5.1.4 and Pro 2.1 released

Posted on March 22, 2012

This has been an interesting update, because aside from a set of new useful features, we’ve also managed to make some great improvements to the plugin stability.

New Features

Here’s a breakdown of what’s in the new updates:

New Pro Features

Let’s start with showing off the pro features, because the rest are all available in the main (free) plugin, yet what’s great is how these features will fold into these new ones further down.

• Custom User Fields –  Instead of requesting the same information from users time and time again, you can now create your own custom user fields, just like you do with booking forms, and then insert these fields in your booking form! The advantage of this is that users will be able to modify this information from within their user profiles.
• Multiple Custom Booking Forms! – You can now create more than one booking form, which means you can take event-specific information if needed! This is currently available within the form editor admin menu, but in the near future, this will also be available to users on a per-event basis!

Bookings Table facelift, phase 2

In version 5.1, a new booking form table was introduced with limited functionality. This is a phased introduction, as we’re going to be making this a very powerful widget for administering bookings in one place. 5.1.4 marks our second phase, which revolves around adding customizable column information and CSV exports.

• Sortable bookings table columns – The bookings table got another major update with more column choices and a handy sorting interface. Moreover, your settings are now saved so that you don’t have to keep adding those fields into view, time and time again! Pro users will find this particularly useful as it now also allows custom booking form and user fields to be included in the table!
• CSV export upgrade – If sortable columns weren’t enough, you can also export the results shown on your bookings tables, whether viewing one event or many events. Moreover, you can also choose to export entire bookings, or split the information up by tickets within the bookings. Pro users will also be happy to hear that any fields you can use in sortable columns can be exported.

Better Booking Management

Once a booking is made, there were limited options with regards to modifying that booking. Admins can now change any detail of a booking and resend emails.

• Resend Emails – Did someone not get the message first time round? View their individual booking in the admin area and you’ll now see an option to resend your email.
• Change booking status – You can now change a booking status from within the edit booking page to any desired status, and you now have the choice whether or not to send the corresponding notification email to that user.
• Edit booking information – You could previously edit ticket information in Events Manager, but now you can also edit your other booking form information. Users with the Pro add-on will benefit most from this, since alongside the comment field, it is possible to edit the custom booking form fields.

Other Updates

Whilst the main focus at the moment is on booking features, some other unrelated features will inevitably get done along the way!

• Draggable Google Maps marker position –  A long overdue feature for those in countries where Google just can’t correctly pinpoint your locations! When editing a location (directly, not when editing an event with a saved location), or creating a new one, you should now be able to move the marker to a different position in the map.
• BuddyPress private group events – Events Manager will now treat any private group event as a member-only event, meaning it won’t be shown on any listings. This applies to both public and hidden groups, if the event is private, it’s hidden.
• Get that ID – Since the move to version 5, the event id, category id and location id have been hard to find. No more! When viewing the lists in your admin area, click screen options and you’ll now see an option to include the ID as a column.

Events Manager 5.1.4 Updates

Here’s a snippet from the changelog in our readme.txt file. As you can see, a lot went into this update!

• customizable cancel booking message and confirmation
• 24 hour option for time pickers possible in admin area
• wp archive options visible now regardless of event/location page options
• further fixes to post thumbnail compatibility (hopefully fixed for good!)
• added “Add New” location and recurring events to admin bar
• blank pending status corrected in my bookings pages
• fixed event categories when event is a subsite event shown on main site
• added Swedish datepicker translations
• fixed pagination issue
• updated Danish, Dutch, Swedish language files
• small fix for duplicating plugins that keep the event id when saving dupe (WPML fix)
• added ticket name field in single ticket mode
• fixed pre 2k events showing in future events list in admin area
• changed calendar linking so it works on all/most themes without JS
• fixed bad translation of JS calendar days in Italian
• hard-coded country names for currently translated languages
• fixed some incompatibilities with Yoast Breadcrumbs
• modified date fixed in ical
• single event ical endpoint detection improved
• fixed reserved spaces miscalculation bug
• invalid taxonomy ids now stripped from searches
• improvements to wp rewrite compatibility by registering events and locations in varied order
• fixed recurrence bug for single day events ending next early morning
• depreciated attributes deleted if blank and resaved
• single-event.php now overrides EM regardless of page settings
• front-end deleted events now trashed (if available) rather than deleted
• fixed errors on recurring event creation with bad ticket data
• admin localized js variables (messages) hidden to public
• php and wp mail functions called directly instead of via em/phpmailer
• depreciated js .live() calls and used jQuery 1.7’s .on() function, hence min wp 3.3 version

Events Manager Pro 2.1 Updates

Updates to Pro mostly revolved around rewriting how custom forms are handled, which also paves the way to further custom forms like individual attendee data.

• detached booking form editor into a re-usable class for user fields and future custom forms
• booking form editor is now “form editor” in menu, containing all forms that can be edited in EM
• offline payment confirmation window can be properly cancelled (bugfix)
• membership key options now showing properly in MS mode

More on the way!

This is just a small preview of what’s to come. With 5.x being very stable now, we’re now focusing more on features than on bugfixes, which will directly translate to more features! Spring is in season, so it’s time to bloom….