What's New – July 2020

Hello everyone,

We're always working to improve the Backstage experience for you. In pursuit of that, we've recently rolled out features to help you effortlessly host online events, along with a few other updates as well.

Here's everything that happened this month in a nutshell.

Host online events with Backstage OnAir

Create events that can be hosted virtually with Backstage OnAir and help your attendees stay engaged throughout the event. When creating an online event, simply select Backstage OnAir as the webcast service.

You can then build your agenda, onboard your team, and invite session speakers similar to how you would an in-person event. After you've taken your event's microsite live, you can spread the word about your event using promotional tools such as offering promo codes or sharing event banners on social media. Attendees can check in directly from the event microsite when the event has started and interact with other participants online using discussion channels. During sessions, you can use tools that enable you to keep your audience engaged, such as sending out polls, starting a chat, or answering questions. After the event, you can get real-time analytics based on your attendees and sessions conducted.

Integrate with Zoho Meeting

Broadcast virtual sessions and video conferences to a wider audience using the Zoho Meeting webcast service in Backstage. Your virtual event can be just as good as your face-to-face event with the tools that Zoho Meeting provides for hosting engaging sessions.

You can share your screen so participants can follow along with your presentation, and you can use the screen recording feature to download and save your session offline. When creating your online event, simply switch the webcast service to Zoho Meeting and you can create everything else—sessions, polls, and more—directly in Backstage itself.

To set Zoho Meeting as your webcast service : Edit an event to go to Microsite Builder > Event Details

Review user actions with activity logs

View activities in a comprehensive timeline. All actions done by members of your team will be displayed along with a timestamp and the user name.

Activity logs can also be filtered enabling you to gain easier access to the actions performed by a specific user, actions in a specific event, or even down to the actions in a specific module, tab, or page for an event. You can also see the user action history in just events or at the portal level.

To do this : Go to your User Avatar > User Activities

OTHER UPDATES

Choose specific payment gateways for your event even if you have multiple payment gateways configured in your portal.
Previously, for events hosted in the United Kingdom, VAT could be collected only from attendees residing there. Now you have the option to collect VAT from all purchasers, irrespective of where they are from. Not only that, you can also choose not to collect VAT from attendees in the EU region if they add a valid VAT registration ID.
With partial refunds, Backstage offers you more flexibility with your cancellation policy. When canceling orders or tickets, you can now refund part of the order amount instead of the whole. It's no longer all or nothing! You can also choose if you just want to refund the ticket without canceling it.
Download all submissions sent by visitors in the Get in touch form on your event microsite. All questions and related details for an event can be exported into an XLS, XLSX, or CSV format.
Customize the ticket registration form to hide any of the billing address fields, except mandatory fields. You can do this even if tax has been set up for your event.
The data collected by custom fields in the ticket registration form can now be pushed to CRM. Simply add the field name as found in the Custom Form Editor into CRM in the Contacts or Leads module layout. The information collected by the custom fields will be passed along with attendee details to your CRM.
Export the list of all the attendees who have checked into your event to have an offline copy in XLS, XLSX, or CSV format for your reference.

That is all we have for this month's product updates. We would love to know what you think about these latest additions in the comments below. Also, if there is anything specific you need from us, send an email to support@zohobackstage.com . We would love to help!

Happy organizing!