What's new in Elevent

In WordPress v0.5.11, we introduce a new plugin setting to help demystify when and how templates are applied to single event landing pages.

When using a page builder like Elementor, there tends to be a bit of a tug of war between WordPress itself and the templates applied by the page builder. For Elevent Events, we let you explicitly check off whether WordPress templates or a page builder's templates should rule the day.

If this checkbox is checked, the default WordPress templates that come with the plugin will take priority. You can copy, modify, and paste your own custom versions into your theme.

While checked, page builder templates (e.g. Elementor) will take precedence.

For your own integrated website to detect new Elevent events and showtimes, events need to meet certain conditions--conditions to consider an event a "ticketable" event, and thus, ready to feature on a website.

Not only would an event have to have future showtimes with tickets, but at least one of those tickets would have to be scheduled to go on sale.

We realized it was inconvenient to have to schedule ticket on-sale times just to alert your website, "Hey, there are some new events here."

Now, an event needs to pass only the these checks to show up on an integrated website:

• An event needs to exist
• It needs to have at least one showtime in the future
• That showtime needs to have at least one ticket in it
• All of the tickets cannot be off-sale (completed) -- i.e., all tickets were on sale but aren't any longer

This change impacts any website that uses the Elevent for WordPress plugin or integrates to Elevent's External Web API.

There shouldn't be any change one needs to make to any bespoke website integration or WordPress plugin user. The info that is provided is the exact same--this change just accelerates when websites will see and know about future events and showtimes.

Learn more about the External Web API here.

For those of you in jurisdictions where the sales tax specifies midpoint rounding, you can save yourself a few dollars in over-reported sales tax with this new rounding policy.

Before, fractions of a cent would round either up or down--up by default. With midpoint rounding, calculated sales tax will round a fractional cent up if it is >= .5 of a cent, and down if it < .5 of a cent.

To enable this rounding policy, visit Manage Taxes in the Tools menu.

Press the button to edit any existing sales taxes. Change the rounding rule to Midpoint.

Learn more about the exciting world of sales tax here.

To make the multi-scheduler more efficient, as you queue up showtimes to create, your most recently selected allocation template will now remain selected. This saves you some as you quickly schedule many showtimes at once.

Not using the Multi-Scheduler, Copy Showtime, or the Airtable import to streamline your process? Learn more about each in the knowledgebase.

Several versions of the WordPress plugin have been released--let's get caught up.

Restructured the CSS styling for cleaner customization

For a cleaner, easier time designing every aspect of the plugin to look sharp and consistent, we took a major pass through the entire plugin to make CSS styling optimal.

We did extensive testing to minimize any unexpected changes that might occur from any customization you have already done, but backup before updating and do a review just in case.

Also new & improved:

• Revised it so user-friendly text (instead of the slugs) displays in the filter dropdown in calendar views
• Added the ability to specify in-person, live-stream, and/or virtual showtime types in the elevent_calendar_view shortcode. This introduces the ability to display virtual, on-demand streaming windows as date ranges in the event calendar views.
• New taxonomies will now have a default color. So color-coding on the event calendar will not require additional color picking unless you want to change colors
• Added some default styling to enforce a min-width on the ticket quantity selector. This was done to protect ticket widgets from not showing the numeral on smaller mobile devices on some websites
• Changed the default color of navbar widgets to show on light backgrounds--the more common default
• Fixed a bug causing event search results not to display due to exceptional leading "A" and "The" sorting

Order Fields--those random checkboxes, dropdowns, and text fields you can add alongside items and transactions to collect extra bits of information. It's been fascinating to see the wide range of use.

We realized you couldn't easily group a set of responses into a date range--making it difficult to parse out responses from one season to the next.

So we've added a purchase date column to the Customer Order Field Report to help you do just that.

Learn more about collecting extra info with Order Fields here.

Credentials--printed badges or labels--can have a printed photo to help personalize and identify patrons on sight.

At any time, a person with one or more credentials can upload or, if on a mobile device, take a photo, crop it, and resize it in the Elevent account. Or if acquiring the credential on goelevent.com, add a photo if interrupted during the purchase of an item with a credential.

None of this is new.

Now, for the first time, you can prompt users during a sale of a pass or ticket package to enter their credential information before checkout--and also ask for a photo for each credential. All while embedded on your website.

This is an especially valuable feature when making free or low-cost passes or ticket badges available from your own website--reducing the number of customer follow-ups you need to undertake.

Learn more about collecting customer info on credentials here.

Before, we weren't doing a great job isolating transactions partially or fully paid for using Elevent gift card Extras. They were showing up as Payment "none".

You can now see explicitly broken-out dollar amounts for Elevent gift card usage in transaction-level reporting.

See, there it is. A column titled "Gift Card".

You'll find it in these reports:

• Stripe Reconciliation
• Transaction Reconciliation
• Staff Shift

You will also see Gift Card usage broken out in Order History

Gift Card are a type of Extra in Elevent. Learn more about managing gift cards here.

Available to Premiere and Enterprise tiers only.

We're introducing customer-facing tipping during walk-up transactions via the Box Office and Concessions app. This is an easy and cost-effective way to supplement your staff take-home.

It is not lost on us that this can be a contentious topic. Think carefully about how you use this feature and your staff and compensation policies.

Enabling tipping is simple--go to Terminal Settings in the Back Office, where you created card-reading terminals in the first place.

You'll be able to set 3 percentage-based suggested tips. Of course users can opt not to tip.

You can also set a "smart threshold" - a cutoff point where the suggested tips will be flat dollar amounts.

You can also configure Tipping to apply only on certain types of products on an order. So if you want tipping to calculate only on the concessions in an order, you can uncheck other types of items.

You can see a pretty bad video of the entire tipping process in action, and learn more about how to set it up, here in the docs.

In keeping with the late 2022/early 2023 season of total rewrites, enter Credentials.

We have ambitious plans for credentials and all the various ways there are to provide attendees with a something that gets them into one or many doors.

Before building more on top, we gave credentials a total once-over to make them easier to set up, a bit more flexibility, and a real performance boost.

They've moved

Credentials used to live on their own in the main menu of the Back Office. No longer!

You'll find credential setup now in the submenu of any pass, ticket package, or membership.

We eliminated the ability to have a single credential work with multiple passes, ticket packages, or memberships. Because nobody really seemed to care about that. So they are one-to-one now, which is more intuitive anyway.

They're more Open-ended

You used to choose from a small list of pre-defined fields. Now, credentials contain an optional selection of:

• First Name
• Last Name
• Photo
• Custom Data 1
• Custom Data 2

You can use those custom data fields to collect any bit of info--name of an organization, a creative work, title, favorite color, what have you.

Requiring Credential Info Now Works in Widgets

This is a big one. It is now possible to interrupt a purchase and require entry of credential information within the embedded widgets on your own website.

They're more flexible

You can choose which custom fields will actually print--or are just there to collect bits of info. Anything that isn't printed is considered optional.

Also, all users can now save just some of the information on a credential and enter the rest later.

Custom credential layouts were a very tedious affair before--it's now easier for us to create custom badge layouts and we have more options planned for the future.

Tools & Printing

The pre-existing Credential Import and Credential Management & Printing tools work now with the new credentials. So you can still import and assign credentials from Airtable even if you don't have emails for all recipients.

Heads up!

Since the switchover, you will find that previously printed credentials will show up as unprinted. This can make tracking credentials a little tricky, but we made this switch when the least # of credentials were hanging around.

Impact on older credentials

Since this is a ground-up renovation of credentials, older credentials

Get (re)started on credentials here.