We no longer want to sell gift certificates, but are still obligated to honor certificates that have already been sold. I can see how to make changes to the page in the Product Type Editor and Product Editor, but not how to turn the page off entirely. We don't link to it from anywhere else on our site, but a simple google search will still turn it up and someone did buy a GC this way over the holidays. The only other option I could think of was to inactivate the payment method in Tessitura, but that would make it so we cant redeem any of the already issued GCs. Can anyone tell me how to disable just the page for purchasing new GCs, without preventing old ones being used?
I would hope there is a better way of solving this, but in Security, you could restrict access to the payment method for return amounts to $0. Presumably that with some messaging might be a sort of a solution?
John is correct. We do this for a GC payment method that was only supposed to only be in Test but were actually sold in Live. Once they are all used up, we will inactivate it. Well, it's been 5 years and almost none of them have been used.
In Security > Maintain User Groups > select Web User > Pmt Method > Max Refund set to 0 > OK.
In our case, I did the same thing for ALL of our user groups. This makes it impossible to sell another one using that payment method.You can also set the payment method to Income only. GoTo > Campaigns > References > Payment Methods.
Thank you both for these tips - I tried following Neil's steps, but what I'm seeing is that the Gift Certificate payment method isn't actually associated with our web user group - so now I'm especially baffled! I also tried setting the payment method to Income only, but was still able to successfully complete a GC purchase after making that change. Any further ideas, or should I slide this over to a support ticket?
Yeah, I think a support ticket is in order, and after that I suspect an Idea to allow turning off Gift Certificates.
Did you also change the Refund amount to $0 like John suggested? It is per user group (I think).
No, because the payment method for Gift Certificates doesn't appear to be associated with the Web user group at all - I think I'm going to take it to Support from here, because something appears to be off with the basic setup. Thanks for your help, all!
Hi Erin, John, and Neil,
Paul here with the TNEW product team. You have correctly identified a defect with TNEW v7 where the configuration of Gift Certificates in Security does not control their availability online. The great news is that we identified this and resolved the issue in TNEW v16.
As an interim solution, you may be able to configure the URL Slug property in the Gift Certificate Product Editor to be something other than you have used in the past to prevent customers from finding the page organically.
Just like Gawain mentioned, if more control is needed, we love seeing new ideas on our new idea board.
I bet you have that payment method defined as the "Gc Payment Method" in LTR_TN_EXPRESS_WEB_DEFAULTS. You'll need to change it there.
Hi Paul, thanks for the additional information. Unfortunately it's easy to find our GC page just by googling our site and "gift certificate" - is there any way to disable the whole Page?
Yes, it is in the Gc Payment Method field in LTR_TN_EXRESS_WEB_DEFAULTS - do I just change that to 'none'? Will that disable the sales, or will it just let the patron go through the checkout process and then throw an error at the last minute? I'm hoping to avoid the latter, to avoid unnecessary patron confusion!
If you really wanted to get crazy, you could place some JavaScript on that page that would either disable adding something to the cart, or even just something like
location.href = "https://carolinaperformingarts.org/"
Unfortunately there is not a way to disable the entire page. If Google is the culprit, our Meta Tag Properties may be of assistance in blocking the page from being found by search engines. Disabling the page would be a great suggestion for the idea board.
I have a hack that I just had to reuse this morning myself (fingers crossed no one sees this message and replies to tell me that I'm endangering my website and innocent puppies by using it).This won't disable a page or do anything for search results, but it'll force a redirect to whatever you want if someone does load the page you don't want them on. They won't have an opportunity to build the gift card. I tend to drop it into the source code of one of the top HTML enabled fields you can edit in TNEW Admin.
<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="0; url='your url here'" />
(And now hoping that got entered right here; we'll see after I hit the reply button.)
John, thanks for this tip - I don't know JavaScript, so this is total greek to me but none of the other things I've tried have worked - can you elaborate on this suggestion and how it would be implemented? is that something I'd add to the URL slug, or something completely different?
Jamie, thanks for this tip - which field in TNEW Admin do you put this in?
Erin Murillas,
In your TNEW admin, what you can do is go to the Product Editor, select "Gift Certificate Class" and then select the Gift Certificate that is on that page. Then in one of the fields, and I just tested this out myself using "Additional Instructional Text", uncheck "Inherited Value". Then open that up, hit the "Source" button in the editor and paste the below:
<p>Testing</p> <script>location.href = "https://carolinaperformingarts.org/"</script>
Save it, clear the cache, and that should take care of it for you.
That solved it at last, thank you so much for the hack!
Not a problem, glad to assist! And yeah, JavaScript can be your friend when you have something really wonky you need done.
Thank you one and all for your help! I've submitted "be able to inactivate the TNEW GC page and/or forms" on the Ideas board, so hopefully the next time this comes up for someone, there will be a much simpler solution!
Don't forget you can vote on your own ideas!