Dear HarmonySite administrator,

Our second important new feature today is one that's been much requested:  The ability to ask questions of the people purchasing event tickets, to gather more information from them.  Questions such as...

• Are you coming to the afterglow?
• How did you hear about the event?
• Which member referred you?
• What song are you most looking forward to hearing?
• etc

ALSO:  As well as event tickets, this new system has also been applied to:

• Merchandise purchases
• Donations

You get to create your own questions that get asked at checkout time, as many as you want.  Over time, you can build up a library of dozens of questions (as many as you want), and for each event/merchandise/donation, you can nominate which of your many questions should be asked during the checkout process.  Further, you can specify...

• What access level gets to see the questions - so, for example, you can ask questions of MEMBERS purchasing tickets, but NOT ask the same question of the general public
• Whether the question should be asked for each BOOKING or each TICKET.  For example, if someone is purchasing 5 tickets to a show, should the question be asked once or 5 times.  Ditto for merchandise:  If someone is purchasing 4 identical T-shirts, should the question be asked once or 4 times.
• Which event ticket TYPES should get asked the question.  For example, you may wish to ask a question of "premium" ticket purchasers, but not "regular" ticket purchasers.
• Whether an answer is required or optional

The TYPES of questions that can be asked are essentially the same types of questions that can be asked in the "Member Audits" system...

• Simple, short response.  e.g. What is your favourite colour?
• Comprehensive response.  e.g.  Please tell us your life story
• Numeric response.  e.g. How many children do you have?
• Multiple-choice tick-boxes.  What continents have you visited?  (North America, South America, Europe, Asia, etc)
• Single-choice tick-boxes.  e.g. How did you hear about this event?  (Social media, advertisement, word of mouth, website)

To get you started, we have pre-populated the "Questions" database with the following questions...

• Any special dietary requirements?
• How did you hear about this event?
• What name would you like printed on the T-shirt?

Feel free to edit or delete these.

HOW TO CREATE NEW QUESTIONS

1. On your Admin Dashboard, click the new link called "Checkout Questions" in the right-hand column, on the "Financials" line
2. You'll be taken to the "Questions Administration" page, and will see the list of existing questions
3. Click the "Add new question" button, in the top-right corner (or update any existing question)
4. Fill in the blanks - everything on the page is pretty self-explanatory
5. Click "Save" at the bottom

HOW TO USE YOUR QUESTION LIBRARY

With Events

1. Visit the event's page
2. Click the "Manage tickets" link at the top of the page
3. If the event is already set up to sell tickets, then you simply need to click the little "update" icon to the right of a PRICE that's been set, as shown...
   
4. On the "Ticket price Details" page, scroll to the bottom to see the new field called "Ask the following questions during checkout"...
   
5. The list ON THE LEFT (in yellow) is the list of questions that will be asked during checkout - IN ORDER.  The list on the right is all available questions.
1. Drag questions from right to left to add them
2. Drag questions from left to right to remove them.
3. Drag them up and down on the left side to reorder them
6. Click "Save" at the bottom when you're done.
7. Repeat the process for each of the other ticket pricings that you sell, keeping in mind that you may choose to ask different questions for each pricing.

With Merchandise

1. Visit your Merchandise page
2. Under the name of an item for sale, click its "Update" button
3. On the "Item Details" page, scroll towards the bottom until you see the field called "Ask the following questions during checkout"
4. This is now exactly the same as for event tickets (above)

With Donations

1. On your Admin Dashboard, in the right-hand column, on the "Financials" line, click the link called "Donation Targets"
2. Create a new target or update any existing target
3. On the "Donation target Details" page, scroll to the bottom until you see the field called "Ask the following questions during checkout"
4. This is now exactly the same as for event tickets (above)

The system should now function exactly as you expect.  When someone adds something to their shopping cart (tickets, merchandise, donations), the shopping cart page will show all the questions, in order, right below the section that asks for the contact details of the purchaser.

REPORTING

You can, of course, always visit any booking/order/donation's page and examine the answers that were given to all questions by that one purchaser.  That information is also included in the emails that go out to the purchaser and the admin person.  But naturally you will want to see a summary/collation of the answers given by ALL purchasers.

For EVENTS, we already have this:  On the event's page, click the "Manage Tickets" link at the top of the page.  On the "Manage Event Tickets" page, there's now a new tab, called "Questions".  On that tab you'll see a summary report of all answers, grouped by question.

For MERCHANDISE and DONATIONS, we have no such summary - yet!  I wanted to get this system released to you all FIRST, and then I can write a nice reporting/summary page - once you've actually got some answers to summarise.  Don't worry - it will come very soon!

Enjoy!

In harmony,

Mark Virtue

HarmonySite

Australia

+61 2 8005 4277 (Australian number)

In North America, call:  1-415-651-7009 (San Francisco number)

Skype name:  mvirtue

mark@harmonysite.com

www.harmonysite.com