What's New?

Performance and design updates

With things on the quieter side this winter, a lot of updates have been made around performance, scalability, and reliability in preparation for a big 2021.

Amazon EventBridge Integration

Shopify now sends all webhook payloads directly via Amazon EventBridge, and are processed by a Serverless lambda function, as opposed to HTTP webhooks previously. This means:

• Faster processing of new order data
• More reliable processing of new order data (fewer duplicate and/or missing webhooks)
• Much more scalable and will be able to handle large rapid bursts of new orders without scaling up new servers (flash sales, etc)

Resources to learn more about Shopify + AWS Event Bridge:

• https://shopify.dev/tutorials/manage-webhook-events-with-eventbridge
• https://shopify.dev/changelog/amazon-s-eventbridge-integration-now-available
• https://www.shopify.com/partners/blog/shopify-eventbridge-integration

Updated Shopify app interface

The Shopify Polaris library has been updated to the recently released version 6, which brings the overall app interface in line with the new Shopify admin design style.

Performance improvements

• Creating and updating large multi-date events 10x improvement
• Loading tickets on the confirmation page 25x improvement

Internal app updates

• Rails 6.1
• Ruby 3
• Shopify API version 2021-01
• Removed 2 major dependencies that haven’t seen updates in a while
• Enhanced DataDog server monitoring and alerting

Coming up

Recurring events are next on the list!

Collect your own booking and service fees on Shopify!

It’s been awhile since the last update, but believe me, things are happening! The past month or so has been devoted to improving app reliability and performance for our largest Shopify Plus customers. It’s with great satisfaction to report the app is more reliable and fast than ever. With those improvements out of the way, it’s time for some new features:

Collect your own booking and service fees

With Shopify’s Custom Carrier Rate Service, you are now able to collect service fees for your tickets cleanly and reliably within the Shopify platform!

Learn more: How to collect your own booking and service fees

Update to Cookieless App Bridge Authentication

Event Ticketing is committed to staying up to date with the latest and greatest tech from Shopify. With cookie less auth, the app is now much faster, and more reliable when being used in the Shopify mobile app, and Safari.

DKIM and SPF email sender authentication

For Plus+ customers, we now offer the ability to authenticate your outgoing emails using DKIM and SPF. This improves email deliverability and maintains your own branded from address. Please contact support to get this feature added to your Plus+ Subscription!

Other improvements

• A reply to field has been added to the Ticket attachment email, so you can receive any customer questions directly from the email.
• Improved iOS check in app to better handle multi-date and time slot events. The interface is now much simpler, allowing you to scan and check in for all events without having to navigate back and forth between events/dates.
• Dozens of bug fixes and performance improvements. Happy to report there are now no known bugs!
• All products are now created by default in DRAFT status, and the Online store sales channel is pre-selected. To make your product available, simply set the status to ‘Active’ in Shopify. And, if necessary, add more sales channels (such as POS).

More customization options for the PDF ticket and collecting attendee info

Improvements to collecting attendee data

Some Guest Manager features related to collecting attendee name, email, etc have made their way into the Shopify app and can be configured directly on the Ticket Type. If you want to collect other custom fields, that is still done in Guest Manager for now. Please see help article here on Collecting attendee information.

More customization settings for the PDF ticket design

You can now hide/show certain fields as well as add a blurb of text to show above the barcode (good for Terms/conditions, age restrictions, etc).

New Check In App Interface!

These past ~6 weeks have been primarily minor bug fixes and performance enhancements.

New Check In App Version 3.1

Major simplification of the user interface! Especial benefits for clients using time slots who need flexibility in being able to look up and scan for many time slots at once. Get the update in the iOS App Store! Mac app update coming soon.

See the app here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/guest-manager-check-in/id1460267612

Improvements and changes

• Inventory sold through the POS when you “POS order processing” disabled will now be accounted for in Event Ticketing, so you don’t have to manage inventory yourself in an awkward way. Events using “Capacity” are also accounted for too!
• Inventory changes now sync faster to Shopify when editing a large event with many variants
• The limit of 15,000 inventory has now been removed, as ET now manages inventory internally in a simpler way.
• There is now a backup mechanism when loading tickets on the Order status page. If Shopify hasn’t sent their web hook within 15 seconds, the app will auto-fetch and process the order, so the customer is not left waiting.
• Updated Shopify Polaris to the latest version
• Option to display tax amount on the ticket
• Editing a multi-day event will hide past dates by default for ease of use
• Option to disable customer editing of custom ticket fields

Not mentioned: dozens of minor bug fixes and performance improvements!

Emailing tickets as attachments (Shopify)

A new feature is available for Professional and Plus+ customers: the ability to send tickets as attachments (PDF / Apple wallet) directly to the customer via email after purchase.

Learn more about the new feature here: Enabling the ticket attachment email (docs)

Multi-use passes for Shopify

When setting up Multi-date events, you now have a new option to create Passes in addition to Tickets. Whereas Tickets are added as a purchasable option for each date that you add, passes are a separate product that can be used to grant access to multiple dates within an event. For example, this is useful for season passes, annual passes, single use pass (valid on any one date), etc.

Other changes

• If a single variant is to be created, it now makes it appear as a simple product, as opposed to a ‘product with 1 variant’
• Fixed bug where changing a one-off event name would not update the product title in Shopify
• The Guest Manager backend now has a new, more user friendly date picker, especially when picking times
• Fixed issue when attempting to empty a very large trash bin
• Fixed issue where tickets had the purchasers name pre-filled into it, allowing purchaser to download ticket without providing the actual attendee’s name

Duplicate event and POS feature

Over the past month the app has received a lot of refinements not really worthy for a post! Today announcing two new features.

Duplicate events

A highly requested feature has been the option to duplicate an event. I’m happy to announce it is now possible! Click on an event, and below the title, next to the “Customize”, “Manage in Backend” buttons, there is now a “Duplicate” button.

Disable processing of point of sale orders

Some merchants who use Point of sale but do not need ticketing features, now have the option to disable processing tickets for POS orders. This means that no tickets are generated (because you likely let the customer in right away), and you are not charged any fees!

Small update

Collecting custom fields

• Added option to include a photo upload when completing registration for a ticket. Useful for season passes, etc. This photo will also display on the scanner when the pass is scanned.

View the how-to article on how to collect attendee information post-purchase such as Name, Email, and Photo. Also consider using the Ticket transfer feature.

Minor changes

• Fixed issue editing an Order in Shopify: Now supports removing line items where the variant was previously deleted.
• Added column in Attendees for “Sessions”. This is the number of dates (events) that the attendee is registered for. Useful for tracking season pass redemptions, conference sessions, etc

Shopify app polishes

Small release to tidy up a few things!

• The new event capacity setting now takes group tickets into account. For example, if you sell 1 group ticket of 5, Shopify will only reduce inventory by 1. The app will automatically reduce it a further 4 units, as well as reduce all other variants of the event by 5.
• Improved the ticket transfer process
• Added German localizations for ticket transfer, emails, buttons, etc
• Tickets are no longer downloadable (buttons are hidden) if you have configured required fields (ticket custom fields, name, email, form questions, etc)

Event editing improvements

Event previews and sales overview now displays the time

If you set up multiple times on the same day, the preview and sales overview now displays the time:

​

If all dates occur on different days, then only the date is shown.

Set up dates and time slots more quickly

The user experience of creating multiple dates has been improved.

Often you need to add multiple dates in the same interval, such as every hour, or every day. Set the day and hour dropdown to your preference, and click add date!

• Can paste a time in to the Start time field
• Can paste a date in to the Start date field
• Duration is preset to the last used Duration
• Summary at the bottom tells you how many total, new, and existing dates have been set up.

I hope these enhancements save you a few seconds!

Other improvements

• Added a Transferable? Checkbox when adding or editing ticket types
• New orders/tickets are now synced in realtime to the iOS App (previously you would have to trigger a sync)

Shopify app updates

Hard at work making polishes to the Shopify App!

Shopify inventory is now the default

When creating new events, inventory management is now set to Shopify. This is more reliable and a better solution all around. For anyone with events already created, I recommend switching inventory for those products and variants, too.

Some notes about this:

• The fulfillment service is now ‘manual’ instead of ‘Event Ticketing’
• Please still use the Event Ticketing app to set inventory. While it’s now possible to use Shopify to set the inventory, unfortunately this does not sync back to the app (hoping Shopify will improve their web hook soon to make this possible)
• This brings supports for multi-locations. When you create an event with the location set to one of your Shopify account locations, inventory will be stored there.
• Using the ‘Event Ticketing’ fulfillment service was a nice idea in theory, but there’s really no benefit in doing this for digital products. It added more confusion than it was worth, for example creating an ‘Event Ticketing’ location in your Shopify account.
• Eventually the app will no longer set up the fulfillment service and location at all.

Set your own billing limit

Many merchants were frustrated by constantly having to increase the billing limit when they created new events. No more! You can now increase the limit to whatever you’d like.

Custom ticket design now includes a QR code

The Custom Template (for PDF) now includes a QR code on it. QR codes are easier for the camera to scan than the 1D barcode.

Minor fixes and improvements

Squashed a few minor bugs!

A few polishes

Shopify app updates, new iOS Check In App version 2.2, and some minor fixes.

Shopify Multi-day events

When setting up a multi-day event, you now have the option to split it into multiple products, by ticket type, similar to how the “one-off” event option works.

The checkbox is clickable if you have at least two different ticket types used in the Tickets section.

Check In App Version 2.2

Guest Manager Check In for iOS received a small update, fixing the last known (minor) bugs!

Update your app from the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/vn/app/guest-manager-check-in/id1460267612

Minor fixes, changes

• Error message displayed if attempting to create events/tickets that result in more than 100 variants created for a single product (Shopify restriction)
• Added ability to hide/show fields on Apple Wallet just like PDF (event name, ticket type, date, attendee, etc)
• PDF design setting to show end time in addition to start date/time

What’s coming soon?

• Using Shopify inventory as the default
• Recurring/repeating events (e.g. daily 9-5pm at 1 hour intervals)

Shopify app updates!

Automatic product expiration when events are over

It would be nice if Shopify had a feature for setting when a product or variant goes on and off-sale, wouldn’t it? Introducing the next best thing: automatically un-publish, delete, or make sold-out your ticket products when the event is over! This should take some manual labor off your plate!

To enable it, head on over to Apps > Event Ticketing > Settings and look for the Product management section. Set a action for products and variants.

Custom line item properties displayed on tickets

Line item properties are now automatically added onto the ticket! This works out of the box with any Options app, such as Infinite Options from ShopPad, as well as doing it yourself by editing the theme code.

Other changes

Locations are now synced

The locations in your Shopify account are now synced into the app as locations to use when setting up an event. If using the capacity feature, inventory will be stored at this location within Shopify. In the future, the plan is move all inventory management to Shopify in order to support multiple locations. This means the app’s Fulfillment service and location will no longer be used. This will likely happen over a few months - get in touch if you have any questions!

What’s coming soon?

• Using Shopify inventory as the default
• Recurring/repeating events (e.g. daily 9-5pm at 1 hour intervals)
• Option to split multi-day day events into separate products by ticket type

Shopify event capacity setting

New feature alert! By popular demand I am happy to announce the ability to set an overall event capacity for sales. For example, if you have multiple ticket options (Adult, Child, Senior) but need to ensure only X number of tickets are sold across all options, then event capacity is for you!

It’s as easy as enabling it and setting the capacity when editing the event. For multi-date events, the capacity is set for each individual date, meaning if you set the capacity to 100, and you’ve set up 5 dates, you will be selling a total of 500 tickets (100 per date).

To learn more about how this new feature works, head on over to the help article on how to set up the event capacity.

If you run multiple locations for inventory within Shopify, please get in touch so we can better understand your needs.

Minor changes

• When creating an event, the summary now displays the total inventory to be created, to reduce confusion when using multiple dates and/or the new capacity feature
• Streamlined the interface for adding multiple dates under an event

What’s coming soon?

• Using Shopify inventory as the default
• Recurring/repeating events (e.g. daily 9-5pm at 1 hour intervals)
• Automatically taking variants and products off-sale when an event is over

Display tickets on the Order status page

Event Ticketing now hooks into the official Shopify order status page, to display ticket download buttons:

Previously this would open an external webpage, offsite from Shopify. Now, the app does a little magic to dynamically display tickets, with download and transfer links within Shopify.

And as a bonus, this is implemented for you automatically - no messing with copy/pasting of script code!

Help doc guide: Customizing the order status page widget

How to upgrade

For existing customers, the upgrade process is easy.

1. Delete the code installed* in Shopify Settings > Checkout > Additional scripts
2. Go to Settings in the Event Ticketing app and enable the Order status page widget. Customize it as you wish.
3. Done!

Other upgrade tip: With the tickets now displayed on the order status page, it may be wise to remove the code from the Order notification email and SMS, and instead only use the order status page button/link. I’ve prepared a new piece of code that can modify this button to say, for example, “Download tickets” instead of “View your order”, if the order contains tickets.

*The code begins with <script> and ends with </script>. Delete it all, from < to >

*This is the code to delete:

Shopify app updates

We’ve made some improvements around creating and editing events.

Collection no longer created

Creating a collection in Shopify for the event never seemed to be the right thing to do from the start, so this has been removed altogether. All events created from now on will not have a custom collection created in your Shopify admin.

One-time events now create a single product

Previously, if you created an event with multiple ticket types, a product would be created for each ticket type. In most cases, customers wanted a single product created regardless of the number of ticket types, so this is now the default. To achieve the previous behavior (creating a product for each ticket type), there is a checkbox in the Shopify preview section when creating the event.

In addition, products are no longer published by default. This gives you a chance to add a product description, images, etc, before making the event live on your storefront or POS.

• Click the “View product in Shopify” link in the event to edit the product and publish it to your storefront sales channel

Other minor changes

• The compare at variant price will be automatically reset if you save the ticket with a price higher than the previous compare at price.

Update to the Order Status Page script

Previously the Order Status script referred to the fulfillment-service to determine if the order contains tickets and should thus display the “Download tickets” link. Now, since the app no longer requires that you set the fulfillment-serviceto Event Ticketing, this script should be updated to refer to the Product type instead. The updated script is available in the setup guide.

On a technical note, we’ve switched to using Shopify’s new GraphQL to create products. This means we’re cutting edge :)

Shopify app updates

Order editing support

Order editing, released by Shopify in early 2020, allows you to add and remove items from an order after it has been completed. Learn more about order editing here.

The app will now automatically issue and void tickets appropriately when you edit an order, as well as trigger the fulfillment process for you. Everything should simply work as you’d expect! The customer will use the same download link, and new tickets will appear on the download page.

This opens up a lot of exciting possibilities, such as doing ticket upgrades, swapping to a different date/event, etc.

Please note: Since existing tickets will be already fulfilled, they won’t be removable while editing. What you can do is cancel the fulfillment before editing, which will allow you to remove the previous ticket and add a different one. Not a big deal because nothing is actually being shipped!

Other improvements

• Previously if you clicked “Mark as fulfilled” on a ticket order, the app would be unable to issue tickets or update tracking information (download link). Even though it is best to click “Request fulfillment”, as this gives the app a chance to report back successfully by completing the fulfillment, support has been added for “mark as fulfilled” as well. If you mark it fulfilled yourself, the app will update the fulfillment with the tracking information for you.
• Inventory changes are now synced immediately to Shopify when you update an event. Because Event Ticketing manages inventory for you, Shopify only checks inventory levels every hour or so. It was tricky to ask Shopify to trigger a manual refresh, but I figured it out! Now, when you update an event, you will see the correct inventory immediately in the Shopify variant page in the Admin.

That’s all for now! Reach out if you have any questions about how the above stuff works.

New Tiered Pricing Plans

I am excited to announce additional pricing plans! The goal of these new plans is to provide clients a fair cost structure that scales with their volume. Check out the details on the App Store, and learn more about how Shopify is the perfect event ticketing alternative to Eventbrite!

Here’s a little excel formula I whipped up to help decide which plan is the best fit. This table calculates your effective per-ticket fee for a given monthly number of tickets sold. For example, if you sell 1,000 tickets per month, the Professional plan would be the cheapest, for an effective per-ticket fee of $0.60.

App improvements

• New welcome page that helps you get started and suggest features to set up
• The embedded app now loads quite a bit faster
• Migrated to the new FulfillmentOrder method (tech speak for - we keep up with the latest Shopify developer resources!)
• Migrated most billing and fulfillment queries to use Shopify’s GraphQL

What we’re working on

• Fulfillment service agnostic so tickets can be fulfilled from any location (e.g. using Point of sale)
• Exploring POS integration
• Exploring adding an “Ongoing event” type, suitable for recurring time-slots, bookings, classes, tours, etc.
• Online store themes and templates so we can display an event like a traditional ticketing purchase page

New Help Docs Portal Released

Thrilled to announce our brand new Help Documentation portal! New getting started guides have been added. New articles will continue to be added as we strive to cover all of our features.

Productivity Enhancements

We’ve introduced new tools to save you time and increase productivity.

Saved searches

From any list view, such as events, attendees, orders, you can save your search and filters so when you return next time, the list will already be customized for you. Learn more about saved searches

Improvements to exporting

Previously, the columns in an exported file didn’t always match what you saw on-screen. Now, when you click export, you will get an export with exactly what you see on-screen, including visible columns, and order. You can also export all columns with just a click.

Learn more about exporting data.

Check In App Released for Mac

The Guest Manager iPad Check In App has been ported to a native macOS app! Enjoy the same great check in experience you’re used to on iPad and iPhone, optimized for the Mac.

The app will sync in realtime with other connected iOS devices and Macs, just like the iPhone and iPad app will.

Check in guests

• Search and check in guests by name, custom fields, etc
• Add new guests
• Monitor arrival log
• Edit and manage events and attendees

Dark mode

Events can run late. No problem, make the app easy on the eyes with dark mode.

Benefits over web based check in

1. This app works offline, just like the iPad and iPhone app
2. Optimized experience for check-in
3. Instant searching
4. Talks to other iPad and iPhone devices in realtime

iPad vs Mac?

Please note the following features are not available in the Mac app:

• Scanning tickets/barcodes (using either the camera or external scanners)
• Name badge printing

V2 - iPad and iPhone Event Check In App

Guest Manager Check In version 2 is now available on the Apple App Store.

New Features

• Added support for the Socket Mobile bluetooth scanners

  Check In Actions

  where you can configure actions to take upon check-in. This initial release includes actions for assigning a barcode to an attendee (for example activating a pre-printed pass or wristband), taking a photo, collecting a signature, product pickups, and printing a name badge. In the future we will offer actions for filling out a form, signing a waiver, and more! Let us know your ideas.

  Vouchers

  for events with sessions, you can allocate vouchers to an attendee, which can be redeemed for attendance at your sessions. Useful for attendance tracking where you don’t know in advance which sessions an attendee will attend, and would like to pre-allocate a certain number of sessions that the attendee is eligible to attend.

  Product Pickups

  You can add or import items on an attendee profile to make available during check in, either scanning or lookup. This is designed to be a flexible system, used for tracking anything such as add-ons, meals, product samples, welcome packages, etc.

Bug fixes and enhancements

• Navigating from an event back to the main event list is more intuitive, simply swipe up or down on the top bar while in an event to reveal the back button
• Improved syncing using periodic background tasks to ensure data is kept up to date
• You can now use the camera from the main attendee list to lookup a guest by scanning their barcode
• Improved realtime syncing using Apple’s latest iOS 13 web socket frameworks
• We now request permission for push notifications so you can better control and monitor device connectivity from the web based application
• When you are offline, with changes needing to sync, a push notification will remind you periodically that there is data that needs to be sent upstream
• New notification at the top when working in offline mode
• Can type or scan to assign a new barcode to an attendee
• List registered sessions in attendee profile
• Past events now display in descending order, meaning the most recently ended event is shown first
• Scanner view now displays the current event and date to prevent any confusion
• You can now quickly log out and in as a different PIN/user (e.g. from full access mode to Scan Only mode)
• Email address is now an option to display in the attendee list
• If you are scanning for sessions, and the session just ended, a friendly popup asks you to switch scanning to the next session
• Improved readability of custom fields in the main attendee list
• Added “Absent” tab to the attendees list, to filter by guests who are not checked in yet
• Improved readability of the events list, moving date and venue to their own line

Shopify Multi day events

Changes

• Added new feature for creating multi-day events, such as a tour or class. The benefits of this feature is that all tickets and dates are created in a single Product, with dropdowns (options) automatically set up for you (Date, Ticket, etc). This feature can also be used for a single one-off event if you prefer to have all tickets created as a single product (the one-off event will create a separate product for each unique ticket type)

Default ticket types

Traditionally, importing or adding new tickets/attendees has always required specifying a ticket type, such as GA, VIP, Guest, or whatever. Many clients do not need to differeniate guests by a ticket type, so to make things a little easier we now set up a default ticket type.

• Accounts now have a default ticket type called “Guest” to use for attendees. This can be changed in Settings > Company > Contacts. Additionally, the default ticket type can be changed per event in Design and Setup > Advanced > Default ticket type.
• Minor bug fixes

Shopify app updates

Changes

• Fixed bug when creating a new event, nothing happens upon save when you specify an end date that is before the start date
• Fixed bug when removing and re-adding a ticket in the new event screen
• Currently no known bugs! Get in touch if you find any.
• Updated Shopify API version to 2020-01
• If you have a low usage charge limit remaining, the app now requires you to increase that limit before accessing areas of the application. Ticket orders will still be processed, and will be charged once you increase the limit

What we’re working on

• Multi-day events
• Collecting custom registration data post purchase

New Event Ticketing App for Shopify!

Shopify is a fantastic e-commerce platform, with marketing tools and brand customizability that far exceeds the capabilities of any online ticketing platform (including ours!). Now, with Event Ticketing for Shopify, you can turn your Shopify ecommerce store into a fully featured online ticketing platform. I think this will be the future for the online ticketing industry. Ticketing companies out there have out-dated technology, expensive service fees, hold your money until after the event, and own/control your customer data! With Shopify + Event Ticketing you can now take control of your online ticketing, getting paid automatically on a daily basis for sales, access to the latest most advanced ecommerce platform, and have endless tools, themes, and options for customizing your online brand identity.

How the app works

• Integrates with the Guest Manager attendee management and check in apps (iOS, Mac)
• Sell tickets via your shopify store, and include “Download tickets” links in the Shopify order confirmation email, SMS text message, and online checkout page.
• Use the same great check in app we’ve been building for years to check in and scan tickets

Introducing barcode pools

Barcode pool management is a powerful tool for advanced users to retain full control over how barcode numbers are issued to tickets within the system.

With barcode pools, you upload a list of valid numbers to a ticket type, and whenever a ticket is created within the system (whether it be an import, API call, added via the UI, or onsite with our check in app) a number is removed from the pool and assigned to the ticket, making that barcode number a valid scannable ticket.

Barcode numbers in the pool are not valid, scannable tickets, until they are assigned to a ticket.

Example use cases

• You have an external scanning system such as a turnstile that requires valid numbers be uploaded to it in advance
• To reduce API integration complexity if you require certain barcode numbers to be used for your tickets
• You are allocated specific ticket numbers to use for your tickets, and want to make assigning those numbers to tickets done automatically

Alternatively, you can always import tickets with specific barcode numbers pre-assigned by using the “Barcode” column in your ticket import.

2012 to 2018

Many wonderful things happened, but alas, they were not documented.