The Spotlight : PEO Labs

Rotating show images in Patron Edge Online

Sean Long — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:30:00 GMT

My colleague, Matt Cook, recently showed off a cool Image cube he put together for Patron Edge Online. Take a look at the information below, it would be cool to see this put to work. The really cool thing about this is that each side of the cube can link to different things, so this could help drive interest in things like special events, classes, or whatever the creative minds in your marketing department can think up! As the cube is set up right now, it uses the loader.asp file to allow it to link directly to specific shows. Pretty cool!

Disclaimer: This will require you to do a small amount of coding. The example is pretty easy to follow if you are familiar with HTML, Javascript or other coding languages, but you won’t be able to contact support for assistance setting this up.

1. Create a new screen part on the page where you want the image to display (In this example, I’ll use Template 1)

· Type = Include

· File Name = imagecube.html

· Top, Left, Width, Height – position the element as desired, but you want it to be the size of your images for best resolution. I used 450,20,120,80

2. Grab the latest copy of the image cube library Note: There are literally thousands of cool jquery libraries out there, many of them dealing with images, this is just one that looked slick to me. Most are easy to use and would be interchangeable. Unzip the library into your PEOSite folder (by default, C:\Program Files\Blackbaud\The Patron Edge Online\PEOSite)

3. Open up your favorite text editor, create imagecube.html and drop it in your PEOSite folder

Here’s the code for my file:

<head><script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.imagecube.js"></script>
</head>
<div id="defaultCube" style="width: 120px; height: 80px; overflow: none;">
<a href="loader.asp?target=show.asp?shCode=64"><img src="images/shows/show64.jpg" alt="Show 64 Title" title="Show 64 Title" style="width: 100%; height=100%;"/></a>
<a href="loader.asp?target=show.asp?shCode=38"><img src="images/shows/show38.jpg" alt="Show 38 Title" title="Show 38 Title" style="width: 100%; height=100%;"/></a>
<a href="loader.asp?target=show.asp?shCode=19"><img src="images/shows/show19.jpg" alt="Show 19 Title" title="Show 19 Title" style="width: 100%; height=100%;"/></a>
</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function() {
$.imagecube.setDefaults({speed: 1000, pause: 6000});
$('#defaultCube').imagecube();
});
</script>
You’ll need to make a few changes. Namely, I referenced show codes in my sample database. You can generate your loader link as needed. Your images will also likely not be named show64, so update the img src reference as well as the alt and Title as needed. There are a lot of benefits to using Google’s jQuery library, but you can download your own if needed.

Try it out and leave a comment if this worked for you!

PEO Donation Round-Up, v2

Nicholai Burton — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 13:24:00 GMT

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.

A client recently contacted me about the free donation round-up customization I had written for PEO earlier this year. She had a couple of suggestions to improve it, and I had some time available last week to work on it. Here's the info on version 2 of the customization:

Updated for compatibility with PEO 3.3.3
Fixed a memory leak
Added a new parameter that allows the administrator to enter the amount to round; it is no longer hard-coded to go up to the next dollar

You can download the updated copy of the feature here. Please feel free to download and install it, and let me know what you think. You will need your system administrator to run a couple of SQL scripts and put a file in place, and then it's ready to go. Full instructions are included in the ZIP file. If you install it, leave a comment to let everyone know what kind of effect it is having on your online donations.

Selling out is a beautiful thing

Nicholai Burton — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 22:22:00 GMT

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

Go to Administration, User Setup, User Groups
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

Go to Administration, System Setup, Sales Points
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:

Option	Value	Explanation
<empty string>		Events will never be defined as "Sold Out"
Numeric value	5	Event is Sold Out once number of empty seats = 5
Percentage	10%	Event is Sold Out once percentage of empty seats = 10%
Min(Value, Percentage)	Min(5,10%)	Event is Sold Out once percentage of empty seats = 10% number of empty seats = 5, whichever is lower
Max(Value, Percentage)	Max(5,10%)	Event is Sold Out once percentage of empty seats = 10% number of empty seats = 5, whichever is higher

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.

What do your patrons think about your PEO site?

Nicholai Burton — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 20:50:00 GMT

While thinking about ways to get people more involved with an organization's online presence, I realized that most websites give an opportunity to leave feedback about the website itself. The best way to improve usability is to talk with users, right? I’ve done this with ING Direct, Netflix and a handful of other sites to let them know about bad links or usability issues. Often I leave positive feedback, just to let an organization know that I appreciate a new feature or change to their site that has made my life easier.

So following that line of thought, I whipped this up one evening while watching reruns of Scrubs. It is a new page for Patron Edge Online that allows a person to enter her name, email (if desired) and thoughts about your site. Now that version 3.3.3 has been released, I also threw in an accompanying custom report that can be generated to allow your web marketer or webmaster to review feedback on demand.

You can view a screenshot of what the page looks like here. As always, play with it on a test interface first! This feature is pretty basic (and potentially very valuable) but keep in mind that it is not supported. To install:
1. Download this ZIP file and extract the contents
2. Add Feedback_Form.asp and insert_feedback.asp to your public\bbcustomizations folder
3. If you do not have the Custom Site Settings table yet (from earlier PEO Labs articles), run Create Custom Site Settings Table.sql against your PEO database
4. Run LeaveFeedback.sql against your PEO database to create the custom table that will hold the actual comments
5. Create a new screen called Feedback
6. Create a new screen part on the Feedback screen (INCLUDE is the type) that points to bbcustomizations\Feedback_Form.asp
7. Edit the feedbackheader CSS class so that it matches your site’s overall design

You can also import the Site Feedback Report into the Custom Reports section of the Administration Site, or review the feedback via the Custom Tables folder.

Are you currently using any method of capturing user feedback about your website? How has it affected your design or business processes? Leave a message in the comments.

Rounding up change (but not from under sofa cushions)

Nicholai Burton — Mon, 26 May 2008 22:23:00 GMT

Over the last few months I've noticed that electric and water companies are really pushing the "round up" thing to work on public projects. So why not do something similar for Patron Edge Online? With a bit of ASP and JavaScript, we can find out how much a patron's total order is, then display a message asking if he would like to round the total up to the next dollar and give the remainder as a donation. The concept is simple, the patron doesn't mind giving away the electronic equivalent of spare change, and you get a donation towards your annual fund. Everyone wins!

Here you will find a zipped file containing two SQL scripts and an ASP page called round_up.asp. This page checks to see if the patron has already put a donation in her basket. If she has not, it will auto-magically display and ask if she would like to round the total up to the next dollar as a donation. It does not just look for totals that are even dollar amounts; a total of $42.30 would add a $0.70 donation and a total of $42.00 would add a $1.00 donation.

To install:
1. Place round_up.asp into your PEOSite\bbCustomizations folder
2. If you do not already have the eSroCstmSiteSettings custom table, run Create Custom Site Settings Table.sql on the PEO database
3. Run Round Up Feature.sql on the PEO database
4. Go to Administration, Custom Tables, eSroCstmSiteSettings and set Donation Round Up Fund to the desired code (found in Content, Donation)
5. Drill into the screen parts of my_basket.asp for the appropriate interface
6. Set round_up.asp as an Include After on the basket view screen part, or create a new screen part below the basket view in the desired location

The page is pretty basic and I created it in about 4 hours over the course of a weekend. It would have taken about half that if I had ever taken a programming class (the life of a French/Business major, *sigh*). Please note that this is custom PEO code. It is not supported (which just means my analysts cannot answer questions about it) but works beautifully on my system. Still, be sure to test before putting it on your live site; I claim no responsibility if it breaks your site, burns your supper or lets your dog out of the fence!

Did you find the round up feature useful? Would you like to see more of this kind of thing on the site? Leave a message in the comments.

Add a favicon to your website

Nicholai Burton — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 14:54:00 GMT

For those who are not familiar, a favicon is the icon that shows up in your bookmarks toolbar for a saved site, and in the address bar/tab header of your web browser when visiting a site. It's a 16x16 icon that you can use as another way to reinforce your organization's "brand" on the web.

For those of you know know all about these, I'm sure your question is, "when do we get this functionality in Patron Edge Online?" You can actually do it right now. I have found some great resources online that will allow you to add a favicon onto your current PEO site regardless of version. Here's the scoop:

Create a favicon for your site

If you don't already have a favicon, you need to create an ICO image file that is at least 16x16 pixels. Your marketing folks should be able to handle something like this pretty easily, or you can use some free tools on the web. Here are a couple of sites that can do this for you:

Add files to to your web server

There are three files that you need in order to make this work:

The image file itself. I recommend placing it in the public\Images folder of your website
This ZIP file. It contains an HTML page and a JavaScript library (and a screenshot for later). Place the HTML and JS files in your public\bbCustomizations folder. If you are interested in the technical bits of the JS library, there is a link to the author's website in its comments.

Modify favicon.htm to point to your icon

Edit favicon.htm in Notepad or your favorite HTML editor. If your custom piece folder is not called bbCustomizations, you will need to edit the first line accordingly so that the page can find the JavaScript library. Now edit the sixth line and replace the URL here with the location of your favicon file.

Add a reference to the file on your Admin Site

In Site Design, edit each of the Templates of the Interface you are using and create a new screen part for them. See the screenshot from the above ZIP file if you need an example screen part to help you. Since this is a script, no text will be visible on the page itself, so the dimensions of the screen part don't matter at all.

Do you use favicons on your main or ticketing websites? How has it reinforced your organization's image? Leave a note in the comments!

Using Google Analytics to get more out of PEO

Nicholai Burton — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:17:00 GMT

Google has a powerful, free tool available, called Google Analytics, that will allow you to collect all kinds of aggregate data about your site's visitors. You can use this information to:

Track the geographic location of site visitors to plan where to spend your advertising dollars
Determine what page a visitor hits first on your site and how long he spends there
See what sites or search engines are referring patrons to you
Look for trends to see if parts of your site are confusing or cumbersome to visitors
Discover how many times a visitor comes to your site before making a purchase

I'm not a marketer or a webmaster, but I'm sure there are a hundred other uses you can come up with for this tool. There is a nice demo on their site here that walks you through what the tool can do and how it works. This probably leaves you with some questions. How much does it cost? How long will it take to implement? How do you actually make it happen?

How much does it cost?

According to the Google Analytics site, use of the service is free if you get less than five million (million!) pageviews per month.

How long will it take to get started?

Getting an account with Google Analytics takes a few minutes, and adding it into PEO only a little longer. I would plan for 30 minutes to an hour for the whole project, plus any time you spend playing with settings and setting up reports in your Google Analytics account.

How do I do it?

First, you need to sign up for an account. Once you sign up, you receive something called a Tracking Code. Hold on to this as we will need it again soon.
Download this file and place it in the bbCustomizations folder of your public site.
Edit line six of the file, replacing "UA-xxxx-x" with the Tracking Code you got in step one.
On the PEO Admin site, go into Site Design and edit all of the screens of the interface you are using. In the Include After field, enter bbCustomizations\GAnalytics.htm. This is the part that can take a little while, depending on how many screens you have.

And you're finished! That wasn't so difficult, was it? After you have this all set up in Patron Edge Online, you will definitely want to go back into your Google Analytics account and do some tweaking so that the data it captures for you is more accurate.

You have some opportunities to get really advanced with this if you'd like by tagging the URLs that you send out in your marketing campaigns. For example, tagging your email blasts with things like campaign information will help you determine which ones are most effective. My site is internal only, so I haven't been able to try tagging to verify it plays nicely with PEO, but let me know if you try it out and how well it works. How are you using analytical/statistical data to drive your mission? Leave a message in the comments.

Adding Some Multimedia Spice to PEO

Nicholai Burton — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 16:54:00 GMT

PEO Labs: The idea behind the PEO Labs series is to bring 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.

Graphic design firms show off web portfolios; builders display photos of their finished buildings; even bands put up mp3 samples, wallpapers and screen savers. What kind of multimedia to you put into your PEO site to boost ticket sales? Are you currently using any at all?

Sometimes a photo is enough to get people interested when, say, a traveling art exhibit visits your musuem. But what if you’re a theatre or a symphony and you know that a single photo just can’t capture the spirit of what you are bringing to the world? If you want to get your patrons really interested in what’s going on, it’s time to add some multimedia and make your site really pop. Here are three great ways to give your patrons a more immersive experience on your site and a good taste of what they’ll see and hear when they come to visit.

Photo - This option is great for any organization, but museums especially can take advantage of some of the photo hosting sites out there that provide slideshow abilities. There are a couple of awesome tools I recommend that allow you to create a Flickr slideshow without any real programming knowledge. The first is FlickrSLiDR and is simple to use. If you feel like you need a little more flexibility, check out the PictoBrowser, which is also very Web 2.0 but has a couple more options than FlickrSLiDR.

Video - YouTube has made it ridiculously easy to upload video clips and even edit them on the fly to some extent. You can then use the provided URL to link from your PEO site to the clip, or even better use the Embed link and add the video directly into a show’s Long Description.

Audio - If you’re thinking about adding mp3 samples to your site, I recommend using Audacity. It’s free, open-source (I’m a big fan of FOSS) and easy to use.

Now get out there and put some cool multimedia onto your site, and be sure to leave a link in the comments so others can see what you’ve done!