February 2021 Update: Event Detail Change Tracking, Account Tags, and Contact Groups

Scroll to the bottom to see a demo of these features in the recording of our preview webinar!

New

Event Detail Change Tracking

The new event detail change tracking feature allows your staff members to see late changes to functions, items, and instructions that affect the preparation and execution of events — those changes that often happen after your Ops team has printed their event orders. These changes are visible on the Operations Daily View (click the published_with_changes Change Tracking icon) as well as in the new function change log (on a function details slider, click the more_vert more info icon).

Detail change tracking is a feature distinct from the existing global activity log. We discuss the differences between the two in the master Tracking Changes article.

Some details about the new feature:

  • Detail change tracking will need to be enabled on your account by the Sys Admin.
  • Changes will only be tracked once the function status has been changed to Ready.
  • The default function status is now an account-wide setting instead of a user setting. Users who had set their default function status to Planning will need to ask their Sys Admin to update this setting.
  • For an overview of the feature, including how to enable it and what changes are tracked, please see Track Changes to Event Details.

Notify Staff about Event Detail Changes

You are also able to email staff about late changes to functions. On functions with a Ready status, click on the more_vert more info icon and click Send Change Notification. Add a subject, message, and select staff to receive the email. In addition to your message, the email will contain the event name, event date, who made the change, and a link to the Operations Daily View, where the changes can easily be viewed.

Please see Notify Staff on Event Detail Changes for more information.

Changes to Detailing

In order to implement detail change tracking, we needed to make some changes to event-wide details and functions. While we were making those changes, we took the opportunity to redesign the event details page detailing tab.

Changes to event-wide details and functions
  • There are no longer event-wide details and functions; everything is a function.
    • You are able to flag a function as "event-wide". This will be a no room function which defaults to the span of the event. Event-wide function details will be listed at the top of the Operations View and can be listed at the top of your event orders, just as in the past.
    • Event-wide functions will now have a status just like other functions. (We needed this for detail change tracking.)
    • Existing event-wide details will be moved to an event-wide function during the release process.
    • If you don't want Event Wide functions to appear on reports, we can filter them out.
  • All functions can be multi-day.
    • If you decide to use multi-day functions and want them to show on reports, let us know so we can either add the end dates (or have them show once for each day)
  • Default function status is now an account-wide setting rather than a user setting. The Sys Admin on your account will need to update your account status to Planning if needed.
Detailing Tab Redesign

As mentioned above, we took this opportunity to rework the detailing tab to give you more information at a glance as well as more control over the functions you can see:

  • Rather than being grouped by date then room, functions are grouped only be date and ordered by time. This gives you the schedule at a glance.
  • Each date card can be expanded and collapsed, or click the unfold_less expand/collapse all icon at the top.
  • Function information is listed in a tabular format and we are listing additional information.
  • To still give one-click function creation, each booked space will have a placeholder if it has no functions on a date. Clicking Create function on the placeholder will open the Create function slider with information from the booked space pre-filled.
  • Click the filter_list filter icon at the top to filter the functions by date, type, status, department of its details, room, and more.
  • The "function fill" button (the plus at the top of the page) has been moved inside the more_vert more info menu and is now a text selection to reduce confusion.

Account Tags

Account tags allow you to assign properties or attributes to an account. These tags can then be used to alert staff about account concerns when booking, or to strategically segment accounts by financial, booking, and other concerns.

Account tags are added on the Accounts page in the Tags tab. To tag an account, go to its details page and click the pencil by General Information. Once tags are added, they'll display in the header.

For more detailed information, please see About Account Tags.

Contact Groups

You are now able to create pre-defined groups of contacts, so that you can repeatedly and easily email proposals, contracts, event summaries, avails, and other documents to the same group of people. You can also export contact groups to be used in external email marketing services.

For more information, please see Contact Groups.

Improved

  • You are now able to batch edit functions in the function mass editor. Click the functions you wish to edit to put them in edit mode, then click the pencil by the column you wish to edit. Please see Batch Edit Functions for step-by-step instructions.
  • Accounts and contacts can now have multiple addresses. One address will always be marked as primary. If you've used the multiple emails and phone numbers feature, this will look familiar.
  • We have updated the search throughout the application to support substring and endstring searches. What does that mean? You'll be able to search without having to use the characters at the beginning of what you're searching for: search by the last name of a contact, search unique ID's by the last group of numbers, etc. This will also improve the search experience for accounts using VenueOps in Chinese.
  • Done detailing an event? You are now able to set all functions as Ready with one click. More information available in Change all Function Statuses to Ready.
  • Inventory Items:
    • Each inventory item is now able to have an item code.
    • In the past, only labor items could have both a quantity and a unit count (such as 2 parking attendances for 4 hours). Now, any item can be marked as having a unit count. You can do this as you add the item to your inventory, or edit existing items.
  • We've updated how all day booked spaces are stored in the database on accounts with a non-midnight start of day. This means that events which have all day booked spaces will not have that "extra" day in the date range. These events will also be "all day" in the iCal feed, meaning that in Outlook and other external calendars they will not display with the "extra" day.
  • Invoices now have a description field. This field can be added to your invoice template as well.
  • You are now able to create a tax of 0%.
  • The event unique ID is now included in the Event List.
  • You can now add service charges to rental rates.
  • You can now create a combo room which only has one member room.
  • On tax-inclusive accounts, we have tweaked how discounts display in the application. In the discount card, the tax-inclusive discount will display. In the Charges list, the amount of the discount (no tax) will display.

Fixed

  • The last updated date/time for the event order data model within the PDF document was lagging behind what you see in the UI by one update.
  • When you are booking an event from the grid or day view, the rooms will now be listed in the slider by time and then by the custom room order.
  • The function mass editor will now have red X's to remove like the other large-volume mass editors.
  • The Edit General Information slider now has the event unique ID field labeled consistently with other locations in the app.
  • Depending how you dragged items when sorting them, they would swap places rather than simply move.
  • If a room was booked more than one time in a day, the room's functions were being listed twice on the grid view.
  • When the tasks page was in mass edit mode, the select all option did not appear on mobile.
  • Long booked space descriptions were overlapping other information on mobile.
  • If an event's contract status is Contract Waiting to Send and you created another contract, we would add an activity log that the contract status was updated, even though it hadn't changed. We will no longer do that.
  • Users were able to create combos across venues.
  • Removing functions sometimes caused event orders to become inaccessible on the event details page.
  • Flat discounts on tax-inclusive accounts were not including taxes.
  • Users with Live Entertainment > View permission were able to access the performance configuration and post-show report sliders.
  • The last instruction could not be removed on the instruction mass editor.
  • When adding or editing rooms, groups were not sorted by the custom group order.
  • Event order download: Event orders were missing after selecting events with duplicate names.
  • When editing combo rooms, the list of sub-rooms will now be ordered by room order, not by order added.
  • The PDF Preview icon was missing from void invoices on events.
  • Not all columns were included in the Account List export when exporting the default view.
  • A template will now be required on the Create Invoice slider. There were issues when a template was removed after it was selected in an invoice schedule.
  • Financials were incorrectly refreshed when an event was moved on tax-inclusive accounts.
  • When copying an event but not copying discounts and items, they were not correctly removed from the new event.

Preview the February 2021 update!

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