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wendeth rauf
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July 25, 2013 at 1:58 pm
My non-profit is looking at purchasing Event Espresso, but have some questions not answered in the test drive. 1. Can we use our current ticket printer (BACA)? 2. We currently allow people to purchase flex passes and choose seats once tickets for shows come open, I’m assuming we can offer this with ee? 3. Is the seating chart add on a yearly subscription? 4. Is each QR code for tickets unique? 4. Does the mobile ticket have to be a certain brand (for android phones for instance) or does this work with ANY smart phone which displays QR? 5. So far I only see a shopping cart option on one particular page….can we incorporate a shopping cart so they can add classes/tickets? (I did a test and it didn’t work via the test drive). Can we keep our current pay machines for people paying at our box office? (if we use paypal online, but another gateway in the store) 6. Can I test drive the seating chart?
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Dean
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July 26, 2013 at 2:11 am
Hello Wendeth,
1) I am not sure what a BACA is, but the tickets are in HTML or PDF format.
2) No, I don’t believe this would be possible, unless you set a section aside as reserved for flex pass users and then have them contact you with seat choice. Otherwise the seat is selected at the time of registration.
3) The licence is for one year of support and updates. Once the licence has expired the purchased plugins will still function but support and updates will cease until a new licence/renewal is purchased.
4) Yes, unless the ticket is a group booking then those are identical. The mobile phone app works with iPhones and Android (ver 1.5+) phones only, but particular brand is irrelevant
5) The shopping cart functionality is provided by our Multiple event registration add on plugin. It allows visitors to add as many events as desired to their cart. Once added they then go to the cart page to confirm details and start the payment process. There isn’t a way to include a secondary or alternative shopping cart system, but if you are just needing events added to the cart then it can handle that.
Event Espresso is an online registration system, but it can use multiple payment gateways. I’m not quite sure of how you would incorporate the system into your existing offline system, but it may well be possible depending on the set up.
6) It isn’t set up on the test drive site. I have sent you some temporary credentials for one of my test sites with Seating chart installed, feel free to play around with it.
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wendeth rauf
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July 26, 2013 at 7:45 am
Hello Dean, thank you very much for your well organized answer. I imagine you’ve answered all of my questions fully, but I do need some clarification. The “multi-event” plug in is exactly what we want. However, on the test drive it was only allowing me to add multi events if I was going through the “events” tab, not if I tried to register via the calendar. Perhaps this is the way it is, or perhaps this is just because of the test drive. I’m sorry if you’ve answered that, I’m just not completely sure I understand and this is key for our needs.
And, I’m sorry, I have one more question. We would like customers to be able to register their “attendees” (children) for classes. I know they can create a customer profile, will they be able to save each on of their children in their profile and simply select which “attendee” will be taking a class or they will need to fill that out each time?
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Dean
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July 26, 2013 at 8:44 am
Hi,
No problem, ok so the Multiple Event Registration plugin (MER for short) can currently only be accessed via the event list, not the calendar. I think some people may have done some modifications but it isnt in the standard plugin.
Regarding the attendees, each attendee is treated as a separate registrant, so they would need to fill them out each time. The WP User Integration addon (Members for short) will allow a logged in user to have their profile data transferred to the form but it only works for that user not other registrants.
Hope that helps, and feel free to ask further questions or for clarification.
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wendeth rauf
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August 6, 2013 at 4:01 pm
Hey there. Still more questions 🙂
1. When a customer is (for instance) selecting a seat for a show. Does the system block that from someone else also selecting it at the same time, even if the first user hasn’t completed the transaction. And if the seat is marked as taken, what is the window of time a customer has.
2. During the test drive I noticed on the left (when I was “checking out”) there were upcoming events listed (suggestive selling). However, when I clicked it to see what would happen it did indeed take me to that event not letting me ever finish the first event. I guess what I’m wondering is, can a customer not “add” to their events once they go to the shopping cart?
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Dean
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August 6, 2013 at 11:39 pm
Hi,
1) Yes and one hour.
2) Yes a customer can add to their events, but they need to click an add to cart link. These links are added automatically to the event list when Multiple Event Manager is active, but for the single event registration would need a shortcode in the description or a template modification to add them in.
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wendeth rauf
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August 7, 2013 at 12:23 pm
Okay, so the “window” to purchase the seats you selected is for one hour? Does that mean even if they close their window the seats will show taken for the full 60 min? I’m sorry, we’ve had some issues with our current system and trying to avoid similar problems
Also, I think I’m still fuzzy on the “links”. I was going through my shopping cart and selected two events, then I was taken to my cart. Through that process I noticed “upcoming events” and selected one. At that time it only allowed me to register and pay for that one events. Is that just b/c of test drive or can that be modified?
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wendeth rauf
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August 7, 2013 at 12:31 pm
Also, I noticed you have a free version, which is limited, but I’m wondering if it would be worth it on my end to install that and work with it. Our site isn’t live yet and maybe that could be done on our side as a test run?
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Sidney Harrell
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August 7, 2013 at 6:54 pm
Yes, the seat is reserved for one hour even if they close their window.
The links in the upcoming events widget as well as the calendar are links to the regular registration page for the event. You can work around this by disabling the registration form for your events and putting an add to cart link in the event description, so that the widget and calendar links will take the user to a page describing the event and giving them the opportunity to put the event in their cart.
You can feel free to use the free version of the plugin to try it out, as well as using the test drive site: https://eventespresso.com/pricing/test-drive-event-espresso/.
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wendeth rauf
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August 12, 2013 at 9:29 am
hey there, I’ve been asked to confirm the issue with the window of tickets. our current system allows only 10 min to purchase the seats or they become available again. Your system is one hour? My boss is a little concerned about this.
Also, I’ve installed the lite version to give it a test. I’m not entirely certain I’ve done everything correct. I’ve got my sample landing page, I’ve created an event marked “open”, but it’s not showing up on the landing page. Nor do I have a calendar showing up. Perhaps I’m missing something? I did go through set up and select the sample landing page in the settings.
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Sidney Harrell
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August 12, 2013 at 3:03 pm
I found in the code where you can change the reservation time from 60 minutes to 10 minutes. espresso-seating/lib/class/seating_chart.class.php line 414 change strtotime(“-60 minutes”) to strtotime(“-10 minutes”). And then the text that displays is in espresso-seating/lib/js/seating_chart.class.php line 175.
The calendar is an add-on, and none of the add-ons will not work with the lite version. To demo the full version, you can do the test-drive, available here: https://eventespresso.com/pricing/test-drive-event-espresso/
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wendeth rauf
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August 12, 2013 at 5:53 pm
Thank you for that. I’m not entirely sure at this point where that goes, but I’m glad to have that information. I’m okay w/o the calendar at this point I guess (i’ve done the test drive), but I am still concerned why my events are not populating into my events page.
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Josh
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August 13, 2013 at 8:01 am
Hi Wendeth,
You’ll need to be sure that your event start and end dates are formatted as YYYY-MM-DD and that the registration start and end dates allow for registration right now. Also, the calendar isn’t included with the lite version.
Please note that the Seating Chart add-on is not compatible with the Multi Event Registration add-on. I saw a mention of both of these add-ons and figured it would be good to clarify this point.
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wendeth rauf
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August 13, 2013 at 8:58 am
I’ve got the dates correct (I chose from the drop down calendar). I’ve also got it set as “open” (registration now). Anything else that would cause it to not show up.
May not matter, actually….if I understand correctly (and if I do we’ve all wasted a lot of time)….we can’t have a “shopping cart” for events AND have a seating chart for our ticket sales??? OR is it our customers could register for classes utilizing a shopping cart but not buy tickets at the same time.
Honestly, E.E. I bet people would pay slightly more for your product if you had a faster and easier way for someone to get questions answered.
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Josh
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August 13, 2013 at 9:07 am
Thanks for the feedback.
The seating chart isn’t compatible with Multi Event Registration. So if someone wanted to buy tickets for one show, they would have to purchase the tickets for each event in a separate transaction.
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wendeth rauf
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August 13, 2013 at 1:22 pm
Okay, I get they aren’t compatible together, what I need clarified is if we can use multi-event registration for our events/classes (non selected seating stuff)? also, does this mean they can’t buy tickets for multiple shows in one transaction? (if I want to buy tickets for both sat and sunday or a run OR buy tickets for one show and for a completely different show. I just want to be sure I’m taking ALL of the information to my boss…he’s going to ask these questions.
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Josh
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August 13, 2013 at 2:01 pm
You can use the Multi Event Registration feature if the event does not have a seating chart. If the event has a seating chart, tickets for that and other events will need to be purchased in a separate transaction.
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wendeth rauf
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August 14, 2013 at 7:38 am
Thank you Josh, I just wanted to make sure I was following you. I thought I had stated what I needed and I now I realize I didn’t do so properly and that led to confusion. I’m still not getting my events to post on my events page. This is a concern.
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Josh
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August 14, 2013 at 9:06 am
What is the shortcode that is on the events page?
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wendeth rauf
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August 14, 2013 at 12:13 pm
[SINGLEEVENT single_event_id=”monthly-international-film-7-52093609bc2ec”]
This is for one of the events.
[SINGLEEVENT single_event_id=”see-karls-collection-7-5208f3014d538″]
This is for the second
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Josh
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August 14, 2013 at 1:04 pm
If that’s the case then you are missing the shortcode that actually processes the registrations:
[ESPRESSO_EVENTS]
You can fix this by creating a new page, then placing the [ESPRESSO_EVENTS] shortcode on it, then go into Event Espresso>General Settings and point the Main Registration page to the new page.
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wendeth rauf
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August 14, 2013 at 2:40 pm
I “think” that’s what I’ve done. E.E. provided a page with that text there (I thought you wanted the shortcode from the event). In settings the page was set to the e.e. page. Then, when I was trying to deduce what was wrong, I followed the instructions creating a new page, putting the shortcode on the page and changing it in the settings. So far all I get when I preview the event is that shortcode on my webpage.
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wendeth rauf
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August 14, 2013 at 2:48 pm
I figured it out…it was missing from the permalink on the “events” page
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wendeth rauf
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August 27, 2013 at 9:17 am
Okay, I think I’m down to my last questions before we make the purchase.
I noticed on the website it says there are profiles for the customers. Do I understand this to mean they will create an i.d./password and when they purchase again in the future there will be saved information?
Also, we have members who are allowed to purchase tickets before they go on sale. Is there a way I can create sales open to only certain people?
Lastly….I noticed the instructions for installing the free/lite version, but will there be any assistance available for installing the purchased package?
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wendeth rauf
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September 3, 2013 at 12:44 pm
For some reason this question became “resolved”, however it wasn’t. I am still in need of a couple of answers before we are ready to commit to E.E. or to move on. Thank you
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Garth
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September 3, 2013 at 8:41 pm
Hi Wendeth,
How are you today?
IF you’re using the WP User Integration add-on and the user is logged-in to your website then Event Espresso will try to autofill their personal information fields. It can’t update the other custom fields on the registration form because it doesn’t store those fields to the user’s profile; those fields change on an event-by-event basis (https://eventespresso.com/product/espresso-members/).
The WP Users Integration (https://eventespresso.com/product/espresso-members/) add-on will allow you to make events “member only” so that only those who are logged into your website can register. After a certain time has passed you can turn that restriction off. Other than that, you can use the Admin pre-approval feature to manually approve people who register. After you approve someone they are sent details to complete their registration and payment.
Installing the lite version is very similar to purchasing the regular version. We can try to give you all the instruction you need to setup and configure Event Espresso. If you’re familiar with WordPress plugins you should be ok. We do have a premium service where we’ll do it for you too (Install and Configure service).
Sorry your thread was closed.
Let me know if I can do anything else for you.
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