Phone Numbers and Consent – Ready for Testing!

We’ve just updated dev versions Events Manager 6.5.3 and Pro 3.3.2. We don’t usually announce dev versions, but we’d like to give the opportunity for testers over the coming days whilst we follow-up with other related feature.

These updates also include various bugfixes for our latest booking table updates, and we advise you to update if you’re still experiencing booking table issues.

Whilst we could be releasing these as stable updates, we haven’t released these yet as they pack in a lot under the hood, and this is also tee-ing up for our much-awaited feature, SMS/WhatsApp/Telegram integrations! We’re holding off a few more days whilst we finalize these other features.

The main features introduced in these dev versions are a swanky new international phone number field along with added communication consent fields.

The phone field introduces various options, including selection of flags, restriction of countries, and standardization of numbers in international format which will allow us to use these numbers in third party service contexts (such as SMS/WhatsApp). Here’s an example:

The communication consent feature is similar to the privacy features, but they provide optional consent too. The upcoming communication features will allow you to choose the privacy consent as the basis for communication, or this separate consent method.

The most important thing about these features is what they make possible, communicating with your customers after they have booked! We look forward to showing how connecting to these new features will add a new dimension of automated booking management and enhancing your customer experience/engagement!

Changelogs

Events Manager 6.5.3 (dev)

  • Added communications consent. Ask or require users to consent to being contacted, with history of last acceptance or revocation accross all bookings/user (if admin has caps)
  • Added international phone number input field and validation, see the Phone Numbers section on Settings > General
  • Fixed bookings not showing in bookings table when in Multisite Global Mode
  • Fixed scope filter saving issues in booking/event-booking admin tables
  • Changed default scope to ‘future’ for booking/event-booking admin tables
  • Transitioned known booking meta keys from legacy to new format for storage, with plans to phase out support for previous format of x… for arrays, opting for _x|… instead (‘registration’, ‘attendees’, ‘coupon’, ‘booking’, ‘zoom’, ‘test’, ‘discounts’, ‘surcharges’)
  • Updated countries list to include more translations, file-separated storage for optimal loading, and extra missing countries – Kosovans, we’ve migrated the KV country code to the more recognized XK code including migrating previous location data
  • Moved admin-settings.js into external included file rather than inline.
  • Transitioned phone numbers into real feature.
  • Added example real-time input in settings.
  • Added EM_Booking->get_meta(), EM_Booking->update_user_meta(), and EM_Booking->get_user_meta().
  • Added em_bookings_get_sql_orderby_joins filter for custom ordering options.
  • Added EM_DateTime::create() for chaining quick dates.
  • Added em_person_display_summary_bottom action.
  • Updated intlTelInput to 23.0.8.
  • Fixed selectize.js not allowing custom data- properties in non-multiple selectize dropdowns.
  • Fixed JS modal.remove() JS error in list tables introduced in dev versions.
  • Moved all JS UI setups (datepicker, time, tippy, phone, selectize) into em_setup_ui_elements() for easy reloading in containers.
  • Added em_nouser_booking_details_modified action.
  • Moved data privacy/consent into own classes folder with parent/child structure and standardized functionality between privacy/comms consent.
  • Transitioned known booking meta keys into newer piped format to break up arrays rather than underscores including (registration, attendees, coupon, booking, zoom, test, discounts, surcharges).
  • Fixed some display issues on view person bookings admin page.
  • Fixed PHP warnings on empty graphs in booking dashboards.
  • Fixed empty graph data when viewing booking data as event admins without manage_others_bookings capabilities.
  • Added more WP_Screen compatibility on front-end in case other plugins load template.php but not WP_Class which results in a fatal error.
  • Fixed backend events with bookings admin tables linking to front-end.
  • Fixed PHP notices on bookings admin tables.

Events Manager Pro 3.3.2 (Dev)

  • Added support for consents in MB mode and other Pro features.
  • Added more recursive saving of Multiple Booking meta into individual bookings.
  • Added custom phone field support to attendee and booking forms.
  • Fixed minor booking table PHP notices with gateway and transaction tables.
  • Added native intl phone support in EM 6.5.2.1 onwards.
  • Improved attendee dynamic form additions by removing templates out of DOM to avoid libraries like selectize etc. converting template fields before duplication and causing layout init issues.
  • Fixed fatal error when initiating Pro update from front-end when EM is still on version < 6.5.