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PatronManager February 2024 Release Notes: https://help.pm.leapevent.tech/a/1776927
Happy 2024! We're kicking off this Leap Year with a fresh new release, featuring a Ticket Design Tool to allow you to edit your Point-of-Sale ticket layouts anytime you'd like with a user-friendly editor. And that's not all: you'll also find updates to PatronManager Box Office (with a lot more on the way), the option to sell tickets from any modern tablet (including iPads), Ticket Notes for Mobile Tickets, and much more!
Read on to learn all about:
- The Ticket Design Tool
- PatronManager Box Office updates
- Selling tickets from a tablet
- Other improvements
We're excited, so let's jump right in!
Prefer watching to reading?
You can view a recording of the Release Webinar below!
Introducing: The Ticket Design Tool
Have you ever wanted to adjust your printed ticket layouts? Perhaps you'd like to add a bit of text about your refund policy, update your logo image, or scoot the QR code over a little so it doesn't get caught on the perforation of your ticket stock. With the Ticket Design Tool (or TDT for short), you can do all of this and more in a simple and intuitive editor.
Create your new design from our handy defaults
You can edit for as long as you like, across multiple sessions if needed, before publishing your layouts -- take your time!
When you first visit the TDT, you'll find default layouts already in place based on our years of experience designing ticket layouts for our clients. We hope these defaults give you a helpful starting point, but if they don't match your needs, don't worry - you can freely edit all elements on the ticket.
Do you have custom fields to add to your tickets? No problem: you'll just add those fields to the appropriate field sets and they'll be available to select in the TDT. You can include custom fields from the Ticket Order, Ticket Order Item, Ticketable Event, and Event Instance.
Test each portion of the ticket to make sure they all look great
Enter mock up text in the editor to design for a wide variety of information (e.g. very long event names), then preview the design with real ticket data and do a test print (or a few) to make sure that everything looks the way you expect.
If anything doesn't look quite right, don't worry, you can make further adjustments in the editor as needed.
Need to make an adjustment later? Just pop back in to the TDT
Ticket layouts tend to change over time, and that's ok! For example, maybe you've got a show coming up that has an unusually long name, and your current ticket design doesn't quite work. Or maybe you're preparing for your new season with brand new ticket stock, and you need to move things around to make space for a pre-printed logo.
No problem - you can open the Ticket Design Tool any time to make adjustments. You'll be working in draft mode, so your edits won't affect your current tickets until you've finished your test prints and published your changes.
Ready to get started with the Ticket Design Tool? Click here for the activation guide!
PatronManager Box Office Updates
PatronManager Box Office is changing for the better! We've heard your feedback, have worked with many of you in design preview sessions, and we're so excited to start putting your input into action.
While the changes in this release are relatively minor, they set the groundwork for many more improvements that will follow in future releases, like the ability to add a donation at any point in the order process, the option to quickly add applicable discounts, and much more. Stay tuned for those future changes, and check out what's new in this release:
Re-positioned filters
We've moved the filters from the left column to a more convenient location above your Events and Instances, to make more room for other elements. A few adjustments to the interface make the filters easier to use, and there's a quick way to clear all filters.
Easily switch between Event Instances to find the perfect seat
Quickly access other dates of an Event with a dropdown menu that includes the number of available tickets. You'll find this option on both reserved and general admission Event Instances.
Be aware that changing Event Instances or sections will still cause you to lose any pending seats you hadn't yet confirmed. Pending seats are seats you had clicked on, but had not added to the Order by clicking "Next".
A new look for adding general admission tickets
You can now add multiple Price Levels for general admission tickets at the same time! To adjust the quantity you can either click the plus/minus buttons, or type directly into the quantity box for each Price Level you want. Then click Next to add those tickets to the cart!
A fresh new Order Notes page, with both internal and buyer's comments
Want to access all the notes and communication about a Ticket Order in one place? Now you can! Click the "Order Notes" button at any point on a Ticket Order:
From here you can view and add notes however you need to:
- Use Chatter to tag colleagues or add files.
- Use the new Internal Comments field for info that should be visible to your team in reports, but not to the buyer. This field is available in Door List reports and more!
- The pre-existing "Comments" field is now called Buyer's Comments and includes a note to remind you that it will be visible to the patron in their confirmation email. Use this to note patron requests and preferences.
- The Entry Note will appear on the scanning device when a ticket from that Order is scanned.
Click if you'd like to learn more about Entry Notes or Chatter.
If there are any notes on a Ticket Order, the speech bubble on the Order Notes button is filled in, letting you see at a glance if there's any content you might want to read.
We want to know: is this indicator clear enough? Suggest a Product Idea if you think it should stand out more!
Phase 1 of the new Mini Cart
The mini cart is a key element of future design changes in PMBO, and you'll notice a preliminary version in this release.
Please know that it's not finished yet: in the near future it will have more vertical space, more functionality, and appear on more pages. We're excited for the final version of the mini cart to make it easier to navigate, view the cart contents, add a donation, and make changes at any point.
In this release you'll only see it when adding new items to a Ticket Order, and it might look a little squished on smaller screens. Don't worry - stay tuned for the complete version coming soon!
Sell tickets from a tablet!
Would you like to set up an extra location for walk-up ticket sales in your lobby to alleviate lines at the box office? Perhaps you'd like to move around while selling admissions, to meet your visitors where they are. Tablets make this much easier!
PatronManager has previously offered an Android app to sell tickets via an Android tablet and a special credit card swiper, but that legacy app is limited to Android devices and Bluefin, and it will be retired soon. Not to worry, though - thanks to our new in-house payment processing solution, Leap Merchant Services, your options are expanding!
Once you've switched to Leap Merchant Services, you'll be able to use your normal credit card swipers on a secure wifi network with any modern tablet. That includes Android devices, iPads, and Windows tablets!
Ready to start selling tickets with a tablet? Find all the information you need here.
Other improvements
Click to expand the topics that interest you:
If you've switched to Leap Merchant Services, you may have noticed that sometimes your terminal loses its connection to PatronManager, which means you have to select it again. This often happens if, for example, you have PatronManager Box Office open in multiple browser tabs at the same time.
With this release, PatronManager will attempt to reconnect your terminal when you're ready to process a payment. You may see a brief message telling you that your terminal is reconnecting, but it should only take a moment.
Do your printed tickets include a note to direct patrons to a particular entrance (e.g. "Enter Aisle 2")? If so, you're using Ticket Notes - and you'll want to enable those Ticket Notes for Mobile Tickets when you turn on that feature!
It's a simple checkbox in PatronTicket Settings - once you check that box (and enable Mobile Tickets, of course), you'll know that your patrons will have those handy notes present on all versions of the Mobile Ticket.
Have you enabled Mobile Tickets yet? If not, what are you waiting for? This exciting feature will speed up order processing, simplify your setup, and make things much more convenient for your patrons. Head over to All About Mobile Tickets to get started!
With this release, tickets that are included with the Confirmation Email or emailed after the fact from the Ticket Order will be correctly marked as "Emailed", which was previously missing with Mobile Tickets enabled. Hurrah for clear reporting!
Do you use PatronManager's Sales Tax feature? If so, you can now adjust your Sales Tax Rate whenever you need to via PatronTicket Settings, since those rates tend to change over time.
If you're using Sales Tax, you can customize the label for that field. Previously, that label wasn't applied in the Exchange Confirmation Email - but not to worry, now it is!
PatronManager historically documented features in Salesforce Classic, but over the past few years we've phased out product support for the Classic interface. All recent and future PatronManager features are built, tested, and documented in Salesforce Lightning Experience.
That means the old Salesforce Classic version of the Help tab has become increasingly outdated, with much of the legacy content no longer relevant, or in some cases actively wrong. That's confusing, so we're fixing it up!
With this release and over the coming weeks, we'll be consolidating all help resources into the current PatronManager Help Tab, and removing the defunct Classic Help Tab. You'll have access to all the content you rely on, in its most accurate and up to date format.
That's all for this release!
Do you have ideas for new PatronManager features or want to tell us about a part of the system where you'd like to see updates? 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!