New Tricks for the Old App

HoldMyTicket is ecstatic to announce our epic renovation of the Tools menu in your account.

First, all the existing features have been completely updated. In fact, you can read about each tool individually to see what has changed. Plus, if you’re brand new to our Tools, the posts can serve as a quick start guide! Here they are:

• Calendar Widgets
• Attractions
• Export Ninja
• Users
• The Website Content Manager

Polished Interface

Second, the interface has been given an extreme makeover. All the different tools are exceptionally easy to navigate, come with built-in instructions and look just spiffier in general. The sleeker, more efficient design has also resulted in a slimming down of the menubar up top in the Venues interface: we’ve incorporated the Users tab into the Tools menu, where it belongs.

Surveys

Third, we are introducing an entirely new tool: Surveys.

Surveys are sets of questions you can attach to any event or even an individual ticket type in order to gather more info about your patrons. This could be crucial in planning future events! Read up at the link above to get the details.

Roadmap

We plan on bringing you even more tools as things progress, keep an eye out for what lies ahead.

Feedback

As always, your comments and questions help us on our mission to forge the best ticketing tools available. Feel free to contact us with questions, comments, reviews or anything else that pops into your head at support@holdmyticket.com,

visit our Twitter feed @hmtnews,

or post on our Facebook wall.

Photo © Copyright Chris Downer and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons License

What it’s All About

The Export Ninja Tool in the Venues app is the faucet for the big pool of data you’ve collected from all your ticket sales. This handy feature can present that data right in your browser as an html file, or you can download it as an Excel (.xls) spreadsheet or a text-based comma-separated file (CSV) or tab-separated file.

The newest feature we’ve added to the Export Ninja is the versatile filtering system: you can filter your data either by event or venue, and, if filtering by venue, you can filter by tags or dates to focus on the events you’re most interested in. The possibilities are endless, allowing you to adjust your data file with scalpel-like precision.

How it Works

(Click on any photo to view it full-sized.)

Fire up the Export Ninja by clicking on its tab in the Tools section of your Venue management account.

Filtering

You’ll first want to decide if you’re going to filter by venue or by event.

By Venue

Selecting Venues in the Venue Filter

Clicking the Venue radio button will bring up a field with a list of your venues. You can select one by clicking on its name or select multiple venues by clicking and dragging (or by holding down shift and using the arrow keys).

Adding tag filters

Next, you can filter by tags. These will narrow down the records even further, and they can refer to any number of keywords you believe would help focus the information you are going to export: artists, genres, promoters – anything.

Filtering by date

Finally, you can filter your data even further by date. Filtering by date is actually required, as leaving the dates open will tend to produce gigantic files. Just enter the dates you want either manually or using the calendar drop-down.

By Event

Filtering by Event

Filtering by event is even easier. Click the Event radio button, and a blank field will pop up. Begin typing the name of the event you’re looking for, and the Export Ninja will search through our database to find it. Hit enter to lock it in, and simply click on the empty field and begin typing again to add another. You can add as many as you’d like.

Note: You can’t filter by tag or date when filtering by events, because you’ve already narrowed it down more than either of those tags could do!

Exporting

Choosing an export file type

Once all your filtering is in place, Export Ninja will calculate how many records will now be ready for export; you’ll see the number displayed at the bottom of the screen above the file type buttons.

Exporting is simply a matter of clicking on the button corresponding to the file type you’re after. HTML will open up a page in your browser, while the three other choices will create a file for downloading.

And that’s all there is to it! All the information entered by your ticket-buyers will appear in the files. Don’t forget to check out the new Survey Information column, which stores the answers created by our new Surveys Tool.

Let the data harvest begin!

You might already be familiar with HMT’s Embeddable Calendar Widgets, but we’ve made some improvements. The updated Calendar Widgets tool makes it easier than ever to generate embeddable code to export and display your calendars in a number of different formats and designs.

The Calendar Export widget allows you to share your events in text, html and csv formats using a number of different design templates.

The javascript and flash Embeddable Calendar widgets have improved greatly – embed graphically rich calendars across the web as a slick list view or the NEW month view.

Rounding out the team of widgets are the Flash Flyer Rotator and an embeddable iCal Icon.

How it Works

(Click on any photo to view it full-sized.)

The Calendar Widgets Tool

Calendar Widgets is the very first tool listed under the Tools tab in the Venues app. You will see all five choices laid out in the center window.

The operation of each of these widget-generators is ultra-simple and is the same across the board.

First select the type of widget you would like to generate. You will be taken to a widget creation page.

Export Calendar - An example of embeddable Calendar Widgets

Select the venue whose event page you’d like to embed the widget on. You can select multiple venues by holding Command/Ctrl or Shift. Next, you can customize your widget using the available drop-down menus, fields and checkboxes. You have your choice of templates, formats, styles, colors and a few other options. A preview of your widget will appear in the field at the bottom of the page.

Code generated for a Flash Flyer Rotator

Finally, click Get Code to create a window displaying the code to embed. Select the code, copy it and paste it into the right source document for your website.

What It’s All About

The Staff Users tool allows you to create, manage and edit multiple user profiles for your Venues account.

What It Can Do

In addition to enabling other people to access your Venues account, you can specify each user’s level of permissions for reports, venues and events.

How It Works

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The Users Tool - Viewing the list of users

From the Users tab, you will see all the users for the account outside of the main account, followed by each user’s e-mail address. This e-mail address will be the username for that profile.

As you might expect, Add Staff Users creates a new user, Edit brings you to a profile editing screen, and Remove will remove that user from the list.

Editing a User Profile - Note the choice of permissions

From either the Add Staff Users or Edit page (they are almost identical), you can edit the user’s name, e-mail address/username, profile password, and permissions.

The check boxes on the left allow or deny that user access to the various Venues reports, and the table on the right will list your account’s venues and offer you the chance to allow or deny that user access to view, modify or read reports from that particular venue.

Hit Add to save changes. That’s it!

What It’s All About

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Introducing the Surveys Tool

How it Works

Creating a Survey

Access Surveys by clicking on the Surveys section of the Tools tab in the Venues app.
Add Surveys brings you to the creation screen.

Simply click on the names of the field types to add them to a survey. I've added four here.

From here, first name your survey, then simply select the type of field you want and give it the preferences you choose. You can keep creating new fields or duplicate existing ones (if you want to create a lot of the same type).

Editing Survey Fields. I have filled out the details for one checkbox field and am working on a multiple choice field.

Click the Field Settings tab to edit the details your fields. Make as many changes as you’d like, as often as you’d like.

To save your survey: Just click Add, and you’re done.

Attaching the Survey to an Event or Ticket

Entire Events

Adding a Survey to an Entire Event. Here I've added the "Cinema" survey to this event and have checked the "Sync" box to make sure it updates when I update the survey.

Visit the event of your choice from the Events tab and scroll down to the Survey bar. Click the bar, then select your survey from the drop-down menu to choose that survey to attach to your event. You will see a sample survey displayed below. There is a link back to the Surveys tool to use if you need to go back edit something.

Note: By default, the survey will be attached once, as-is, to the event. To make sure that the survey attached to your event is continuously updated, be sure to check the Sync box. Now your survey will be updated whenever the survey is updated in the Surveys tool.

Individual Tickets

Here I've added the "Cinema" survey to General Admission Tickets and have chosen to Sync it.

Attaching surveys to individual tickets is as easy as scrolling to the Tickets section of your event’s edit page, selecting Advanced Options and selecting Survey. As above, you’ll have the option to Sync the ticket’s survey with the survey stored in the Tools section.

Linking the Survey to Multiple Events

Do you want to include your survey with Repeating Events? You can set Survey Preferences for each venue, so you don’t have to add the same survey over and over again for each new event.

Using the Survey Preferences section of the Venues tab, you can choose a default survey to attach to all your new events

Take a quick visit to the Venues tab and scroll down to the Survey Preferences section. Click to open it, then choose a default survey from the drop-down menu on the left. When you Save the venue, it will now have a default survey for events happening there. This means that, every time you create a new event, the survey you selected will automatically be switched on and ready to go.

If your default survey does not fit with a particular event, you can always turn it off using the Surveys section of the Events tab.

Viewing your Captured Data

Simple Stats

The simplest but least detailed way to check how a survey is being answered is to click the Stats button associated with that survey in the list of surveys displayed when first accessing the Surveys tool (see first photo above).

A couple piecharts showing the breakdown of survey answers

Clicking this button will bring you to the Stats view, which provides you with piecharts showing a breakdown of the answers for your survey, organized by question. Good for a quick assessment of how things are going.

Using the Export Ninja

The information collected from your survey will make its way into the customer information you can print from the Export Ninja tool.

Opening the Export Ninja

Once you have brought up the Export Ninja screen by clicking on the Exports tab in Tools,

The bottom of the Export Ninja page. Once you've chosen which customer data to bring up, select a filetype for export.

use the fields available to specify which customer data you will pull (if you need to narrow it down) then simply choose an export file type. The survey data will be located in the chart or document you end up creating.

Using the Will Call List

Using the Survey Preferences section of the Venues tab, you can set a default survey to attach to all your new events

You can view survey data for individual ticket sales by visiting the Will Call list for your event.

Visit the Events tab, find your event, click on it, then click on the Will Call List. You will see a list of attendees; click on the Folder icon to bring up transaction details. You will see either event survey data or ticket survey data or both, depending on what you have added.

What it’s All About

The Attractions tool keeps a library of artists, entertainers & performers within hand’s reach, allowing you to easily attach them to your events. You can store website urls, photos, videos, and content for every attraction. You involve this media with your event when you attach it using the Showtimes section of your event editing page.

How it Works

Creating and Editing Attractions

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The Attractions Tool - Viewing the list of stored attractions

Let’s start at the beginning. The Attractions tab will bring you to a list of all existing attractions in your account. From here you can Add Attractions or Edit existing ones. If your list of attractions is particularly long, you can use the Search field to find it.

Editing an Attractions's basic info, web presence links and media files

Once all the information is in the right fields, click "Save Changes"

When in the attraction creation/editing screen, there are fields for including the Attraction’s general info, online presence (website, Facebook page, etc.) and media in the form of images, videos or text descriptions. Click either Add or Save Changes (depending on which screen you are in) to save your changes.

Adding Attractions to your Events

Access your event’s edit page, either by finding the event in one of the listings of the Events tab or by creating a new event. Then find the Showtimes section.

Adding Attractions through Showtimes

The fields for the first showtime will automatically display. Enter the date and time of the Attraction’s show, then type the name of the attraction in the field to the right. It should automatically bring up the name of any matching attractions. Click on the name to add it to the field. It will be added automatically, no need to save.

Note: A date and time is required for each showtime.

Clicking Add Showtime will prepare another line, so you can add another showtime with another attraction.

Authorize.net Response Times

What this picture shows is that there is a connection difficulty with Authorize.net. That connection speed at the bottom, which should be same at the top, reflects Authorize.net’s ability to connect to us, and it is about 300x larger than it should be – a number large enough to indicate a disconnect.

As you can see on Twitter, other people are still having trouble, though it seems some are doing fine:

Authorize.net on Twitter

We’re sorry for the inconvenience – check out our own twitter feed @hmtnews to find out when things will be back up!

1. What is a Boxoffice user account?

Using HoldMyTicket’s Boxoffice terminal requires a unique Boxoffice user account. Giving each user a separate account allows better tracking of sales and allows you to fine-tune all the different roles in your ticket-selling team.

A Boxoffice user account is separate from your venue account (the account you use to manage your venue and event information). If you are a venue manager or promoter who wants access to our ticket sales terminal – you’ll need your own box-office user account.

2. Who needs a Boxoffice user account?

You should create Boxoffice user accounts for anyone who sells tickets.

Ticket sales could be in person, over the phone, through fax, by e-mail, carrier pigeon or pony express – any method you choose, outside of selling online. Since selling tickets online is automated, there is no need to create a Boxoffice user account for online sales.

3. How do I set up a Boxoffice user account?

Because Boxoffice users carry so much responsibility for your venue, Boxoffice user accounts can only be created by directly contacting our staff via email (team@holdmyticket.com) or phone (505-886-1251).

For starters, each user will be assigned a name, email address and password (of your choice).

Next, we will ask you what tasks and responsibilities you want to give this user.  There are a lot of different factors to consider, and we will work with you to tailor-fit a user’s profile to the specific way your venue wants to sell its tickets.

For example:

• John Johnson, who takes tickets at the door, can be assigned to accept cash for tickets and access will call lists. He won’t be able to take credit card or check; he won’t be able to read reports; and he won’t be able to void transactions.
• Suzie Smith, on the other hand, works in the box office during working hours and can take credit card and checks in addition to cash. She still cannot read reports or void transactions, however.
• Felicia Fox is Suzie’s manager. Not only can she accept any form of payment, but she can read reports on ticket sales and void transactions.

It all depends on what your venue needs.

4. Logging in to Boxoffice

Have everyone’s user accounts squared away? Great. Time to log in.

Visit www.holdmyticket.com/boxoffice to begin.

Log in to HMT Boxoffice here.

Tip: Make sure you are not going to http://www.holdmyticket.com/venues – that’s a completely different site!

Enter your username and password, and hit enter or click the Login button to access the Main Screen of HMT’s Boxoffice Terminal.

If your info was correct – you’re in!

To find out how to locate the right venue, load events and create ticket orders, check out Lesson 02!

| 忍術 Ticket Ninjutsu 忍術 |

Consider everyone’s different responsibilities carefully. Giving someone access to more tasks than they need can be confusing or risky – and providing too little access can force users to wait for approval from their supervisor on tasks they could be doing themselves – costing everyone time and energy.

Make all users aware of their level of access. This includes how they can accept payment, what venues they can sell tickets for, and whether or not they can void transactions.

HoldMyTicket is announcing the release of Ticket Dojo: a series of online tutorials for its ticketing platform. The lessons will progress in a gentle learning curve, allowing you the comfort of knowing for certain that you understand the basics before moving on to the more complex topics. You’ll be a Ticket Ninja in no time!

The lessons start today with an introduction to our Boxoffice app. We will be releasing more lessons on Boxoffice over the course of the next few weeks – with more topics to come.

Stay tuned, and happy training!

Photo: Ninja Sword Training on the Beach at Rick Tew’s NinjaGym™ Martial Arts Training and Fitness Camp in Thailand

* Not only can you print out an old-school will call list, HMT provides various forms of electronic will call lists. The will call list in your HMT account can be used on a laptop, tablet or smartphone to validate entrants. Or you can download our free iPhone app, WeGetIn®, which includes an interactive will call list. All check-ins on electronic will call lists are tracked and reported for you, just like they were scanned in with a scanner.

** A Mophie® modified iPod Touch comes with WeGetIn® installed on it, allowing you to scan the QR codes printed on E-Tickets using the iPods’s camera. These scanners include a built in extra battery, ensuring hours of worry free scanning.

*** The Linea Pro® modified iPod Touch also comes with WeGetIn® installed. It has a laser for super-fast scanning of ticket barcodes. This feature, in conjunction with WeGetIn®, is the fastest form of ticket validation in the industry. The Linea Pro® also features a credit card swiper, allowing for both door sales and credit card validation.

Happy Scanning!

To request scanners for your events contact the Team at HoldMyTicket! We’ll set you up.