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Customize Your Ticket Layout With the Ticket Design Tool: https://help.pm.leapevent.tech/a/1777322
The Ticket Design Tool (or TDT for short) lets you create your own Point-of-Sale ticket layout from a default starting point, test the draft version before publishing, and make adjustments later on whenever you'd like. The TDT also makes it easy to add notes to the ticket (like your late seating or refund policy), add text to label fields however you'd like, and add custom fields.
In this article, we'll explain exactly how to use the tool to craft your ticket layouts:
- An overview of the Ticket Design Tool
- Creating your ticket layout, including
- Testing your design
- Publishing your layout
- Best practice tips
- And of course, some FAQs!
Ready to make your tickets look awesome? Let's get started!
If your organization is just getting started with the Ticket Design Tool, there are a couple extra steps required to prepare the system for the tool, and then activate it for the first time.
Start with this article - you'll be directed back here when it's time to design your tickets!
An overview of the Ticket Design Tool
First things first - get familiar with the TDT! There's a lot going on, so let's start with a high-level overview:
- Navigation bar: This is how you'll switch between designing the various cards.
- Canvas: This is your working area! It's built for Boca's standard ticket stock (5.5" x 2") with a grid and rulers to help you design.
- Adding elements: You can add fields, images, and free text to the canvas from here.
- Toolbar: The toolbar activates when an element is selected. The name of the element and a description will appear to tell you more about it. From here you can change the styling, add mock-up text, and more.
- Testing and publishing: This is where you can toggle the grid and element borders, test your design with real Ticket Order data, and publish when you're ready. If your design goes a bit off the rails, you can always reset to the PatronManager-provided default.
There are two versions of the layout for each card: draft and published. As you make changes on the canvas, you're only editing the draft version - the published version is unaffected until you click Publish Draft.
The editor automatically saves changes to the draft in real time, so you don't have to worry about hitting a save button.
Create your ticket layout
Getting to the TDT
To reach the Ticket Design Tool, head to PatronTicket Settings from the PatronTicket Hub and find the "Ticket Design Tool" link, or find it in the App Launcher (waffle).
Via PatronTicket Settings:
Then scroll down and click on the Ticket Design Tool link in the left column:
Or via the App Launcher (waffle) in the upper left of the page:
Choose which card to edit first
When you open the TDT you'll be on the Header Card by default. Click the navigation bar at the top of the page to change cards.
The default layout
Each card has a default layout based on our experience at PatronManager designing ticket layouts for our clients over the years. This is what you'll see when you first visit the TDT.
If you're happy with the default, you can leave it as-is and publish the card - or you can edit the layout however you'd like!
If you've made a bunch of edits and want to get yourself back to a "clean slate" starting point, click the button to "Reset to Default." This will only affect the card you're viewing - no other cards will be reset.
And remember that when you're working in the TDT, you're working always on your draft version, so while the changes you make are saved to the draft automatically, your edits won't affect your real tickets until you publish your changes (and activate the TDT)!
Adding elements to the design
You'll find all the available fields and images (e.g. Organization Logo or Ticketable Event Image) as well as the option to add free text in the Add Elements list on the left side, with a searchable box at the top of the list.
Want to know more about an Element? Hover over it in the list, and a description will appear!
To add an element to the layout, click the plus sign.
Free text is great for labeling ticket fields (e.g. "Row") or adding additional content (e.g. your late seating or refund policy).
Your newly-added element will appear in the center of the canvas (1), and it will be selected so you'll also see the name of the field and information about it at the top of the page (2). You can add the same element to the layout more than once, for example if you want it to appear on the main body of the ticket and also on the ticket stub.
Click & drag the element on the canvas to move or resize it, use the toolbar to edit its style attributes (3), add mock-up text to simulate how it will look on a real ticket (4), or remove it with the "delete" key on your keyboard or by clicking Remove Element (5).
When you move an element, it will snap to the grid at 1/16 inch increments, making it easier to line things up. The grid lines (which you can toggle on and off at the bottom of the page) display 1/8 inch increments.
When you resize an element, text will not spill over the borders of the box, which means the options for setting the height of the box vary according to the font size.
The TDT won't allow you to cut off text in the middle of a line, so you can only set the box height to accommodate complete lines of text (not 1.5 lines, for example).
The TDT allows you to place images and the barcode and change their location (click and drag, just like fields and text), but resizing is not permitted. Here's a bit more about how that works:
Barcodes cannot be resized since they must function properly for scanning. Note that barcodes (including the white padding) will cover up any element underneath to ensure successful scanning. Make sure to avoid overlapping elements!
Organization Point of Sale Image: The actual Organization POS Image will appear on the canvas, and it cannot be resized from within the TDT. The tickets will render the actual size and shape of the image that was uploaded.
Ticketable Event Image: As with the Organization POS Image, the tickets will render the actual size and shape of the image uploaded for a given Ticketable Event. You can change the borderlines of the Ticketable Event image in the TDT, but it will have no impact on the images themselves when printing. We suggest using the borderlines as a way to measure the amount of space you'll need to save on the canvas, and be sure to upload images that fit in the allotted space.
The borders on the canvas snap to 6 pixel increments, but the images themselves can be of any size.
If the Ticketable Event Image aligns to the top-left of the element container.
General Admission vs Reserved Seating
The Main Ticket has two possible versions: the General Admission version and the Reserved Seating version. While most elements will appear on both versions, some fields (like the Row and Seat) only appear on one version.
You can also set Free Text to appear on either version or both. This is so that you can label fields like Row and Seat on Reserved Seating tickets without confusing patrons at General Admission shows.
Use the dropdown to view the two different versions of the ticket. When you select an element on the canvas, the checkboxes will show where that element appears.
When you publish or reset the Main Ticket to the default layout, this will apply to both versions.
Adding custom fields
To add a custom field to your ticket layout, once you've created the field you'll add it to the "Additional Fields for Ticket Layouts" Field Set on that Object in Setup. You can add custom fields from the Ticket Order, Ticket Order Item, Ticketable Event, and Event Instance.
The field will then appear in the list of Elements in the TDT for the appropriate card.
Sure can!
1. Head to Setup
2. Go to the Object Manager tab, and search for the object
Remember you can add fields any of these objects:
- Ticket Order
- Ticket Order Item
- Ticketable Event
- Event Instance
3. Click Field Sets and select the one labeled "Additional Fields for Ticket Layouts"
4. Drag and drop fields into the "In the Field Set" box
Note that you can only add custom fields from the primary object. In the example below, you can add fields from the Ticket Order - but not Account, Contact, Donation, etc.
5. Don't forget to save!
If you want to remove a field from the Elements list in the TDT so that it cannot be added to the designs any longer, simply remove that field from the Field Set.
When you remove a field from a field set, the field will automatically be removed from your draft design (but not the published design).
Test your design
You've made all your adjustments, added mock-up text to ensure long titles and names will fit nicely, and you're happy with your draft. Now it's time to test it with real data! Select a Ticket Order using the search box below the canvas by last name or by Order Number, then click Preview Draft.
A new browser tab will open with the Ticket Order you selected, showing how your designs will look with the data from that Order.
You can keep this browser tab open and refresh the page after making edits to your layout to see live updates!
To make sure you're not missing any potential issues, be sure to test with several Orders that have different characteristics - different payment methods, a mix of general admission and reserved seating, and so forth.
Publish your layout
When you've completed your testing and you're happy with your design, it's time to publish the card! Click the "Publish" button at the bottom right on each card individually. This will only publish the layout for the card you're viewing.
You'll see a success message - click OK, then move on to the next card.
If you're getting started with the TDT for the very first time, there's one more step to activate the tool. That's covered in the introductory article here and you'll only have to do it once.
Best Practice Tips
Here are a few guidelines to help you create the best ticket layouts.
Don't allow elements to overlap
If you're trying to include a lot of elements on the layout and it just won't fit, making the borders overlap is not the solution! Even if you think that overlapping would only happen rarely, it makes the ticket illegible when it occurs. It's better for fields to be cut off than layered on top of each other.
To check whether anything could overlap, use the "View Element Borders" toggle!
Use the mock-up text to test for extreme scenarios
You can override the default name of the field that appears in the editor with mock-up text to see how the field would look with real information, and help you avoid problems later on. For example, some Events have very short names (Hamlet) while others have very long names (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum), and your ticket design needs to work for all the scenarios your organization is likely to encounter.
Double-click the field on the canvas or put your cursor in the mock up text bar to enter any text you'd like to see.
Frequently Asked Questions
Click on a question to view the answer.
Not to worry! This usually means that you haven't unchecked the Session Setting required to start using the tool.
If you've completed that step and are still experiencing the issue, try logging out of PatronManager, clearing your browser's cache, and then logging back in.
Absolutely - you can edit your ticket layouts anytime you'd like!
Perhaps you noticed an issue that wasn't apparent before, like something overlapping or landing on the ticket perforation. Or perhaps you're preparing for new pre-printed ticket stock and need to move some things around.
Just head back to the Ticket Design Tool and follow the steps outlined above to adjust your layout. Your changes to the draft won't affect your real tickets until you click "Publish" so you can experiment and test with real data as much as you'd like.
If a field overruns the bottom of the ticket, it can cause an extra blank ticket to print. If you're running into this issue, try toggling on border lines and ensuring that none of your borders go past the bottom edge. If in doubt, move the element up a bit or size it down slightly.
No. The Ticket Design Tool is only for editing your Point-of-Sale tickets (i.e. Boca tickets).
The Print at Home ticket will be retired in future, as it does not meet modern accessibility standards and can slow down order processing. We encourage you to switch to Mobile Tickets instead!
No. To ensure accessibility and compatibility across devices, the online ticket and mobile ticket layouts are standardized.
If there's something you'd like to see changed on those layouts, please suggest a Product Idea!
Not today, but if this is something you'd like us to consider adding in future, please suggest a Product Idea!