Support

October 7, 2024 at 6:17 am

Hi Richard,

There are more options to display data more efficiently within the advanced editor than legacy so let’s figure out what happened here and what/if we can/need to change to make something clearer.

I’ll walk through the text here and also add a quick video at the end of this as it may be easier to highlight sections using that.

That said, I spent over an hour yesterday and could not figure out something as simple as the fact that I had inadvertently set the sale dates for my ticket incorrectly.

May I ask, what prevented you from seeing the ticket sale dates were incorrect?

For one thing, I naturally thought that if I clicked on “Assign Dates” it would assign the dates that the ticket was on sale.

I’m not sure I follow what you mean here, clicking the Assigned Dates allow you to select the datetimes the ticket is assigned to. This same feature was in the legacy editor but it was displayed differently.

Take a look here: https://monosnap.com/file/7gn6IVYd1AHkTfORDmcZosf7dj51MY

That is exactly the same event opened up in 2 tabs, one is advanced editor, the other legacy. In the first half of the video it shows the tickets assigned to the Datetime 1 of that event within that Assign Dates section, in the second that info is display in the advanced section of te ticket as a checkbox. How that feature functions between the 2 is the same, they assign the Ticket you are editing to a datetime (becuase tickets can be assigned to multiple datetimes within an event).

The difference is the data display and the filtering abilities you have when assigning the datetimes, that becomes much more useful as you have more that one datetime on an event.

That’s not what it means. In fact, I can’t figure out why that part of the workflow is named “Asign Dates”.

It’s labeled Assign Dates becuase that is exactly what you do to a ticket, you assign the datetimes relevant to that ticket in the same way EE has always worked with datetimes.

It appears to be the part of the workflow where the ticket is “Assigned” to the Event but even that part is not clear as to whether or not the ticket has been assigned to the event.

People define ‘event’ as different things when replying here, so what are you referring to when you say you assigne it to the event?

The ‘Event’ in terms of Event Espresso is the event as a whole, within that event you can have multiple ‘datetimes’ (which you can think of as instances of event, the same event may happen once a week for 4 weeks, its the same event just 4 times… so each is a datetime within that event) and then you have tickets within that event which may or may not be assigned to multiple datetimes (tickets will always be assigned to at least 1 datetime).

You don’t assign tickets to events, you assign them to datetimes. Whilst that may sound like I’m splitting hairs… events and datetimes have their own specific meanings within EE so its important.

Using the example I mentioned above, 1 event across 4 datetimes.

You could have 1 Ticket assigned to each individual datetime, allowing registrations for each datetime… OR you can have 1 Ticket assigned to ALL datetimes in that event, meaning if you register onto that ticket you are ‘attending’ all 4 of those datetimes. We need to have some way to manage that datetime assignment and thats what ‘Assign Dates’ is for.

Again, I’m not sure you’ve made much of this new interface intuitive. You’ve only increased the number of steps to add tickets to an event.

Which additional steps do you mean here? Datetimes and Ticket assignments have been a part of Event Espresso single EE4 was introduced so setting those has always been the case. The defaults assign tickets to datetimes in the same way legacy used to.

The classic interface where the dates are clearly visible allows me to see a ticket is still on sale or that I’ve set the dates correctly.

There are more options for this in the advanced than legacy rather than less. You have the options of what details to display and you can view the status of a ticket at a glance quicker than legacy.

Yes, we have some default that filter the ticket display for the standard event setup, but you can change those and EE will remember the options you set.

For example by default the editor will display all active and upcoming datetimes by default, that’s this default filter

https://monosnap.com/file/qnDyqOhUHduePGtThkWPsNMDvOkHta

Then what it will also do, is display ‘all on sale and sale pending (aka upcoming) tickets that are also linked to the current datetime on display based on the filters applied.

Thats these ticket filters: https://monosnap.com/file/yz8tynMBoypbRr8ggQnTvBRqtJH6Xc

(Linked ON means the tickets on display are also based on the datetimes displayed the display is linked based on the filters set)

So by default, it displays all active/upcoming tickets for the current active/upcoming datetimes. Thats a sensible default for the majority of users… but you have the options to change that AND also how that info is displayed.

For example the datetimes filter:

https://monosnap.com/file/xaTTtlZOG4gwQt7YYknUhRf8a4NzV8

You can set the datetimes to dipspaly based on the datetime status and the sales capacity. You can set which dates to display be it start date, end date or both (working through this I’ve found a bug with how the card displays both and we’ll get that fixed), the colour of the datetime box as its own meaning and in my example above is blue meaning the datetime is upcoming, green would be active.

Click the legend button to display an overview:

https://monosnap.com/file/WRqbG0F8XlbxYpjzczc2l5qRL2piFA

The card itself is also editable, you can set the Name, Description, capacity, dates and various other settings directly within the card (this is using the Datetime as an example but the same applies on tickets).

Datetimes: https://monosnap.com/file/3JN4Z32sswS8TS69uFx6oxOj7kxyH0

Tickets: https://monosnap.com/file/GuQwjrTDtoPJv2AIdIweY1t1hQX38f

If an of the above doesn’t highlight the section you were stuck in please do let me know and we can discuss it.

Heres a loom video walking through some of the options and how to change the display:

https://www.loom.com/share/95714a0eb9594cb0a14db9e3c986dc64?sid=08b54109-c15b-4968-bad7-950c49e0d2d4

October 7, 2024 at 9:21 am

More than happy to work through any feedback given from our users so if I sound dismissive, or defensive in my replies it’s not my intention but I’m aware I can often come across a little too direct 🙂

1. Notice, I can see and edit all the dates for my Event and Ticket dates start and end dates…

Question here is how often do you update the start/end times within a Datetime/Ticket? That information does not need to directly editable if its edited only a handful of times per event.

Viewing them is a different story and you can set EE to display BOTH the start/end dates (or sell from/until on tickets) if you need that info and updating them is then just a single additional click to get to the datepickers, that allow us to display more info relevant to each datetime. For example, TimeZone information is going to be much more relevant when/if we add the ability to specify which timezones specific events are in, along with other features we have planned for the future.

So you can have all the date information on display that the legacy editor had, editing them is slightly different but not drastically, one additional click to pen up a modal on the card.

…and quantity in one window.

That can still be edited in the same way, click the qty field and update.

With the new editor, I not only have to scroll down to see the information but I can’t easily get to the start and end dates but have to click into a date box on the Ticket to make those changes. This is where I got tripped up because I didn’t notice that the date icon for the ticket was where I set the start and end dates for the ticket.

Scroll down?

The advanced editor has a table view if you prefer the data to be output in that format? Granted you can’t edit the date fields in that view in the same way but you can have all of that information visible if preferred.

From a workflow perspective, how am I benefitting with the Advanced Ediitor. Not only cannot I not see my Evanet start and end dates in one computer window but I cannot get to all the fields by simply clicking into all the important information I need to assign.

I guess I don’t follow how having the event dates directly visible and editable whilst editing tickets changs the workflow here?

Your event datetimes you set up within the edit, you assign the start/end dates for the datetime itself and that’s your instance of the event… right? Those are set, that’s the date your event is happening.

Why does having that on display (which it is) change the workflow for tickets? You wouldn’t edit datetimes and tickets together at the same time.

But the change isn’t purely based on workflow, there’s multiple reasons we’ve changed to the advanced editor and a big one is how max_input_vars can completely mess up events if you exceed the limit on the server. With the the Advanced editor that doesn’t happen. We’ve also paved the way for upcoming features to be added into the editor which we wouldn’t have been able to to with the older interface.

Recurring events, would have been very limit with the old editor.

2. I think the assign Datetimes thing threw me off because I’ve always just added tickets to a single event and just put start and end dates to when the tickets went on sale. Because the start and end dates for when tickets on sale were now hidden under another button I had to click to add them I was stuck trying to think of ticket dates by using the Assign Dates feature.

Assigning datetimes has always been a part of Event Espresso, originally it was in the advanced ticket (and datetime) options, now it’s part of the Ticket Assignment Manager. So to me, this sounds more of an issue with being used to the legacy editors way of doing things and adjusting to that change.

Your default ticket would have already been assigned to the datetime in the event, especially if you only have a single datetime, all tickets in that event will be assigned to it.

So I’m wondering now if you’d have know the datetime icon loaded the date pickers for that section, would you have been as frustrated here?

Just to note, there are things about the advanced editor I don’t like, its not ‘my project’ so I’m not sitting here all defensive over something I designed myself because I didn’t.

Because of this, if there is one event, the workflow was easy because the tickets being sold were for that one Event datetime grouping. Thus, the added steop of having to assign a ticket to a Datetime made no sense to me. In hundreds of events I had used prior to the new Advanced Editor, I had never had to assign or unassign a ticket to a Datetime and now I’m being forced to do this as an “Advanced” feature. It made no sense to me.

The legacy editor automatically assigned the default tikets add when creating a new event to the current datetime in that event.

Thats exactly the same in the Advanced Editor.

You don’t need to assign tickets to a datetime if you have a single datetime on an event, they will be assigned by default.

Maybe it only makes sense for the workflow to force the user to assign Tickets to a Datetime if there is going to be more than one for the event. I may be wrong but that’s probably 90% of events anyway.

Can you walk through this with me?

When are you seeing it force you to assign a date?

I’m asking because creating an event created a default datetime and ticket (or multiple tickets if your added multiple default tickets)… that ticket will already be assigned to the datetime. That setup is the same as legacy because it’s a core part of how EE handles datetimes and tickets. Legacy and Advanced editor MUST create a ticket and assign a ticket to it to generate and event, the default ticket will always be assigned to the single datetime generated by default because it has to be, but above your saying its not (by default)?

I’ll see if we can improve on this but I need to understand further.

If you prefer to do a Google hangout to walk through it if that’s easier to show it I’m more than happy to schedule one in.