Events and Instances are essential to be able to sell tickets to your customers.
Before you read this article, make sure you are familiar with:
REMINDER: You’ll need the Administrator user role to be able to add or edit Events and Instances.
What is an Event?
An Event in Spektrix can be thought of as a ‘run’, ‘show’ or ‘production’ containing multiple performances. An Event holds data such as the Name and Description and can contain one or multiple Instances.
An Instance can be thought of as a single performance or occurrence as part of a run of multiple performances. Instances contain information about the individual date and time for a specific occurrence of the event.
For example, an Event would be “The Book of Will” by Lauren Gunderson and the Instance would be the 7pm Friday performance.
This article will walk you through the required steps for setting up an Event, with a view to creating an individual Instance or multiple Instances. If you want to know how to set up Instances within your Event, see our article How to Set Up Instances.
Creating an Event - Basic Details
Go to Admin > Events > Add.
Here you will be prompted to enter the general information about the Event. This information can be edited at any time.
- Name: Name of the Event. This will be visible to your customers.
- Description: A synopsis of the Event. Depending on your Integration, this may be visible to customers on your website.
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Status:
Draft: This Event is still in development. An Event will remain in draft until live instances have been added to it.
Live: The Event is live in your system. Just because an Event is live does not mean it is on sale, although it does need to be live to be made visible and go on sale. - Date Created: The date the Event was created.
- Duration: The length of time (in minutes) of your Event.
- Image: You can upload a .jpg, or .jpeg image that will appear in your Sales Interface and, depending on your integration, on your website.
- Image Alt Text: This box will appear once you have uploaded an image and will allow you to insert an image description for web accessibility.
- Financial Target: The amount of money you are aiming to make from the entire Event.
- Seats Target: The number of seats you wish to sell to this Event.
- Enable queuing: This box will be checked by default and it is not possible for you to uncheck this. Queues are helpful if lots of customers try to book online at the same time and when it is required we manage this feature on your behalf.
- Partner Companies: If you have active contact preferences for Partner Companies (also known as promoters, producers or visiting companies) set up on your system, they will be listed here. Check the box to associate this Event with a specific Partner Company, and prompt users to manage related Contact Preferences.
Finally, any custom Event Attributes you have will display at the bottom of this list.
TIP: You have the option to add as many Instances or Event Attributes as you’d like to your Events. Event Attributes are additional information you want to include. For example Access Performances, the Genre of the Event, the Season the Event is associated with etc. You can set up any Event Attributes you wish to use and add them after you have set up your Event.
While all this information is included in the Event Basic Details tab, only the Name of the Event is required to build one.
Once you are happy with the information you have inputted, click Add.
Instances
This is where you add the individual occurrences of your Event. You can do this now or come back to this later.
To add Instances now, click Add and follow the steps outlined in the How to Set Up Instances article.
Website
Under Website you will see a number of options.
- WebEventId: Depending on your integration, this is where you can enter a unique identifier for the Event to be displayed on your website.
- Web URL: This is where you enter a related Event URL when following the steps to set up Cross Selling Using Recommended Events.
- Tweet from checkout: If you use Classic Checkout, this is where you can activate a Twitter Integration to display in the basket/cart.
- Post to Facebook from checkout: If you use Classic Checkout, this is where you can activate a Facbook Integration to display in the basket/cart.
- Website Content: Depending on how your website is integrated, you may want to host some information about your Event here. Follow the Editing content on iframes with Wikitext article for instructions on how to use this.
If you make any changes, remember to press Save before moving onto the next tab.
Recommended Events
Here you can add Recommended Events using the Cross-Selling feature which is a useful tool for cross promoting Events when a customer is booking online.
If you want to set this up, read the Support Centre article on Cross Selling using Recommended Events.
If you make any changes, remember to press Save before moving onto the next tab.
Supplementary Events
Supplementary Events can be used to offer secondary spend items that aren’t Merchandise (for example, pre-show dining, drinks packages, car parking etc.) as your customer buys tickets for another Event on your website.
If you’re thinking about setting this up, read the Support Centre article on Upselling Using Supplementary Events.
If you make any changes, remember to press Save before moving onto the next tab.
Order Attributes
If you wish to add any specific custom Order Attributes to this Event then you can choose whether to display them online to customers here. You can also choose to make them a required condition for check out.
Read more about Order Attributes and how to set them up in the How to Capture Order Attributes for Certain Events article.
If you make any changes, remember to press Save before moving onto the next tab.
Audit
Here you can track the audit history for your Event. It documents each user that created a change. You will see web listed as a user, this indicates the first time a ticket is sold for each Instance.
- Create means the date and time that this Event was first created in Spektrix.
- Update means any changes made since.
REMINDER: Any imported data from your previous Box Office system will begin with "admin: create" on the date that your data was migrated. No changes made on your old system will be recorded here. This is different to the Customer Audit, which may include creation and update data from before your migration.
Editing Events
Follow the steps below to make changes to your Event after you have created it.
To edit an Event:
- In the Admin Interface, go to Events and choose the Event you want to make changes to.
- Select the tab where you would like to make changes and click Edit.
- Make the required changes and click Save.
To edit Instances, take a look at the editing section of the How to Create Instances article.
You can also find out more in:
Further Reading
If you’re new to setting up Events and Instances, a good next step might be to explore the following articles:
- How to Set Up Instances
- Introduction to Offers
- Creating Merchandise
- Cross Selling Using Supplementary Events
You can find more articles on Setting Up and Editing Events in the Set up Events, Offers, Subscriptions and Merchandise section of the Support Centre.