CiviBoxOffice

[jcm55]

I guess it depends on how many people start using it, and whether I get any collaborators on the development effort.  At the moment, the ties from CiviCRM into FusionTicket are pretty lightweight.  So I don't see any reason why we couldn't keep current with FT releases as CiviBoxOffice evolves.

[robinhood]

Ok I will do some testing but am having trouble with getting it going.  I have followed the instructions in the INSTALL file and it shows as installed on the extensions page, but I get a 404 on the Manage Seat Maps link:

The requested URL /web/files/civicrm/extensions/org.bactheatre.civiboxoffice/fusionticket/admin/ was not found on this server.

The directory is there and is readable/writable.  Not sure what I am missing.

[jcm55]

I think you may need to put your civicrm extensions directory somewhere outside of the civicrm directory itself.  Try putting the extension in /web/files/civicrm_extensions or something like that.  And then change the setting for the civicrm extensions directory accordingly.

[robinhood]

Ok thanks, that was it.  It works!

N.B. There is also a wiki page discussion here on on a booking component which includes features similar to what is being discussed in this thread.  See in particular the "reserving seats" section.

[jcm55]

I jush pushed some changes to github for CiviBoxOffice.  Updates include:

1) Seatmap and seat selection for event registrations via backend/admin interface.
2) Cosmetic improvements to seat info on Confirm/ThankYou pages
3) Better warning/error handling
4) Barcodes on ThankYou page (barcode check-in still to come)

Still working with lobo on how to get seat info (and barcodes) into confirmation emails.

I'd love to get some more testers/implementors on this!  Please step up!

[SarahG (FountainTribe)]

This extension looks fantastic. I am planning to test in my local sandbox.  Will share my results here on the forums.

[jcm55]

Just committed a few bug fixes.

Also, demo site is available here:

https://test.bactheatre.org/civicrm/event/register?id=4&reset=1

If you'd like an admin login to see how seat map and event setup work, send me a PM and I'll set that up for you.

[robinhood]

I installed the latest version to test and I can't make it display the seatmap, either on the public page or on the back end.  If I fill out the registration form, I get:

Ticket quantity (3) does not match number of selected seats (undefined).

I un-installed and re-installed, and created a new event, but the result is the same.  The price set has Participant Count = 1.  Any suggestions?

[jcm55]

Can you do "view source" in your browser on the event registration page and send me the output?  I'll send you a PM with my e-mail address.

[totten]

Still working with lobo on how to get seat info (and barcodes) into confirmation emails.

I talked with lobo a bit about this problem. With Smarty-based content (like emails and forms), you can mark parts of the template as "regions" so that extensions can manipulate the content. A more detailed discussion is available here;

http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC42/Region+Reference

What we could do is modify the default template used in event-confirmations to include a 'region', and then the extension would append/prepend/replace content in that region.

You should be able to experiment without making changes to core. For example, go to "Administer => Communications => Message Templates =>System Workflow Messages" and edit "Events - Registration Confirmation and Receipt (on-line)". Then add tags like:

Code: [Select]

OLD: Dear {contact.display_name},
NEW: {crmRegion name="email-greeting-text"}Dear {contact.display_name},{/crmRegion}

Some notes:
 * One would probably use different names for the "Text" and "HTML" emails (eg "email-greeting-text" vs "email-greeting-html")
 * You may need to experiment a bit to find the right place at which to generate the code that goes in there. For example, in civiboxoffice_civicrm_pre() you might check for 'create/Participant' and put a call to "CRM_Core_Region::instance('email-greeting-text')->add(array('markup' => 'Hey there, buddy!'));" Or it might be better to use hook_buildForm or hook_postProcess.

If that works for you in an experiment, then we can update the default templates in core so that they're automatically extensible on most sites.

[kharding]

@jcm55, are you still looking for testers for this?  Have there been recent updates?

I think I may be able to assist with testing and potentially some development.

[jcm55]

Yes, absolutely.  I think getting some testers & at least one collaborator are really what's needed to move this forward.

I haven't done any work on it since November, but it's in pretty decent shape as is.  There are only a few areas that need development effort at this point:

1) Add seat assignment info to registration confirmation emails.  Totten has described how to do that a few posts ago.
2) Installation.  Would be good to reduce the number of manual steps required to get the extension installed.
3) Seatmap CSS.  This could be improved I think, and needs to be tested across a variety of sites & themes.

My big fear is undiscovered bugs which could cause duplicate / missing seat assignments, data loss, etc. -- which would be a huge fiasco on show day.

[kharding]

I think that I can absolutely be a tester for you, and may be able to collaborate to some degree. 

I can look at the CSS, and potentially the seat assignment info, but I'm not too sure how much time I will have in the immediate term.  In any event, I'll grab a copy of what you've got done so far and stick it on my dev machine to play with.

[zentaifan]

I'd like to pickup some code of orphaned if there are any available.

[jcm55]

The project is still active -- just haven't been any changes in the last couple of months.  You can grab the extension from github here:

https://github.com/jamescmeehan/org.bactheatre.civiboxoffice

There is an INSTALL.txt in the distribution.