offering a bulk deal on places at a training course.
Custom questions
The ability to ask custom questions in text, check-box or multichoice formats was added some time ago. In this upgrade you’ll see some improvement to this functionality. Most especially, the answers now show in question order in the special requirements report – even if you re-order them. Administrators can now answer custom questions as they add bookings which was not possible previously.
Administrators booking
There is a whole new experience waiting organisations who allow bookings by phone, email and over the counter. The new features that speed-up the back-end booking process for administrators are numerous:
- Most importantly, you can now do a quick search on the email or name of the booker and select those who have booked in the past. The platform remembers all their details, rather than you re-entering them.
- The same goes for ticket-holders. If they are anywhere in your contact list, or the booker has reserved tickets for them before, you can now search and select them.
- As you add a booking in the back-end, you’ll also see the price of each ticket, and the number of each ticket type left available – why didn’t we think of that earlier?
- This one’s a goodie. If you look to the bottom right of your screen as you add the booking, you’ll see ticket holder name and price details accumulating as you add tickets, so if the booker asks you a question in the middle of a long booking like ‘have I added Fred yet,” or “how much will that be,” you will have the answer right in front of you.
- You can even change the details of bookers and ticket-holders as you are making the booking – something that was previously locked down and that we know many of you have been hanging out for.
Editing a booking
You now have a lot more power to edit bookings yourself:
- If a ticket-holder can’t come and has secured their own replacement, you’ll choose to ‘replace’ them.
- If a ticket-holder’s name is spelt wrong or they’ve called with updated personal details or special requirements you can easily 'edit' them.
One thing you still can’t do is edit the email address of the booker after the booking has been made. That is fraught with risks, so if it needs to be done, please just email support@eventspronto.co.nz with the incorrect email address, the correct email address and the BRN number for any affected booking. We’ll get the technical experts to do it for you. It’s all part of the service.
Booking confirmation emails
If you look very carefully you might spot some changes to the booking confirmations and e-invites. The most notable is the removal of the social media links. While it’s sad to see them go, it has been made necessary to make the emails less vulnerable to over-eager spam protection systems.
Websites talking to websites
Last year we introduced a system that makes it easily possible for your website developer to grab your event details and display only the current ones on your main website so people can see what’s on and click to book. This is made possible by an Application Programming Interface or API. The API also makes it possible for information to be passed from Events Pronto or Business Axis straight into any good online CRM system like v-tiger, capsule or salesforce. The recent upgrade adds to this functionality and makes it possible for you to bring across ticket-holder details where in the past you could only grab booker details.
New things happening behind the scenes
PHP upgrade
The Events Pronto and Business Axis Platforms, like all Booking Rooster powered sites are written in the “PHP” programming language. PHP is regularly upgraded and keeping up to date with the PHP upgrades means your booking site is always current.
E-invites
A lot of behind the scenes work has been done with Mailgun which improves the ability to monitor things like clicking on links, unsubscribes and bounces due to bad addresses. There is also improved functionality around selection of e-invite recipients for event attendees.
Payment gateway upgrades
Supporting 7 different credit card processing gateways means upgrades each time the gateway providers make changes. This time round there are upgrades to Braintree and Stripe.
Don't forget the recent upgrades
In the time since our last big upgrade we’ve slipped in a few extra features that you may have missed. Here are some of those features. Feel free to ask us about these features when the time is right for you.
- Promotional Events.
- Registration of Interest Events.
- The ability to switch off tickets so they are not sent with booking confirmations.
- The ability to add bookers to contact groups – if you are not using this, talk to us now.
- Better ways to handle people who share an email address.
Author: Moira Moroney
Events Pronto is the all-kiwi online booking and administration platform that takes the leg work out of managing conferences, events, courses, workshops and much more. Organisations pay a small monthly or annual fee to use the service - no booking fees, agency fees or commissions! Try it free here or call us on 07 575 6903.
To see the latest articles please follow Events Pronto on Facebook.
Tweet
