VBO Blog

Virtual Box Office is proud to reveal the launch of Version 1.43, a major release with several new features including re-vamped navigation and sub-navigation. VBO has been working very hard on these improvements and are excited to see how these aid its clients in their ticket-related businesses.

What’s New in Version 1.4.3
Navigation: We listened to you and over the past few months have been working on improving our navigational structure for the Event Manager. Main changes include:
- All setup-related pages have been moved to SETUP
- Removed FUNDS and replaced with REPORTS
- FUNDS have been moved under REPORTS and have been relabeled as ACCOUNTING
- EVENTS sub-navigation has been simplified
- EVENTS SUMMARY page has been improved and redesigned
- PROMOTER DASHBOARD has been simplified (most items have been moved to SETUP)
- Re-designed DASHBOARD
- The Event Summary page has been retooled

Navigation Tree: OLD NAVIGATION vs. NEW NAVIGATION

Box Office: Several improvements to the box office section have been added to 1.4.3.
- Assigned seating maps now support drag-and-drop for selecting and deselecting seats
- Full ticket refunds that include an exchange and refund fee now calculates the partial refund amount correctly (this was a rare edge-case scenario)
- Several improvements to the hold system, including: detailed ticket list on email confirmation, unused tickets that had been added to the online cart, but patron did not complete purchase tickets go back to hold; active holds are now visible on the will call list and on the box office guest list
- Seat maps have now links to sold and reserved seats to the corresponding patron record, order record or hold and reservation record
- Default box office pages are now loading correctly after signing in to the Event Manager
- Fixed issue with free tickets showing a service or facility fee (free tickets now do not show any facility fee even if the event is set to have facility fees applied to tickets)

Events:
- Added custom eTicket instructions (under SETUP -> EVENT SETTINGS -> DELIVERY OPTIONS)
- A new analytic tracking feature with a sales amount reporting option that allows the system to report the conversion and the corresponding sales amount has been added
- Engineered a new HTML cleanup feature to text boxes. This is especially helpful if text has been copied from Microsoft Word to remove excess HTML formatting that can potentially interfere with the sales page look and design
- Fixed batch-printing format issue where coversheet for laser printing was creating a page break

Reports:
-The report page layout has been redesigned
- Redeveloped main event summary report
- Improved some elements of the Transaction Details By Event report
- Added first interactive Custom Sales Report (we are now adding the Custom Patron Report)
- Custom Sales Report now allows for more interactive settings and output options (we will continue to expand on this report and your input is very much appreciated if you feel something is lacking)
- Orders now have an option to filter Refund Transactions (select REFUNDS from the Options Drop Down Box)

Customer Relationship Management (CRM):
- Added a new customer detail page with relationship options between patrons, including a 5-star rating system and more account fields
- A new patron history feature details by item type, time range, etc.
- Added online email subscription forms (SETUP -> EVENTS -> EMAIL SIGNUP SETTINGS)
- The addition of a default email list to CRM: allows to list, edit and delete subscriber email address records

Subscriptions:
- Standard Subscriptions now has a global ticket fulfillment option that will automatically generate and assign season tickets to all subscribers matching the filter parameters

Mobile:
If you have not used this exciting tool we encourage you to try out this lightweight management kit for your events. Go to http://www.vbotickets.com/mobile on your mobile device (this is not an app its built from the ground up exclusively for mobile browser support)
- Added simple sales charts to the mobile event manager
- Merchandise sales has been added
- A touch screen signature tool to mobile credit card transactions has been added


What's to come in Version 1.44:
- A new PayPal payment gateway
- Corduro payment gateway
- Sched.org API
- Sales Force API
- Investigating MailChimp and Constant Contact API
- Working on iPhone App v1.5 and adding support for Android devices
- Improved CRM and donor development tools
- Subscriber tickets self-management tools. Basically, subscribers renew and select their season seats online via a wizard-type seat selection tool that removes the need to fulfill ticket allocation by the venue

Happy New Year! As we march into 2013, we continue to add tools to our cloud based event management software. One of the great things about working with such a diverse set of customers is we learn a lot about the experience they are providing for their customers.

The common theme is that they want to provide the best experience to their patrons that they can. That is an end to end event that leaves a positive feeling. We realize that we are a small part of this process and work very hard to make our user interface easy..

As a result, we are always listening to feedback and to coming up with new ideas for to provide a better customer experience. We have two really big developments that we would like to introduce to you.

1. Global Donation Widget: We have created a streamlined donation button that you can add anywhere on your website solely for the purpose of online donation collection. The cool part is you never leave the page, the donation is SSL layer secure, and it takes three steps! Your patrons press the "Donate Now" button, they enter an amount and then enter their billing information.

Automatically, a thank you letter and receipt with tax ID is emailed out. You get an email notifying receipt of a donation and capture of patron data.

This donation function can also be added to the check out process during ticket purchase or event registration.

2. Rewards Cards/Gift Cards: The VBO Event Manager now can manage third party or virtual reward and gift cards. This tool lets you manage a patron account balance or gift card balance with a unique identifying number. You can use cards that you have purchased from a third party source with your logo and swipe them through a card swiper to track the number and acount information. Or you can create a virtual card or certificate and generate for your patrons.

Thanks for reading.

As always, Virtual Box Office strives to bring its customers the most powerful and easy-to-use tools for ticket management.

This weekend, updates were made to the following:

- A public API key generator was added.

- Issues were fixed with the “Event Specific Merchandise” menu.

- A solution was launched for a user registration error caused when checking out with a merchandise item.

- By request, a promoter can now email a customer their lost password.

Even on the weekends, Virtual Box Office is hard at work to bring its clients the very best that the ticket trade can offer. Here’s what VBO was busy on Sunday night, while our competitors were shut down for the day:

1. Transaction Report by Event Dates received a major overhaul:
a. These reports allow the promoter to reconcile daily ticket sales with the payment gateway (i.e. Authorize.Net).
b. The updated report layout will break out the transactions for the requested date range but also provides grand totals.
c. The challenge for this project was working with external reports by the gateway providers, variable batch times, local transactions and any inconsistencies in cutoffs.
d. To overcome this challenge we made the date range transaction start and end times flexible based on actual transactions that happened near the batch cutoffs. This allows the promoter to exactly match the gateways batch times and thus results in a 100 percent match!

2. As always, minor user interface improvements have been applied to various pages.

In an effort to keep the public and Virtual Box Office’s valued clients informed as to our recent software updates, here is what VBO has been busy refining in recent days:

1. “Event Manager Version 1.14” is live! Here are some of its new features:

a. A major update on how exchanges are handled.
b. Now transactions are enforced to “Straight” Exchanges if the order had been discounted by online discount codes.
c. The promoter has the option to either completely refund the order or do a Straight Exchange
i. Straight Exchange means ignoring the ticket price at the time of the transaction -- VBO only changes the seat information.
ii. Exchanges from one event to a different event is now supported.
iii. Straight Exchange permits trade to multiple tickets with multiple price levels in one transaction.
iv. Exchanges are now supported for “Boxoffice” and “Phone Sales” transactions.

2. “VBO Web App” updates:

a. In “Calendar” view, the timeline will now by default load the the month in which the first event is listed (if there are any future events) -- if there are no events at all the calendar will show the current month. This basically prevents loading an empty month if your first event is set for a month in the future, and avoids confusion for the end user.

Virtual Box Office staff has been engrossed in updating its Event Manager 1.15. The new release, which is set to launch this weekend, touts the following updates:

- Subscription tools that allow the promoter to assign seats for multiple shows in one transaction. It also has the ability to email the electronic tickets to each subscriber.

- It’s a unique feature that had to be done manually in-house in the past when using other ticket provider platforms. VBO is now building an automatic tool that will save its customers time and effort.

Ticket management upstart Virtual Box Office has been busy improving the functionality of its products and ease-of-use for its diverse group of clients.

-- EventManager 1.14 has an improved “Ticket Exchange System” that can handle transactions better when online discounts have been used. Version 1.14 uses a “straight exchange” feature that ignores the ticket price and therefore enables faster transactions. Previously, discount codes created problems for exchanges because you did not know what discount code amount needs to be applied to each ticket -- discounts can be on a per-ticket basis , or per-order, which used to be tricky before this fix.

-- VBO resolved an issue with local date-time conversion: events on the East Coast needed a standardized local time to calculate ticket availability timeframes correctly.

-- An issue was fixed with an error message that displayed when no more tickets were available for purchase. This previously prompted a message stating that an event is sold out, but now states there are no more online tickets available , and to contact the promoter or buy at the event’s box office.

"VBO Touch" used at Summer Fest

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- VBO Tickets had the unique challenge of providing a wireless ticketing solution that would allow the famous San Jose Jazz Summer Fest to scan, sell, look-up and check event stats in real-time during the popular three-day festival.

The event draws upward of 80,000 patrons annually, and are processed through five E-Gates. These gates did not have power, so VBO Tickets deployed 25 iPhones with VBO Touch credit card swipers that all tied into VBO Tickets' cloud-based solution in real-time.

This was a new feature for the San Jose Jazz Summer Fest that allowed it to increase sales and provide more options to its patrons.



Vitual Box Office Founder Dave Boehme was so excited about this innovative technology that he worked the event all three days. He is running a credit card transaction in the picture left of this paragraph.

As a result of VBO's technology, attendees that in years past had to wait in long lines to purchase tickets breezed through the gates efficiently in 2012. The crowd was able to redeem tickets purchased online, by credit card or cash at the gate.


"Working with VBO Tickets was outstanding," said Brendan Rawson, acting executive director of the SJJSF. "We set out to establish a thoughtful approach to pre-event online ticket and merchandise sales, day of event transactions and ticket fulfillment and VBO Tickets delivered smart solutions and executed on those strategies exceptionally. We are excited to continue working with VBO to deliver the best possible ticketing experience for our festival patrons."

B. Rawson
Acting Executive Director
San Jose Jazz Summer Fest

VBO Tickets did this for San Jose Jazz Summer Fest -- what can we do for you?

Contact gary@vbotickets.com for a demo today.

Virtual Box Office has been hard at work improving its current platforms and releasing new products.

If you’re already a VBO client, see below for new features that will aid your ease of use and ability to service customers. If you are not yet working with VBO, contact a representative today (1-888-826-8858) to gain affordable access to the ticket trade’s most in-depth and simple to use tools.



1. “VBO Touch” version 1.3 was submitted to the Apple Store with the following enhancements:
a. Continuously improved details

2. Added new “Transaction Details By Event Performance” menu
a. Breakdown of transactions by date range
b. Summarized by event performance

3. Smart Buttons -- new button-generator tool
a. This tool allows generating the embed code for a “Smart Button”
b. A smart button will load a specific event or date without the need to update
c. Smart buttons take a partial event name as a filter input and will generate the correct link to the customer’s website by using the VBO Web App. This is especially valuable for recurring events where otherwise the link would need to be updated constantly.

4. Various improvements to the backend
a. This includes improvements to reports, UI and page/link structure (example: moved the VBO Web App to “Dashboard” from “Events”)
b. Fixed an issue with pagination on the orders list

5. Fixed another error on event thank you page.

6. Lastly, large-scale prep for the biggest VBO event ever -- the San Jose Jazz Summer Fest!
a. Three-day event; 70,000 people expected
b. VBO to manage all credit card transactions via iPhones
c. VBO is offering a “Don’t Wait In Line Solution” -- buy with your mobile devices
d. VBO will be responsible for all technical aspects related to ticketing

Welcome to the inaugural Virtual Box Office blog, where VBO will provide insight into its new software development and marketing updates.

VBO will check in regularly with the latest happenings, so keep an eye tuned to this here space and also the company’s Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter feeds.

In the last week, VBO made advances in the following;


Forthcoming VBO Touch v1.3:
VBO Touch will now include the ability to sell tickets or merchandise
New cash and credit option
Credit optional with CC swiper
Integrated signatures
The average transaction time on 3G network -- 60 seconds.
Improved scan technology
Upgraded guestlist with search feature
New reports are available
Detailed transaction reports
User registration summary reports
Retooled events summary report
Simplified event summary report with focus on sales stats, rather pure accounting
Global donations and self-standing donation wizard that can be deployed on any customer web page

VBO Go:
Now includes an integrated merchandise option