Tagged: helpful tips

We offer many different e-commerce gateways in Event Wizard® when it comes to collecting fees from your registrants. However, some users prefer to use PayPal, so here’s a quick rundown on how to set it up in your event.

Enable PayPal as a Payment Option

The first step is to enable PayPal in your event’s payment process.

To do this, head to the orange section of your event task list and select “Edit your payment options and details”, as seen above.

On the page that opens up, you’ll notice the PayPal panel on the right side.

In the first box, enter the email address associated with your PayPal account. Then, under Item Name, enter something relevant to your event/fees. This will be the name that appears during the PayPal checkout process for this event.

Enable Instant Payment Notification (IPN)

While it’s not required to enable IPN, we strongly recommend doing so. If you don’t, you’ll end up having to manually check your PayPal transactions on a daily basis and manually flag each successful transaction as Paid in your Event Wizard® attendee database using the Event Wizard Reports. It is a huge time-saver, especially when it comes to higher transaction volume.

How to Enable IPN:

1. Logon to your PayPal account
2. Click on the Profile link under the My Account tab
3. Click on the My Selling Tools link on the left side of the page
4. Click the + beside Getting paid and managing my risk
5. Click the Update link next to Instant payment notifications
6. Select Receive IPN messages (Enabled) and enter the following URL in the text box provided:
   https://event-wizard.com/app/form/process/connectors/paypal/
7. Click on the Save button to save your information

There are a few more steps on how to check your transactions and test your IPN integration, which we have compiled into a quick-reference PDF for your convenience.

As always, if you have any questions regarding PayPal integration or anything else in Event Wizard®, you know where to find us!

Posted on October 24, 2017 by Mike Schumann
Category : Event Wizard® & Event Wizard® Tips
Tagged : ,event registration form, Event Wizard®, helpful tips, payment gateway, PayPal

Emails can be found all over Event Wizard®, like the ones that are sent automatically when someone registers/pays for one of your events, or sent manually using the Mass Email tool in your event’s reports section. While you can’t directly attach files to these emails, you can easily create a link to the file using your online file hosting space, which is included with every Event Wizard® account.

1. Upload Your File

The first step is to navigate to My Files in Event Wizard®, which can be found in the main menu at the top of every page.

From here, you can either click the Upload button and choose a file local to your computer, or simply drag-and-drop it into the browser window. You will likely notice a progress bar at the bottom of the screen as your file is uploaded; the speed of which will depend on the file size and the speed of your internet connection. Once the uploader has finished doing its thing, you will see your new file in the list.

2. Create Your Link

For this example, we are going to use the Registration Confirmation Email.

Now that you have uploaded your file, head over to your event’s task list, open up your Edit registration confirmation email page and scroll down to the editor. Highlight the text into which you’d like to insert your link and click the Link button in the editor’s toolbar.

In the popup that appears, click the Browse Server button, which will open up your list of files in a new window. Locate your newly-uploaded file in the list, (likely near the top) and click the file name to close the window and insert the link into the URL box.

NOTE: Some older email clients require that you set the Target of your link to open in a new window. To do this, click the Target tab at the top of the popup and select New Window (_blank) from the list of options.

Click OK to confirm, then click Save to lock in the changes to your email contents.

That’s it! Now, when someone receives this email, the embedded link will allow them to download the linked file from your Event Wizard® storage. You can also use this method when linking to files elsewhere in your event; to an agenda PDF on your Welcome page, for example.

As always, if you have any questions about this or anything else in Event Wizard®, please check out our Help Centre or drop us a line.

Posted on September 28, 2017 by Mike Schumann
Category : Event Wizard® & Event Wizard® Tips
Tagged : ,confirmation email, event registration, Event Wizard®, File Uploader, helpful tips, My Files

The reporting system in Event Wizard® is very powerful and feature-rich. Not only does it give you a full overview of your event’s progress, it also allows you to manage your registrants in just about every way imaginable. One particularly useful reporting feature is the Excel download function, which allows you to download an Excel-compatible file containing the report of your choice.

However, some reports contain names that use special characters, (like accented letters, for example) and depending on what spreadsheet software you’re using, it may not be able to read them properly. There are a couple different ways you can deal with this issue:

Method 1 – Convert and Import into Excel

If you’re using Excel to open your .csv file, there’s a tried and tested way of preserving special characters:

1. Open Excel to a new document
2. Click the Data menu at the top, then select Get External Data > From Text, (or Import Text File…, depending on your version)
3. Ensure All Files are selectable and choose your downloaded .csv report file
4. In the window that opens, choose Delimited for your data type, and UTF-8 as your file origin – click Next
5. Finally, choose Comma as your delimiter and click Finish.

If you’re on a Mac, the above method may require an extra step in order to make it work properly:

1. Before opening Excel, open your .csv file in TextEdit
2. Click File > Duplicate, then File > Save to save as .TXT file, but be sure to select UTF-16 from the Plain Text Encoding dropdown in the Save dialog
3. Follow the same steps as the PC instructions above, but instead of using your .csv and UTF-8, (in step 3) choose your new .txt file and Macintosh as your File Origin.

Regardless of whether you’re on a Mac or PC, the import window in Excel provides a preview of what your data will look like once imported. If for some reason the above steps don’t work for you and you’re still getting strange looking characters in your preview, try different encoding/file origin types until you find the one that works for your setup.

Method 2 – Open in Google Sheets

This method is a bit easier than above and works on all platforms, since it’s done through your web browser. It also doesn’t require you to have Excel on your computer, so there are no software costs:

1. Go to https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/ and sign into your Google account
   (NOTE: if you don’t have a Google account, it’s quick and free to create one through the link above)
2. Create a new spreadsheet
3. Click File > Import
4. Click the Upload tab and select your downloaded .csv file
5. Select Replace spreadsheet as your Import action, Comma as your Separator character, and then Import

You can then use your new spreadsheet as is, or you can download in a variety of file types by clicking File > Download as.

Hopefully one of these methods will help you deal with special characters in your report downloads. As always, if you have any questions about this or anything else in Event Wizard®, please drop us a line.

Posted on November 4, 2016 by Mike Schumann
Category : Event Wizard® & Event Wizard® Tips
Tagged : ,download, Event Wizard®, excel, helpful tips, reports, spreadsheets

Having a mobile-friendly event registration form is a must in today’s smartphone heavy world and ensuring your registration form is compatible shouldn’t be a headache. In our latest update we’ve made sure all registration forms created in Event Wizard® are mobile friendly regardless of device.

          

Many aspects of building your form do not require any updates/changes from you during the build process. However,  there are some recommended dos and don’ts when building your form that will help make certain your form looks great on small mobile screens.

• Use percentage widths and heights wherever possible: percentages allow for easy scalability, whereas static pixel dimensions will not scale in the same way. Header/Footer graphics do not apply to this recommendation. These images will be scaled down to 100% page width on the mobile device.
• Try to avoid tables in your page contents: because of the way tables are laid out, (ie: rows and columns) they aren’t meant to scale down to smaller screens, especially if the table has a static (ie: non-percentage) width.
• Avoid using a lot of text in your Submit button(s): the more text in the button(s), the wider they will need to be in order to accommodate it, which can cause it to stretch past the bounds of a small/mobile screen.
• Ultimately, simple is best: try to avoid really complex layouts and absolute/fixed positioning of elements – the simpler it is, the more likely it will translate well to mobile.

Follow these tips and you’ll always present the best possible product to your registrants on whatever device they are using.

If you have any questions about our mobile formatting contact us today.

Posted on March 18, 2015 by Mark Turner
Category : Event Wizard® Tips
Tagged : ,Event Wizard®, helpful tips, mobile, mobile event applications, registration software

When creating your registration form you may find from time to time that you wish your form could be customized just slightly to accommodate a special requirement for your event.

We are happy to fulfill requests for custom programming work. In fact, when we receive common requests for the same programming we look at how we might build that into a feature that’s available to all Event Wizard® users.

If you require custom programming work to be done or just would like our team to build out a certain aspect of your form we are happy to do so. To request custom work, please download and complete our custom programming request form (or, right click and ‘save-as’) and send back to us. Once we have received this we will reply to you with the necessary items we require to complete your request.

If you have questions about custom programming please contact us.

Posted on March 10, 2015 by Mark Turner
Category : Event Wizard® & Event Wizard® Tips
Tagged : ,custom programming, custom work, event registration form, helpful tips

Event Wizard® 6 introduces many new features to your Event Wizard® account and loads of updates to features and tools you already use. In addition to the main features and updates listed here we have made many small improvements throughout the software to help speed up and create a more efficient and user friendly environment for you.

NEW: TASK LIST (EDIT MENU)

There is a new task list menu in Event Wizard®, but as a current user you will not see it right away. We have left the current user default to the old version of the task list and will let you decide if you would like to change to the new one (we think you should!). To preview the new task list simply click the Check out our New Task List button on your current task list.

Once you have previewed the new task list for a moment you will be asked if you prefer it as your default via a pop-up window at the bottom of your screen.

At this point you can set the new task list as your default or remain using the classic version. If at anytime you change your mind you can go into your account preferences and change your default. Once you are in the task list you will notice everything is laid out a bit different than you are used to but in very logical easy to understand categories. If you want to toggle back to the old task list click the Go to Classic View button.

NEW: ONE PAGE CREATE EVENT SCREEN

We now have a one page create event screen that allows you to create and launch a simple event from one page. This page is essentially a stripped down version of the multi-step process you are used to when creating an event. Just like the task list though we have a new Create Event screen that can be accessed by clicking the link in the upper right of the current Create Event screen.

Select that link and set the preference for the new screen and you’ll be looking to the future from here out. View our how to get started guide to see how the new Create Event screen works.

NEW: BARCODED TICKETS AND ATTENDEE SCANNER APP

You may have noticed we quietly launched our Event Wizard Attendee Scanner App a few months ago. There was a reason for that and it had a lot to do with our new barcoded tickets in Event Wizard® 6. Read more about onsite attendee check-in, barcodes and event tickets.

NEW: ONE-CLICK EVENT COPY

Copying an event already saves you a ton of time, we just went ahead and made that even quicker. We now have a one-click copy event function that is so easy you may just copy events for the fun of it. Read more about copying your events.

UPDATED: MY FILES

We have updated all current accounts from 100MB of file storage to 200MB of file storage. In addition you can now create folders to better organize each event’s files and drag and drop those files into the folders you create.

UPDATED: FORM ERROR CHECKING

We have updated the form error checking tool to now highlight the required fields that your registrants miss. This eliminates the pesky pop-up boxes that weren’t too popular and takes the guesswork out of which fields need to be filled out to continue on the form.

UPDATED: SERVICE FEE FIELD TYPE

We have revamped the way the Service Fee Field behaves in Event Wizard®. You are now able to use your own payment gateway and make the fee any amount you would like.

Recovering your per registration cost just got much easier! Read more on the Service Fee update.

NEW: MY EVENTS ORGANIZATION

Our long standing customers have been waiting for this and we’re pleased to finally make it available. You can now show only the events you want in My Events based on the events status. You can even archive old events! Check out all the new My Events organization.

UPDATED: HELP CENTRE

Our Help Centre has also been updated and will continue to be a great source of help and support as your use your Event Wizard account and it’s new features. Be sure to bookmark it to get the most out of your account.

Posted on September 26, 2014 by Mark Turner
Category : Announcements & Event Wizard® & Event Wizard® Tips
Tagged : ,Announcements, Copying an Event, event registration, event registration form, Event Wizard®, field type, helpful tips, registration software

TICKETS

UPDATE: be sure check out our post on fee-based tickets.

When you create a new event in your account a ticket for that event is created in the background. So, each time someone completes a registration on your registration form a personal ticket is created for them.

Here’s how it appears:

After completing a registration your registrant will land on the confirmation page where they may click the View and Print Your Ticket button. You can customize the information that appears above this button to suit your needs.

Upon doing so they will be presented with their ticket for printing.

If you do not want a ticket created for your attendees you can turn this feature off. To do this, head into your event’s edit menu and select Build/Design Your Form & Website > Event properties > Select the last item in the list ‘Enable/Disable Event Tickets’.

From here you will uncheck the ‘Enable/disable event tickets’ checkbox.

You can check/uncheck this selection at anytime whether your event is in test mode or live.

BARCODES

In addition to the barcode that is created on the registrant’s ticket, you can also create one for the confirmation email. To see how this is done read How to Set-up Barcodes.

ONSITE ATTENDEE SCANNING

Now that your attendees have barcoded tickets you can use the Event Wizard® Attendee Scanner App to scan the barcodes when your attendees arrive at your event.

The attendee scanner app will scan the barcode on a screen (phone, tablet etc.) or paper print out then automatically update your attendance report in your event. This app can be used for multiple events in your account, and multiple devices can be scanning at the same time without data conflict.

The Event Wizard® Attendee Scanner App is available for all Apple iOS devices and Android and is free of charge. Download the Event Wizard® Attendee Scanner App now.

ATTENDANCE REPORT

To access your attendance report to see who has attended your event (been scanned in) or not attended (not scanned) click the reports icon in your account.

Then select Attendance Report in the Reports & Tools dropdown list.

Your list of registrants will appear in this report.

Use the Show: dropdown list to show only those that attended your event or did not attend your event.

• Use the two lists to segment your registrants and send targeted emails based on whether they attended or did not attend.
• Running webinars, seminars or classes that go towards CE credits? The Attendance Report is the perfect way to track credits based on attendance.

If you have any questions about using our onsite attendee and scanning tools, contact us today.

Posted on June 16, 2014 by Mark Turner
Category : Event Wizard® & Event Wizard® Tips & Mobile Apps
Tagged : ,attendance report, event registration, Event Wizard®, helpful tips, mobile event applications, onsite scanning, registration software, reports

We cannot stress the importance of testing your event registration form enough. This is your chance to see if something is out of place, doesn’t flow right or if you have just plain forgot something.

To test your form, click the ‘View Icon’ icon from any page.

This will open your form in a new browser window.

While in test mode you may process as many test registration as you would like. The url of the form and the way it behaves will be the same when you make it live. You will notice that your form will also display a TEST MODE note in the social media bar located at the bottom of your webpage.

You may enter a maximum of 15 test registrations into a test form. If you reach the maximum you can delete some and keep testing.

Receiving Confirmation Emails

To get a truly real-world experience when testing your form, make sure you have your desired confirmation emails enabled. The testing email address will receive the emails as a normal registrant would when you make your form live.

If you have added any merge tags to your email these will populate as normal with the relevant information from the test registration.

Are you not receiving your test confirmation emails? This could be why.

Testing Forms with Payment Processing

If you have an ecommerce gateway linked to your event so you can process credit cards, you will need to obtain the test credit card number.

1. If you are using the Event Wizard Payment Gateway (DotCom Your Event Inc.) the following information can be used for testing.
   Card Number – 4111 1111 1111 1111
   Expiration Date – Use the default month and year that are on the credit card form
   Security Code – 111
2. If you are using another payment gateway you must contact your provider to obtain the testing card number for their payment gateway. View our list of payment processing partners.

Viewing Test Reports

Your reports will populate as normal when you are in test mode. To view your reports click the Reports icon from anywhere within your event’s edit menu.

Please note: Event Wizard does not back-up any test data. When you want to make your form live you will require a positive registration balance in your account.

Once you have completed your form testing it’s time to make your event registration form live!

Posted on June 12, 2014 by Mark Turner
Category : Event Wizard® & Event Wizard® Tips
Tagged : ,confirmation email, event registration form, Event Wizard®, helpful tips, merge tags, payment gateway, registration software, testing

When using Group Registration you may sometimes need to relocate a group member or move a single registrant (known as a group of one) into an existing group. This move can be achieved in two easy steps.

First, you will need to find and copy the registration ID of the person that you want to move. You can do this by opening up a registrant’s confirmation page or by searching their name in the By Transaction report.

FINDING THE TRANSACTION ID ON THE CONFIRMATION PAGE

From the registration report, find the registrant you need to move into a group and click the ‘View Registration Details’ icon to the right of their name.

When clicked a new page will open. This is a copy of the confirmation page your registrant saw after completing registration. Find the Reference Number (Transaction id) and copy it.

USING THE ‘BY TRANSACTION ID’ REPORT

To find the Transaction id using the By Transaction ID report, click on the report name in the Reports & Tools. Search the name and the ID will be displayed in the fourth column.

Copy the Transaction id.

Your second step is to navigate to the Groups Report, Find the group leader of the group that you want to move the person to and click on the last icon in the Tools.

Enter the Transaction ID and click CONFIRM. This will complete the move into the new group.

If you have any question about moving registrants into groups contact us today.

Posted on May 22, 2014 by Mark Turner
Category : Event Wizard® Tips
Tagged : ,event registration, Event Wizard®, Group Registration, helpful tips

Setting up barcodes in your event is the same as setting up any other merge tag within your Event Wizard® edit menu (task list).

Use the Event Wizard® Attendee Scanner App with your attendee barcodes onsite at your event. When barcodes are scanned for each attendee your attendance report will update real-time in your reports.

HOW TO SET-UP BARCODES

There are two areas we recommend adding barcodes; the confirmation email and the confirmation page (thank-you page). In either instance, adding the barcode merge tag is the same. Let’s use the confirmation email in this example.

The first thing to do is head into the confirmation email edit screen in your task list. Once here, click your mouse inside the editor screen so the cursor is flashing. Then select the merge tag dropdown list labelled Insert System Merge Tag. 

Then select 1D barcode and the barcode merge tag will be added to the email body.

Click save and you’re done! Now, each time a registrant completes their registration and receives their confirmation email a unique barcode will be in their email.

Instruct your registrants to bring the email with them on their mobile phone or in a print out to be scanned at the door using the Event Wizard® Attendee Scanner App. Each time a barcode is scanned your attendance report will update that person in your reports as attended.

If you need assistance setting up barcodes feel free to contact us today.

Posted on April 8, 2014 by Mark Turner
Category : Event Wizard® & Event Wizard® Tips & Mobile Apps
Tagged : ,barcodes, confirmation email, event registration, Event Wizard®, helpful tips, merge tags, registration software