Events Manager 6.6 and Pro 3.4

We are excited to announce the release of Events Manager 6.6 and Pro 3.4! This update brings several new features and improvements that enhance your event management experience, focusing on telephone contact gathering and communications consent.

The focus on international phone number fields and communications consent options lays the foundation for upcoming integrations with messaging platforms like Telegram, WhatsApp, and Twilio SMS/WhatsApp. By standardizing how phone numbers are captured and stored, we’re making it easier for you to leverage these communication channels effectively.

Key Highlights of the Update

International Phone Number Input Fields

We’ve added support for international phone number input fields, allowing you to capture and validate attendee phone numbers accurately during the booking process, featuring front-end and server-side validation.

Additionally, you can tweak many display options, such as restricting the countries shown appearance options, such as displaying flags next to country codes, placeholder formatting, etc.

This feature is available in the General Settings section (Settings > General) and is designed to ensure consistency and reliability when handling contact information. It set the groundwork for our new highly anticipated integrations with popular messaging services Telegram, WhatsApp, and Twilio SMS/WhatsApp via our release-in-process, Events Manager Connect (more on this in the coming day).

Enhanced Communications Consent Options

Maintaining compliance with data privacy regulations is critical. We’ve had privacy policy consent for some time now, but this doesn’t necessarily cover contact consent in all countries. Given that privacy policy consent is a requirement, consent to communication may not be.

We’ve introduced new consent options specifically for communications, allowing you to ask or require users to consent to be contacted. This includes a history of the user’s last acceptance or revocation of consent, ensuring transparency and control over communication preferences.

Moreover, consent can be handled across multiple guest-user bookings, so if a user has booked multiple times without logging in and revokes consent, all bookings related to the user email reflects the consent change too.

This new consent feature works perfectly with our upcoming add-on (already available to Pro customers), Events Manager Connect, making managing communication across different channels easy.

Ready to Experience the New Features?

Upgrade to Events Manager 6.5 and Events Manager Pro 3.3 today and take advantage of these new features and improvements. We are committed to continuously enhancing our tools to provide you with the best event management experience possible.

Stay tuned for more updates, including the upcoming launch of the Events Manager Connect add-on that will bring even more powerful communication capabilities to your fingertips!

If you’re already a Pro customer, check out the Downloads page, it’s already there ;)

Changelogs

Here is the changelogs from the respective readme.txt files for a full breakdown of changes.

Events Manager 6.6

  • 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.
  • Fixed $location_fields fatal PHP errors when loading maps and location-dependent event search queries.
  • Added option to exclude taxes from subtotal in booking summary pricing.
  • Added EM_Bookings search by booking_id.
  • Fixed EM_Booking->can_rsvp() occasionally providing incorrect result if number types are strings, as well as check to make sure booking is approved.
  • Added requirements check class.
  • Added events_manager_plugin_loaded action for loading any EM-dependent plugins early on in plugins_loaded.
  • Improved consent options including better EM_Person consent checks and a default to consented option if user already active (in development).
  • Fixed rows setting not getting saved.
  • Fixed summary issues showing empty summary section, fixed typo in new option from last commit (in development).

Events Manager Pro 3.4

  • 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.
  • Improved obtaining of downloadable PDFs allowing for easier upload access.
  • Fixed automation nonce false-positive error.
  • Added ability to deactivate actions in a specific automation.