PatronManager Help

October 2023 Release Notes

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PatronManager October 2023 Release: https://help.pm.leapevent.tech/a/1734323

Check out the latest updates that will save you time, make things more convenient for patrons, and improve your day-to-day.

Great news: Mobile Tickets are here! This feature eliminates the complex setup for legacy Print-at-Home tickets and speeds up order processing. Your patrons will also love it: they can view tickets on their phone (no pinching/zooming required), add them to a digital wallet, or print them if necessary. And there's no need to worry about patrons losing their confirmation email, because you can now include their tickets in your automated pre-show emails!

You'll also find new filters to help you prioritize incoming Contacts for qualification, more features for Leap Merchant Services (our in-house payment processing solution), and more. You should also note a recent Salesforce update that requires a slight adjustment to keep email notifications that alert you to Chatter messages.

Read on to learn all about:

Let's jump in!

Prefer watching to reading?

Check out this webinar recording where we go into detail on Mobile Tickets.

Mobile tickets

Mobile tickets allow your patrons to pull up their tickets easily on a mobile device, add them to their Apple or Google Wallet, or print them if necessary. Check out all the aspects of this exciting new feature below!

Simplify your setup

No more creating perfectly-sized images, then switching over to Classic to upload them, then placing them in various spots in the system, then customizing rich text and hoping for the best. Instead, add and update key information quickly and easily in a few text fields.

As an added bonus, these are also available as merge fields for pre-show email templates, so you won't have to enter the same details over and over in multiple places.

Improve accessibility

The legacy Print-at-Home ticket had potential accessibility gaps because while it supported images, it could not support alternate text for those images. Mobile tickets, on the other hand, are fully accessible and compatible with screen readers.

Speed up order processing

Email-delivered Ticket Orders can take a long time to process today, and the bulk of that time involves generating the one-page-per-ticket, image-heavy PDF file that is the legacy Print-at-Home Ticket.

Mobile tickets only generate a single button in the confirmation email, so your orders will complete much faster!

Include tickets with pre-show emails

You can include mobile ticket links (for patrons who chose email as their delivery method) in automated pre-show emails, ensuring your patrons have their tickets at their fingertips when it's time for the show.

Give patrons their new tickets automatically in exchange confirmations

As long as the order's delivery method is email, your patron will receive their new mobile tickets with their exchange confirmation. You don't have to take an extra step to email their new tickets anymore!

Ensure ultimate convenience for your ticket holders

As long as their delivery method is "Email", your patrons can access their tickets quickly and easily in a variety of ways:

  • On the confirmation page of your Public Ticketing Site
  • In their confirmation email
  • In Portal
  • In their automated pre-show email

And of course you can still email tickets on demand from any order, any time.

Reduce paper usage

Be kinder to the environment (and to your patrons' printer ink costs) by reducing or eliminating printed tickets. Even if your patron chooses to print their tickets, mobile tickets contain multiple tickets per page and don't include background color or images. That means they use less paper and less ink than the legacy Print-at-Home PDF.

Ready to get started with mobile tickets? You'll find complete documentation here, and you can also join us at the release webinar to learn more!

New features for Leap Merchant Services

Have you switched to our in-house payment processing solution yet? Leap Merchant Services will save you time, simplify your workflow, and streamline your costs. It also comes with a range of exclusive features like Apple Pay and Google Pay for online transactions (as well as in person), automatic stored card updates to keep your recurring donations running smoothly, and more.

This release contains two more updates for this exciting offering! Expand these sections to learn more:

Complex refunds now possible with Leap Merchant Services

Complex refunds allow you to refund a Ticket Order to a single credit card, even if it had been paid with multiple credit cards originally, rather than having to back out the piecemeal amount to each original payment method one by one.

It's a great time-saver for those situations, and with this release it's built right in to Leap Merchant Services.

Eliminated faulty stored payment methods for tap-to-pay with digital wallets

When you're taking payments in person, digital wallets (where a patron taps their phone or watch to pay with their Apple or Google Wallet) can't be saved for future use. Previously this was unclear - the system allowed the payment to go through, but the resulting Stored Payment Method was faulty and wouldn't work for future payments.

Note: this only affects in-person tap-to-pay with a digital wallet. Patrons can use their Apple and Google Wallet for online transactions and online recurring donations just fine!

PatronManager now prevents those faulty Stored Payment Methods. You won't be able to process an in-person payment via digital wallet if you've checked the box to "Save for future use". Your patron would need to tap their physical credit card instead, or you can uncheck that box and accept a one-time payment via their digital wallet.

Ready to switch to Leap Merchant Services? Getting started is quick and easy. Submit a case in the Client Community, and we'll have you up and running in no time!

Qualification filters

Qualification is the step you take to check incoming Contacts against potential duplicates in your system, and resolve those to ensure clean data and accurate reports. If you have a large volume of incoming Ticket Orders and Donations, it can be quite a task.

With this release, you'll find new filters on the Unqualified Contacts tab to help you prioritize: for example, you can filter for patrons who live in your area and should receive your marketing and fundraising appeals, or people who have specifically opted in to receive your communications.

If you've enabled State & Country Picklists (which is a great tool to help you keep your data clean), you'll also have filters for State and Country on this page!

Other improvements and fixes

With every release, we make incremental improvements and tidy up bits of unexpected behavior. Expand the sections below to learn more about the rest of the updates in this release:

Accessibility updates for seat maps on the Public Ticketing Site

This release reduces confusion by ensuring that unavailable seats are not clickable. It also simplifies and speeds up keyboard navigation on seat maps by skipping unavailable seats, making the purchase process smoother for patrons who interact via keyboard.

Patrons entering their password for Portal can now view it to reduce typos

We know that some of your patrons have difficulty entering and changing their password for PatronPortal because they can't see what they've entered in the security-masked password field.

Now your patrons can check a box to show their password, check what they've entered, and avoid typos.

Transaction Summary report update for reconciling PM Fees

If your PatronManager contract involves PM Fees (formerly called PatronTech Fees), you  now reconcile those fee settlements using the Transaction Summary Report in the PatronManager Financial Reports tab.

Those fees are calculated based on US Eastern Time, so if your organization is in a different time zone, you can now toggle that report to Eastern Time to ensure a correct match against the Settlement Reports you receive from PatronManager.

Heads up on a recent Salesforce change re: Chatter email notifications

Earlier this month Salesforce released an update that broke Chatter email notifications for many organizations. If you use Chatter (and you should, it's great!), click below and take these steps to ensure your users receive email notifications for Chatter updates.

Fix up Chatter email notifications

1. Head to Setup

2. Search for Chatter and click on Email Settings below it

3. Enter a From Name and Email Address, and save!

The From Name is what will show up in your inbox when you receive a Chatter notification, so make sure it's something easily identifiable, for example "PatronManager Chatter".

We recommend using an email address you've previously verified as a From Email Address.

That's all for this release!

Want to be part of the product development process? Log in to the Client Community to suggest and vote on Product Ideas, track suggestions your organization has given us in the past, see what's planned and in progress, and much more. Read All About Product Ideas to get started!

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