What's New - April 2025 | Zoho Backstage
Hello there,
Phew! It’s been a busy month—and it’s all for you.
You know that feeling when your to-do list is long, your coffee’s gone cold, but your team is absolutely crushing it behind the scenes? That’s been us this month. Between brainstorming, building, tweaking, and testing—we've had our heads down, sleeves rolled up, and minds focused on one thing: helping you run smoother, smarter, and more engaging events.
Every little update we pushed live this month was sparked by a real need from organizers like you. And honestly? That’s our favorite way to build. You throw us the challenges, and we’ll keep showing up with better, faster, and (hopefully) cooler ways to handle them.
So as the calendar flips, we hope you’ll take a moment to explore what’s new, give it a spin, and tell us what you think.
Automated refunds with cancellation fee deductions
Plan availability: Included in the Essentials, Premium, and Ultimate plans
Event organizers often face the challenge of handling last-minute cancellations and issuing partial refunds. With our new custom cancellation policy, you can now automatically deduct a cancellation fee from the refund amount when an attendee cancels their booking.
How it works:
- Set a cancellation fee as a percentage of the ticket price.
- The system automatically handles fee deduction and tax adjustments.
Setting up:
- Navigate to Registrations > Cancellation Policy.
- Select Custom Cancellation Policy.
- Define up to 10 cancellation rules. (maximum window: 60 days before event)
Attendees will see the applicable policy:
- During registration
- On their Your Orders page
- While canceling their order
The deducted fee is automatically logged in the cancellation and refund history, viewable by both attendees and organizers.
Fee changes apply only to new orders. For partially refunded orders, any remaining amount can still be refunded later.
Order and attendee activity logs
Plan availability: Included in the Free, Essentials, Premium and Ultimate plans
Get complete visibility into every update made to attendee and order data with our new activity log. Whether changes were made by an organizer, purchaser, or attendee, you can now view a detailed activity trail.
This audit log captures a record of updates and changes related to attendee and order management. Whether an organizer updates an attendee’s name, a purchaser reassigns a ticket, or a ticket class is changed, the system now logs each of these actions automatically for full traceability.
The log currently captures the following types of activities:
- Updates to attendee details, such as name, email, or custom fields.
- Changes made to order details, including purchaser info and billing data.
- Ticket reassignment, when a ticket is transferred to another attendee.
- An order being marked as paid or unpaid, reflecting changes in payment status.
- Ticket class changes, such as upgrading or downgrading an attendee's ticket.
These logs are grouped into three categories for easy review:
- Portal Activities – actions performed via the organizer portal.
- Order Activities – all modifications related to individual orders.
- Attendee Activities – updates and changes linked directly to attendees.
This enhancement is especially helpful for teams managing large events, providing an added layer of accountability and operational clarity. With audit trails now available, you can confidently trace back who made what change and when, minimizing confusion and improving team collaboration.
Export attendee data with deleted fields
Plan availability: Included in the Essentials, Premium, and Ultimate plans
Managing attendee information often requires flexibility, especially when event organizers make changes to registration forms mid-way through the event setup or after registrations have already started. To support this, Zoho Backstage now offers a new enhancement that allows organizers to include deleted fields when exporting attendee data.
This enhancement ensures that you won’t lose access to that data, even if the field no longer appears on the live form. This gives full control over whether historical data from removed fields should be preserved and reviewed offline.
How to use:
- Navigate to Registrations > Attendees.
- Click Export.
- There, you'll find a new option: Include deleted fields. When selected, any data submitted for removed fields will be included in the export.
In the exported file, these deleted fields will be clearly marked using the following format: {fieldName}_Deleted. This helps distinguish them from currently active fields while still making the historical data available for review or reporting purposes.
Add attachments to scheduled emails
Plan availability: Included in the Essentials, Premium, and Ultimate plans
Attachments are a common and essential part of email communication, especially in event planning. Organizers often need to send event brochures, images, venue maps, or other materials to attendees ahead of time. With this update, they can now do so simply within their scheduled emails.
How to use:
- To add an attachment, simply go to Communicate > Emails > Scheduled Emails > Create an Email > Options > Add Attachment. You can upload relevant files from your event or space library during the email creation process.
- You can upload relevant files from your event or space library during the email creation process.
When you preview the email, the attachments will be visible so you can verify everything is in place before sending. If any attached file is later removed from the event or space library, it will be shown as “deleted” in the email preview—helping you avoid broken links or missing files.
Try it out the next time you send a scheduled email!
Session details in speaker emails
Plan availability: Available in the Free, Essentials, Premium, and Ultimate plans
We’ve enhanced speaker communication in Zoho Backstage by adding session details directly to speaker emails. This ensures speakers have all the information they need—without requiring additional follow-ups or manual updates.
Two key email updates have been introduced:
- Welcome Speaker email now includes the speaker’s assigned session details, helping them understand exactly when and where they’re expected to present.
- Session Updated email is a new automated email that gets triggered whenever sessions are assigned to a speaker or when existing session details, such as timing or location, are changed. The email will show either a New Sessions section, an Updated Sessions section, or both, depending on the changes made.
You can find and manage these templates under:
- Communication > Emails > Automated Emails > Speakers
Enable/disable Workflows during event creation
Plan availability: Included in the Premium and Ultimate plans
This feature gives event organizers more control over workflow management during the event creation process in Zoho Backstage. Any workflows configured at the portal level are automatically listed when creating a new event. By default, these workflows are enabled, but organizers can choose to disable specific ones based on the needs of the event—directly during setup.
This flexibility helps prevent workflows from being overlooked or incorrectly applied, making the event setup more efficient and consistent. Organizers can also revisit and update these settings later, ensuring each event has the most relevant workflows in place.
SalesIQ chat in OnAir
Plan availability: Included in the Premium and Ultimate plans
We’re excited to share that SalesIQ Chat is now integrated with the OnAir platform, enabling real-time communication between participants and organizers during live events and rehearsals.
Attendees can now initiate chats directly within OnAir, ensuring timely responses to their questions. Speakers and exhibitors can also use the chat feature during rehearsals for smooth coordination.
Organizers can configure chat visibility from:
- Design > Edit Website > Integrations > Zoho Sales IQ
- Settings > Integrations > Live Chat
You can choose to display the chat on the event website, within OnAir, or both. All conversations are managed through your existing SalesIQ portal.
This integration enhances engagement and simplifies event communication for a better overall experience.
Gamification Leaderboard now supports public display links
Plan availability: Included in the Premium and Ultimate plans
Leaderboard display allows event organizers to showcase real-time competition results across the venue, encouraging attendees to engage more actively through visible, friendly competition.
This encourages friendly competition and boosts attendee engagement.
You can generate secure, public links directly from the Manage Leaderboard page. These links display only ranking information—no sensitive attendee data—and are ideal for projection screens throughout your event space. Multiple links can be created, each with a unique session ID, screen name, browser, and IP, giving you full visibility and control.
Key features include:
- Expiration controls: Links expire at the event’s end time, with the option to extend or set a custom expiry date.
- Security: A password-protected interface ensures only authorized users can access the leaderboard. Use the Copy Password button to easily share credentials with your AV team or display partners.
- Screen tracking: Each display session requires a screen name, which appears alongside session data in your dashboard, making it simple to identify and manage screens.
- Session control: End individual sessions instantly or reset the password to terminate all active sessions for added security.
Important: If you don’t copy the link at the time of creation, it can’t be retrieved again—make sure to save it immediately.
To set it up, go to Manage > Engagement > Gamification.
Bring your leaderboard to life—visibly, securely, and with complete control.
Time field in forms
Plan availability: The availability of this feature depends on the type of form:
- Registration form – Included in Premium and Ultimate plans
- Custom forms – Included exclusively in the Ultimate plan
- Exhibitor request form – Included in the Premium and Ultimate plans. Also available in the Essentials plan when used with the Exhibitor add-on.
- Sponsor request form – Included in the Essentials, Premium, and Ultimate plans
- Session feedback form – Included in the Essentials, Premium, and Ultimate plans
You can now collect time-specific responses using the newly introduced Time field in the form builder. Ideal for gathering details like arrival times, session preferences, or any time-based input, this feature gives you greater precision and control during data collection.
Organizers can configure the field to accept inputs in 12-hour or 24-hour format, and optionally define a time range to limit selections. The default format shown to respondents will align with the event’s time format set under Manage > Event Info.
For example, if you're coordinating airport pickups or hotel transfers, you can easily request attendees’ expected arrival times during registration or through custom forms.
Registered session participants export
Plan availability: Included in the Free, Essentials, Premium, and Ultimate plans
You can export the list of registered attendees for individual sessions, making it easier to manage participation and access attendee details at the session level.
To use this feature, navigate to Manage > Sessions, select the relevant session, and go to the Participants > Registered tab. From there, you’ll find the option to export the list of participants who have registered for that specific session.
The export file will include the following columns:
- Name
- Email
- Ticket ID
- Ticket Class
- Session Title
This update provides quick access to session-specific attendee data, helping organizers better plan logistics, monitor participation, and coordinate follow-ups.
You keep the ideas coming—we’ll keep delivering.
Let’s make May 2025 even better.
All the features and enhancements mentioned in this article are available across all Zoho Backstage-supported data centers.
If you have any questions, please contact support@zohobackstage.com.
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