Save Time by Deploying RE Integration Files

Two of the most time consuming things with any client-server application are installations and updates. If you have both Patron Edge and The Raiser's Edge, you currently have an additional step after installing an RE workstation (or updating a PE workstation) to copy some files into the The Raiser's Edge\DRE folder and register a DLL. Without performing this step after each PE update, you risk breaking the integration with RE:Export. In order to make life a little bit easier, I have created a small tool that will allow you to perform this process with one click.  In a nutshell, it does the following:

1. Locates your Patron Edge Deploy folder
2. Determines where The Raiser's Edge is installed on the workstation
3. Creates the DRE folder if necessary
4. Adds CustomNodes.xml, overwriting the existing copy if necessary
5. Adds and registers PEExport.dll, overwriting the existing copy if necessary

While not an official tool, it's simple and safe to use. Just download it from here, unzip and run it on a workstation to deploy the files. System administrators could even have this run at startup as part of a startup policy script to push the files after updating the server. Now workstation users can just launch Patron Edge to run the main update and you don't have to walk 15 users through the steps of deploying the additional files.

Create maps of your patrons using free online tools

Check out the guest post I wrote today on The User's Edge blog. I explain how to use the RE Export module and a free service called Map a List to create a Google Maps mashup. These tools are not RE-specific though; you can run Marketing Mailing queries and generate a spreadsheet of address info, enabling you to get a visual of where your season ticket holders or major sponsors live.

What do you think? Do you find it useful to be able to visualize trends about your patrons on a map?

Choose Your Own Order Details

Patron Edge contains a pretty nice feature that allows you to enter additional order information based on the price type chosen. While you will need to write your own reports for the captured data, you have a lot of flexibility with what it can do. Here are a few ideas for using special order details on price types:

• If your organization participates in a reciprocal membership program, create a Member price type. Then use a drop-down to select from the available reciprocal membership programs you accept and a text field to capture the membership ID. Now you can get an accurate count of how often these people come in on a weekly or monthly basis.
• If you give comp tickets to employees and staff, use a Staff price type. You can use a drop-down to record the department and have an idea of which group is coming most frequently. You could approach it a little differently and create a Comp price type, where the drop-down contains entries like Staff, Volunteer, Press, VIP, etc.
• For classes, capture registration details, emergency contact information and status of a parental release form.
• Some grants are given to arts and cultural organizations to bring in a wider range of ages or ethnicities. You can capture these fields in order to present before-and-after information to a grant provider to determine the effectiveness of the grant.
• If your constituency is mostly local or in-state, you can create a field for County to see the geographic distribution of your patrons or visitors. This will help determine where your advertising dollars would be best spent.

Here is how to set up special order details based on price type:

1. Go to Administration, System Setup, Order Type Definitions and create a new order type
2. In the Code field, enter a value greater than 100
3. Enter a description, set Ticket Level Sale to Yes, and choose the appropriate options for the remaining fields. Click OK.
4. Go to Pricing, Price Types and edit the desired price type
5. In the Order Type Definition field, select the order type created above
6. Go to Administration, System Setup, Order Type Details and create new details as needed for the new order type. If you have never added order details before, see Knowledgebase solution BB213578 for a walkthrough.

For reporting, all of this information is stored in the TicketExtraInfo table of the database. Each entry here links to the Tickets table, so you can get to any other tables you need from there. If you are not familiar with writing Crystal reports, Blackbaud provides this service (of course, cash-filled envelopes sent to my home address also work!).

How does your organization make use of order type fields? Leave a note in the comments.

Selling out is a beautiful thing

The PEO Labs series brings you information or advice on items that are geared towards users who can take high-level concepts or sample code and run with them. Please note that many of the things discussed are not supported. That doesn't mean that an item is a warranty-voider; it just means that the Support Analysts can't walk you through it or troubleshoot it if it breaks.

In Patron Edge Online 3.3.3, we started work on a feature that will allow you to continue to display sold out events on your website rather than having them get removed. This is a great feature in a couple of ways. First, the marketing folks will love it because patrons who visit your site can see how popular your events are and won't wait until last minute to make a purchase. A press release that says your last ballet performance sold out on the first day of sale is a great boost to your reputation. From a customer service perspective, it's also a win because people who visit your website can see that the event they want is already sold out instead of calling the box office to see if it has gone on sale or if there are still tickets available.

The reason this is a PEO Labs post is because the feature requires the help of a DBA to implement so it isn't something that a support analyst will take you through. But with a tech person and 15 minutes of free time and you can get this up and running. Here's how:

Set up Patron Edge

1. Go to Administration, User Setup, User Groups
2. Edit the Internet user group and set Update Events Active Data Table to Yes. If you don't see this option, just use the Design toolbar to turn on the field.

Create the SQL job

In Enterprise Manager or SQL Management Studio, create a SQL job to run against the PE database with the following command: exec CalcEventsActiveDataView. This is the part where you want the tech person involved. Set it to run on a schedule as frequent as your PE/PEO sync runs. By default a partial sync runs every hour, but you may want to set this more or less frequently; your mileage may vary on how long a sync takes.

Add the sales point to Patron Edge Online

1. Go to Administration, System Setup, Sales Points
2. Create a new entry that uses the number of the Internet sales point. The description can be anything you want; I would set it to the same description as you have in PE for clarity's sake.

Configure Site Settings

Here is where all of the business logic comes in. Your tech person can do the configuration, but the box office manager and marketing manager need to make some business decisions. 

Set Display sold out events to 1 (leave at 0 to remove the event from the site altogether when it is sold out).
Set Display sold out shows to 1 (leave at 0 to remove the show altogether when all of its events are sold out).
Set an expression for Sold-out behavior, using one of these examples:

And with that, I bid you good weekend. Now take this stuff, run with it, and come back to leave comments about how it's working for you.

Save time on the Administration site with Favorites

Sorry for not posting anything last week; I'll give you two great posts this week to make up for it!

Patron Edge Online version 3.3.3 introduced a completely new, redesigned Administration site to organize things better and make running the site easier. One of the best new features is Favorites. You can save all of the site pieces you frequently hit to your Favorites and access them from the Home tab with one click. The best part is that it's very intuitive. Here's how to create your first Favorite:

1. On the Administration site, browse to Content, Events, Shows
2. Now click the blue star icon in the upper left part of the screen
3. When prompted, enter a name for your favorite or just leave the caption as is, and click OK
4. Lather, rinse, and repeat, until you have all your most frequently used items favorited

When you log into the Administration site you start on the Home tab. Now you can just click Favorites and choose the place you want to go, eliminating the distraction of all entries that aren't relevant to your needs. A site administrator would choose items like Site Settings, Start Sync, Esro Logs and Check Connection as Favorites. For a designer or content creator, Favorites might be Shows, Designs for Tickets, and Interfaces.

What Administration features do you use most? Has the Favorites feature helped you save time?