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January 2025 Release Notes: https://help.pm.leapevent.tech/a/1908802
Check out the latest PatronManager features and updates, and keep an eye on your email for your exact upgrade date!
Learn more about how you can save time and improve your data quality, with automatic qualification to bring good data into your system faster, improved handling for Draft Orders and Reservations to avoid unintentionally tying up inventory, an exciting Salesforce update for list views, and more.
Read on for all the details!
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Register for the Release Webinar on Thursday, January 30 at 3PM Eastern to learn all about these updates, get a sneak peek at what's coming next, and have your questions answered, live!
Automatic Qualification
If you're familiar with qualification (which all PatronManager users should be!), you know that this important step to validate and merge incoming Contact records can be pretty time-consuming.
We're making it faster by reducing the number of records you have to check manually, and letting the system take care of more work automatically!
How does it work? Two ways:
- By automatically merging if there's an exact match
- By automatically qualifying if the Contact is brand new
Let's take a closer look at each - click to expand the details!
Heads up: you need to have Mobile Tickets enabled to get the full benefit of these updates. If you haven't done that yet, don't delay!
As you may be aware, this happened already for online Ticket Orders. We've now extended it to internal box office orders (if you have Mobile Tickets enabled), as well as Contacts created via PatronManager Signup Forms.
Put simply, the system will check to see if there's one exact match in your system for the new Contact.
If it finds one, it will automatically merge the new Contact record with the existing one, keeping the ID of the existing Contact.
If the system finds more than one match, the new Contact will go to your Unqualified Contacts list so you can decide which record (if any) should merge with the new one.
PatronManager will check each new Contact created from an online or box office Ticket Order (if you have Mobile Tickets enabled) to see if there are any potential matches. It will also check new Contacts created via PatronManager Signup forms.
If there are no matches, and if the Contact record includes a First Name, Last Name, and Email, PatronManager will automatically add that Contact as a new, qualified record. It will use the default record types and Account naming conventions you've defined in PatronSignup Settings.
If there isn't enough data for automatic qualification (for example, if the record doesn't have the Last Name filled in), it will go to your Unqualified Contacts list so you can qualify it manually.
Additional notes about automatic qualification
PatronManager will not automatically qualify Contacts for new online Donations, Contacts you import manually, or Contacts created via integrations like Emma, PatronStorm, or MailChimp. You'll continue to qualify those normally.
Please suggest Product Ideas if you'd like automatic qualification to cover more scenarios!
You may have more questions about how this feature works. How does it match? How does merging work? What's the best way to ensure high-quality data and consistent formatting?
We've got a whole article with more details - check it out here.
Other improvements
Every release includes less obvious features, functionality, and fixes to make PatronManager even better.
Better handling for Draft Orders and Reservations
PatronManager will now warn you before you abandon a Draft Order in the box office, to ensure you're not leaving inventory tied up by accident. While Drafts are automatically deleted after a period of time, any seat that's on hold is a seat that can't be sold!
If you click "New Order" without completing or saving your existing Draft, you'll see a message like this:
From here you can Cancel (1) to return to your in-progress Draft Order, Save as Reservation (2) to save it and start a new Order, or Delete Draft (3) to release any held inventory and start a new Order.
You'll have to add a Last Name (or attach an existing Contact record) before you can save as a Reservation. This ensures you won't have any mysterious nameless Orders holding valuable seats.
Chargeback alert on the Event Summary and Performance Reports
Chargebacks occur when a patron disputes a charge on their credit card, and can take some time to resolve. While the dispute is in progress, the Ticket Order gets a special Status of "Chargeback Pending".
If you run the Event Summary Report or the Performance Report and it includes any Ticket Orders in that "Chargeback Pending" Status, you'll see a new alert at the top of the report:
You can click the link in the alert to reach the PatronTicket Orders tab with the "Exceptions" filter pre-selected. Click "Apply Filter" to view all orders with any kind of exception status, including those with chargebacks in progress.
If you'd like more detail about disputed charges in the report itself, please suggest a Product Idea and let us know specifically what you'd like to see and how you would use that information. Thanks!
Improved Credit Card Terminal Selection
We made some improvements to how you select and change the credit card terminal you're using (or not using, if you're taking payments over the phone).
First, we relabeled the button you use to change terminals to say, well, "Change Terminal" (it used to say "Reconfigure Device" which sounds pretty neat but is not what that button does).
We also moved the "No Terminal" option to the top of the list (1) so it's always easy to find, and made the "select" options for each terminal into nicer buttons (2).
Salesforce update: multi-column sorting for related lists and list views
Did you know that Salesforce (the platform that underpins PatronManager) also releases several major updates every year? Their upcoming Spring '25 release includes a couple exciting Salesforce Ideas!
Sorting by multiple columns lets you order information on related lists (the tables of related records that appear on, for example, Contact and Account pages) and list views (lists of records on a tab, like the Accounts tab) by more than one criteria. For example, you might sort a Donations list view by Close Date and then by Amount as shown in the example below.
Want to learn more? Check out the announcements in Salesforce's Release Notes:
Salesforce releases roll out gradually, but you can expect to have this new feature available in your account within a few weeks.
Are you using the new iOS ticket scanning app?
If so, how do you like it? We'd love your feedback!
Not sure what we're talking about? Learn more here.
Waiting for the Android version? Be sure to vote up this Product Idea to be notified when it's available!
We'd love to hear it! Please suggest a Product Idea in the Client Community to tell us what you'd like to see and why.
We're working on the Android version of the app now, and we're excited to continue improving it as we go along.
We're so glad! Could you take a moment to review it on the app store? This helps other PatronManager clients know what to expect.
- On an iOS device where the app is installed, open the App Store and search for PatronManager
- Leave us a review!
Here's a direct link to the store listing, though as noted you'll need to open it on a device where the app is installed in order to leave a review: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/patronmanager/id6621180405
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!
