TNEW - vanity URLs?

You're going to hate me, but this is something you could actually potentially do with TNEW v7 and slugs, but I'm pretty sure there's no baked-way to do it in v6.

Unless you were desperate enough to overload your 404 page...

Gavin,

The v7 thing is interesting - maybe this is something I can use to push NIDA into upgrading..........

Although I would say that it's high time to upgrade, and certainly all of the functionality in v7 is radically superior to v6...there are currently two glaring omissions:
1) No Order or Contribution History pages.  It's weird, but that was dropped.  They're working on a major overhaul of the account pages currently (the memberships page was just release in Test), but it's a little way out yet.

2) No Non-Flex NFS packages.  This has sucked for us, as we have a number of these every year, and have used them for a variety of purposes.  There appears to be no timeframe for adding support for them.  Fixed-Seat Packages, and Flex NFS packages are both supported.  We've just had to use the latter for our genre packages where we have too few performances (e.g. only three Jazz performances most years) to actually have any choice, and have had to come up with alternate solutions for other things, such as our Student Flex Pass.

Another feature that's a bit compromised is payment plans.  It has just been reintroduced, but it requires Hosted Payments, which we didn't have, so we're going through the arduous process of setting that up now.

For more info on Slugs, look under "Customized Product URLs" here:

https://www.tessituranetwork.com/TNEW_7/TNEW.htm#Topics/Building_Links_to_Your_Site.htm

A caveat: because slugs have to be unique, it can be tricky to us them for performances and production seasons, where you might, as we do, have four different production seasons for Jonathan Biss in one season.  They definitely nice for contribution types and gift certificates, however.

I also find the Default Delivery method being a pain. Quite often I need them to select delivery (eg Merch)  

Also if the product in the cart doesn't have the default delivery method it breaks Guest Checkout.

Hi Gawain, 

Thanks for outlining some of your experiences with v7 so far. Just a quick update on my end.

1) We are releasing the v7 account history pages iteratively - and as separate pages. We are working on the new upcoming events page and giving history page as we speak and they should be released in upcoming releases in the next month or two. Memberships was the first one to be released so that's why it's a little lonely right now. We got pretty far along with development on the Order History page actually, but I put a pause on it as it still had the same problem as v6 did in displaying on-account payments (eg gift certificates or contributions) as item in the order. We are having further discussions internally on how best to support those type of items. 

2) I would love to chat with you a bit more about NFS packages. Many organizations that use NFS packages have used super packages or flex package path to support them. I will follow up with you separately offline about that. 

3) Yes - we are moving away from Tessitura acting as a payment gateway with TNEW hosted payments for strategic reasons. Payment Plans do require hosted payments. I would be interested in hearing the challenges you are facing with that process as we would like to make it as easy as possible to help with the transition.

Hi Heath -Thanks for mentioning the issue with delivery methods. We are looking into the issue you mention in Guest Checkout and will look to get that resolved! Thanks. 

Hi Nara!

Re: Account Pages -- will the navigation be unified before the Memberships page is released in Live?  I have lots of other questions/comments on the page, but those I filed through the feedback form.

Re: Hosted Payments -- so far we're finding it really awkward to get the Hosted Payment page styled.  We have tickets in with Payment Express, I mean Windcave, for more template configuration access and to have the icon swapped out (all in Test) but these are languishing, and we're not ever sure what we're going to get with the former.

Hi Nara!

Re: Account Pages -- will the navigation be unified before the Memberships page is released in Live?  I have lots of other questions/comments on the page, but those I filed through the feedback form.

Re: Hosted Payments -- so far we're finding it really awkward to get the Hosted Payment page styled.  We have tickets in with Payment Express, I mean Windcave, for more template configuration access and to have the icon swapped out (all in Test) but these are languishing, and we're not ever sure what we're going to get with the former.

Hi Gawain 

We actually wanted to get Memberships Page out and in the wild as well as Contribution History and Upcoming Events page all in the new account section before porting over the existing Account History and Interests page. I will check on my end though to make sure that requirement is high up in the queue but once everything is done, yes all account pages will be in one place. 

I'm sorry that Windcave is not getting back to you on the template configuration process in a timely fashion. I will chat with our relationship manager internally to see if we can get some attention on those. Thanks for letting us know as, like I said, we want to do what we can with any of the hosted payment providers to make this a simple process.