Spektrix offers you the ability to integrate with Facebook, allowing you to utilise two useful features - Facebook Login and Post to Wall. Each of these features offers an improvement to your customers’ online experience, whether it’s the ability to share what they’ve just purchased with their friends or a quicker route to logging in and confirming their orders. First, we’ll take a quick look at what each feature does, before going on to demonstrate how to set them up.
Note: the Facebook Login and Post to Wall features work only with the Classic Checkout. If you are using Express Checkout, these two features will not work.
Facebook Login
Remembering passwords can be tricky with all the different logins we each have - why not remove the need for customers to remember them, and speed up the login process at the same time? Our Facebook Login feature allows you to add an option on the login screen so that customers can get logged in to their accounts on your system with a single click. Here’s what that can look like:
Customers just need to link their Facebook account with their account on your system, and then every time they log in, instead of entering their email address and password they can just click the blue Log In button.
Post to Wall
Customers are increasingly active online, so why not give them the opportunity to act as your advocates amongst their networks? Our Facebook Post to Wall feature allows you to add an option to your Confirmation page so that with one click customers can create an instant post on their Facebook wall. Here’s an example of how that might look:
As you can see, this post includes the name of the event the customer has booked for as well as its image and a link that you can specify - to the booking page of that event, for example.
Setting Up
In order to use both of these features you’ll need to set up an app via Facebook’s developer portal and then use the information from that app to update your Spektrix system. You need the Facebook app regardless of which feature you want to use, and then you can set up one or both features in Spektrix.
Step One: create a Facebook App
Setting up a Facebook App doesn’t require any development work or need you to write any code...it just takes a few clicks. We’ll link out to the Facebook developer portal and their documentation for you to follow, and also pick out an overview of what you need to do with any relevant guidance relating to Spektrix.
Note: while Facebook’s user interface changes over time, the core principles of what you need to set up should remain consistent. If you’re not sure how to do something, however, please get in touch with the Spektrix Support team to discuss it.
The first thing you need to do is head over to the Facebook developer portal and log in - you’ll need an existing Facebook account for this.
- Developer portal: http://developers.facebook.com
- Facebook documentation: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps
Here’s the overall process to follow:
- Register as a developer
- Create a New App ID
- Think about what name you use for the App, as it will be visible to your customers
- Choose a platform - this should be Website
- For the URL use either:
- https://system.spektrix.com
- OR your Custom Domain if you’ve set one up
- For the URL use either:
- Once you’ve gone through the App Review process (which should be very quick) make sure you switch your App to Live Mode so that customers can use it
Once that’s done and you have a live App, you’re ready to set things up in Spektrix.
Step Two: add your App details into Spektrix
For the Spektrix side of things you first need to go to the Settings Interface - you’ll need to have the Settings Administrator user role to be able to do this.
NOTE: this guide uses the new UI for the Settings Interface.
From the top menu choose Configuration > System Setup and then select Third Party Integrations from the menu along the left-hand side.
There are various integrations you can set up from here, but for the purpose of this article scroll down to the tick box labeled Allow login via Facebook.
To activate this, click the tick box and then copy and paste your App ID and App Secret from Facebook into the two fields. Facebook doesn’t automatically display your App Secret, so you may need to click the Show button next to it and enter your password to be able to see this.
Once you’ve entered both pieces of information, click the Save Configuration button.
You’re now almost completely set up - you’re all done with Facebook, and now you need to set things up in Spektrix.
Facebook Login
In fact, you’re already set up for Facebook Login - that’s all you need to do.
If you now go to the login page on your website you’ll see an additional button just underneath the usual email and password fields.
Instead of filling in their login details, customers can now click this button and as long as they have a Facebook account, they’ll be able to log in with just the one click.
First time logging in
The first time each customer uses this option, they will be asked to link their Facebook account with their account on your system. They will need to agree to this for the integration to work, but once they’ve done that they won’t need to provide their details again.
There are two steps to this - one in Facebook and one in Spektrix.
Firstly, when they click the Log In button they will see a Facebook pop-up asking them to confirm that they’re happy to continue with accepting the App.
Once that’s confirmed, the login page on your website will change to a Link Accounts page where the customer will be asked to either log into their account on your system, or create a new one.
This page may populate with the email address that the customer used for their Facebook account. If that’s different to what they used for their account on your system, they’ll need to replace it with the email address that’s linked to their system account.
Assuming the email address is correct, the customer just needs to enter their password and click the Link button.
If they are a new customer and do not have an existing account on your system, Facebook can populate their account sign up form automatically and the accounts are linked in exactly the same way.
Once the two accounts are linked, your customers can sign in automatically to their account on your system, providing they are logged into Facebook - it's that simple!
Removing access to Facebook
If a customer wants to remove the ability to use this feature, they can do so in one of two ways - one in Spektrix and one in Facebook. In Spektrix, there is a Facebook Settings tab within the My Account page on your website, where customers can unlink from Facebook:
Within Facebook, customers can edit their Settings and remove the App from the list within the Logged in with Facebook section:
Post to Wall
The Post to Wall feature is essentially ready to use once your App ID and Secret are added to the Settings Interface, but it requires you to do a little extra setup for each event you want to use this with.
You can choose for each event whether to allow customers to post straight to their Facebook wall, and what should display when they do so.
To do this, you need to be in the Admin Interface - select the event you want to work on, go to the Website section for that event, and click the Edit button.
- Post to Facebook from checkout: tick this box to enable Post to Wall for this event.
- Facebook post title: the title that you want to display on the post.
- Facebook link URL: the website that you want the post to link to - it’s a good idea to add the URL for the event’s booking page on your website.
- Facebook post description: the text that displays as part of the post - try adding in a call to action here.
- Facebook post image: the image that will display on the post - this uses whatever image you’ve uploaded to the event in the Basic Details section.
When you first edit this page and select Post to Facebook from checkout, you will also see the option of choosing whether or not to display the image.
Once you’ve filled that information in and clicked the Save button, your event is ready to go - repeat this for each event that you want to be included in Post to Wall.
NOTE: you don’t need to add anything into the Website Content section for this to work, although depending on how your website is set up and which link URL you are directing customers to, you may want to make sure there is suitable text included. See this article for more information on when you might want to add Website Content to your events.
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You should now be able to set up your Facebook integration, and enable both the Facebook Login and Post to Wall features in Spektrix.
The one other thing we would suggest is giving someone else in the organisation access to the App in Facebook, so that more than one person can access it if necessary - you should be able to do this from your account in the Facebook developer portal. This way, if you ever need to make a change to the App, access isn’t restricted to just the person who set the App up.
If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the Spektrix Support team.