Product Updates Archive - SeminarDesk.com

June 23, 2021June 23, 2021

Global search, restructured and extended view of person and company profiles, create mail merge letters and more…

In this article we would like to present you all the new features and improvements of the current SeminarDesk update from June 2021.

Global Search Function

A search field is now available at the top right of every SeminarDesk screen. The entire database can be searched, e.g. for booking numbers, names of attendees and guests in bookings, invoice numbers, profiles or for events and event dates.

Restructured display of person and company profiles

With this update, the view of the person and company profiles has been revised.

Using the various tabs such as “Person”, “Billing address”, “Extra fields”, etc., it is now possible to find and edit person- or company-related information more quickly:

Another new feature is the “Data protection (DSGVO)” tab, which can be used to store the legal basis, the data origin and also the storage period for each contact. If these have been created, the consents can also be found under this:

As usual, the most important steps can be carried out via the tabs at the top. For example, a new booking can be created directly for the corresponding person or a new e-mail can be created and sent. In addition, existing invoices and e-mails already sent to this person can be viewed or all bookings made by this person can be displayed.

CRM module: create mail merge letters

Within the new CRM module there was already the function to export the filtered or predefined lists or to send e-mails to the selected contacts.

From now on, serial letters can also be created and printed in the same way:

By clicking on “Create bulk letter”, a comprehensive mail merge editor opens, with which text, logos, tables and dynamic fields can be freely inserted, similar to what is known from e.g. MS Word and other text programs. Alternatively, an existing letter template can be used and edited.

Afterwards, the entire data set can be saved or printed directly using the mail merge function:

As always, we hope these improvements help you and look forward to your feedback!

Best regards from
Christoph, Simon and Jan.

May 18, 2021May 26, 2021

Save your custom filters for your lists, optional accommodation and meals, better selection templates and much more…

In this article we would like to present you all the new features and improvements of the current SeminarDesk update from May 2021.

Mark room occupancy as "prepared"

From now on there is the status “Marked as prepared” for the room assignments. This status can be set via the info popup:

Room reservations that have been marked as prepared are indicated by a “key symbol”:

Attendance fee templates

Under Administration – Templates – Attendance Fee Templates, templates for attendance fee price lists can be defined from now on.

A new price list can then be created from a template in the “Attendance fees” section of the event. The templates are especially helpful if the attendance fees for different events are repeated and thus do not have to be created each time.

Scheduled tasks for events and bookings

When editing an event, there is now the possibility to create so-called “Planned tasks” under the menu item “Functions”.

A “planned task” can be used to specify at a certain time for an event date which actions are to be performed with the bookings and/or guests of these bookings.

This function can be used, for example, to map the following use cases:

10 days before the appointment, the invoice is to be generated, posted and sent by e-mail for all confirmed bookings
5 days before the appointment, all guests with the status “Confirmed” should be assigned a specific label.
2 days after the appointment all unconfirmed bookings should be cancelled.

Set default for country prefix for phone numbers

Under Administration – Setup – Settings, under the section “Currency and default formatting”, there is now also a selection list with country names. The country selected there sets the default for the country prefix for phone numbers in profiles. The new feature is particularly relevant for our international SeminarDesk users.

Structure report templates via "categories

A variety of different reports can be created with SeminarDesk. In principle, there are almost no limits here.

In order to better keep track of a larger number of report templates, they can now be structured using “categories”. When selecting a report template via the “Reports” action menu, the templates are then displayed in submenus based on the categories.

Mark accommodation and meals as optional

When editing an event date, it is now possible to offer accommodation and catering not only as mandatory, but also as optional.

If this option is selected, participants can choose on the booking page whether they want to add meals and accommodation or not.

Selection templates: Query bookings

Via the “Selection templates” under the menu item CRM, it is now also possible to evaluate the bookings of the profiles. This means that profiles can now be selected that have bookings for events with a certain label, for example.

Provide bookings/guests with an "identifier

From now on, guests and bookings can be tagged with an “identifier” – this can be any kind of text.

These “markers” can be used, for example, to assign a “title” to all bookings in a group so that they can be filtered later in the booking overview.
These identifiers or markers are therefore more suitable in these “one-off” cases than the “labels” that would first have to be created in the administration and which would then also be visible for other bookings.

Save custom filters for list views

List views can be customized in SeminarDesk depending on the respective needs. The selected settings were previously also saved in the user profile. Now you can also save any selected filter combinations to quickly restore a view that you need more often.

By clicking on “My Filters” the current view can be saved and named. Previously saved views or filters can be selected or managed (edited or deleted).

As always, we hope these improvements help you and look forward to your feedback!

Best regards from
Christoph, Simon and Jan.

April 23, 2021May 1, 2021

New CRM features, dashboard, booking duplicates, favicon for booking pages, overwrite “price info” on booking page and much more…

In this article we would like to present you all the new features and improvements of the current SeminarDesk updates from March and April 2021.

Configurable dashboard

The April update unlocks a dashboard that is displayed immediately after logging in and can be accessed via the main menu link “Home”.

At a glance, you can see upcoming or overdue tasks, new registrations for events, the balance overview or current waiting lists and room occupancy.

The dashboard can also be customized via the settings, i.e. dashboards that are not needed can simply be hidden or moved.

New CRM features: selection templates, actions, address validation service, profile linking, consents.

With this update, new CRM functions have also been enabled. The main menu now contains the menu item “CRM”, which can be used to create selection templates and actions.

The selection templates can be used to generate profile lists via filters, which can then be exported as an Excel file, for example, using the so-called actions.

Another new feature is the address verification service, which can be booked as an additional service. If this function has been activated, the “Address check” button appears next to the address in all profiles.

Note: Since fees incur per query, this is a chargeable extra service. If you are interested in this function, please contact us via the chat or send us an email to [email protected]

Another new CRM feature involves creating consent types or checkboxes that appear in profiles.

Consent can be given, for example, to contact customrs and attendees by e-mail, phone or mail.

Notification of possible duplicates

Avoiding duplicates is a challenge in the planning and execution of recurring events or event series. SeminarDesk now notifies you directly during a booking if a duplicate has been detected for the booker’s profile.

Clicking on the warning icon will then display a list of possible duplicates.

Additional information for event dates

In the event dates there are now more fields to store additional information:

This additional information can be displayed on the booking page or automatically integrated into e.g. all confirmation emails using the placeholder “[AppointmentAdditionalInformation]”.

Send cancellation invoices by email in batch mode

Within the batch mode for invoices, it was previously possible to cancel or process invoices more efficiently.

From now on, cancellation invoices can also be sent directly by email, which was previously only possible through a further manual work step.

The function can be found under the menu item Invoices and by clicking on “Batch processing”.

Overwrite "Price info" for display on booking page

If the price info text automatically generated by SeminarDesk needs to be customized, this can now simply be overwritten in the Booking page settings section of an event date.

Here you will now find the text field “Price info”.

The booking page will then display the entered text instead of the stored participation fees for the relevant event.

Disable price range for accommodation/meals in the date selection

Under the web settings of an event, there is now the following additional setting for events that include accommodation and meals. If this option is active, the price range and an info popup with further details on the various accommodation options will be displayed during the date selection.

This is only relevant for dates where accommodation and/or meals are activated.

Favicon for the booking page

Finally, another graphical improvement of the booking page went online.

From now on, a favicon file can be uploaded via Administration – Setup – Booking page and Emails – Booking page. The favicon will then appear on all events and booking pages.

As always, we hope these improvements help you and your team and we look forward to your feedback!

Best regards from
Christoph, Simon and Jan.

November 24, 2020November 26, 2020

E-mail blocks and snippets, revenue templates and invoices for persons and companies, moving bookings across event dates, and much more…

In this article we would like to show you all new features and improvements of the latest SeminarDesk November 2020 update!

"Waiting List" Emails

Under “Administration – Setup – Default Email Settings” it is now possible to define an email template for bookings with the status “Waiting List”.

When sending this status e-mail, a “report” can also be attached to all outgoing emails, e.g. as a fillable PDF file.

Email Snippets, Email Blocks and Templates

From now on, e-mails can be created more quickly with the help of blocks or snippets.

Click on Administration – Email snippets.

An e-mail snippet can also be used as a placeholder if the checkbox “Placeholder” is selected.

Finally, the “Active” checkbox must be checked and a click on “Update” activates the e-mail snippet.

To add snippets or placeholders to e-mails, we open a new batcvh e-mail and find the option: Insert text block

For the e-mail templates under Administration – Setup – Default email settings, the “placeholders” are used instead of the text modules:

Order of custom menus and pages on the booking page

The last product update already informed about the improved booking page with the option to create additional sub-pages and menus.

The usability has now been further refined, as it is now possible to easily arrange the menus and change the order.

The function can be found under Administration – Setup – Booking page settings in the section Custom web menus and pages

By clicking on Edit you can now define the order of the pages.

You may then click on an event date and its booking page settings. Double check your changes by clicking on Show booking page.

Cost templates and invoices for contact and company profiles

Orders and sales can now be assigned directly to persons and companies, either manually or by using templates.

In our example we have created the template “VIP Membership” under Administration – Revenue Templates:

Under Profiles – Show People we now find our VIP member and assign this revenue under the section – Other Revenues – now directly to the person.

We can now select the corresponding sales position and create an invoice.

List all guests (as opposed to bookings) for an event

Via Events – Show Dates there was until now only the possibility to display all bookings of an event date. Additional guests could only be displayed indirectly within a booking.

In the event date menu there is now the option Show all guests. This list will then only show those persons who are booked as guests for this event.

Move bookings to dates of other events

Bookings could already be moved from one date to another of the same event. This restriction has now been removed so that a booking can also be moved to a date of another event.

In the editing page of a booking, under Actions, you will find the option: Move to another date

As always, we hope that these improvements will help you and we look forward to your feedback!

The SeminarDesk team

October 30, 2020November 26, 2020

User-defined booking pages, directions in confirmation e-mails, flexible meal types and much more…

We would like to showcase you all new features and improvements of the SeminarDesk update from 22nd October 2020!

Header text and image for the booking page

The online booking page can now be further customized:

Go to Administration – Setup – Default Booking Page Settings to upload a header image and text, or directly use the HTML editor to design your event booking page.

The header image can be a photo of your company, an image to promote a specific event or simply a graphic to improve the overall of the event overview page.

Custom menus and pages for the booking page

With this update you can now display pages and/or sub-pages on the booking page. For this purpose user-defined menus can be created under Administration – Setup – Custom web pages:

The booking page thus becomes a mini website with customizable drop-down menus for additional sub-pages in the drop right corner. In our example we created a More Information dropdown menu and a contact page.

Delete Event Dates

This is a rather small but useful improvement: from now on, events can be deleted as long as no bookings have been made.

When you click on “Edit Event” in the “Dates” section you can now find the option “Delete”.

External Accommodations

With SeminarDesk it is now possible to create external accommodations, assign these accommodations to the different event dates, and add external guest rooms. This feature helps, for example, when planning with external hotel room contingents.

Go to Administration – External Accommodation to create the external accommodations and their locations first.

When editing the (event) date details and scrolling down to the section “External accommodations”, you now have the possibility to create one or multiple room types and select the relevant accommodation – in our case: the City Hotel.

After the room contingents have been created, they can be assigned. When editing an existing booking just click on Rooms – Assign external room.

Flexible Meal Plans

This October update makes it possible to define flexible meal types to easily change an attendee’s booking details or to make the meal selection available attendees on the online booking page.

Under Administration – Setup – Meal types the different options can be added in a first step:

In our case we want to offer the options full board and without breakfast.

If we now create a new booking, we can directly select the appropriate template using the drop-down menu Meal type:

When opening the meal plan details, these catering settings are then automatically pre-selected for each day.

Note: With this function only meals for one event date can be removed. For example, selecting our option “without breakfast” will only remove meals that existed earlier or were originally activated for the event.

Directions as attachment in confirmation e-mail

It is now possible to upload directions as image and PDF files for external venues.

These directions will then be attached to all outgoing confirmation emails.

Set Payment Methods

Go to Administration – Setup – Payment Types, to collect payment information for each booking. Under the section Payment Request Fields add fields to request the preferred payment method and if necessary additional payment data.

On the booking page during registration, you can ask attendees whether they like to pay by direct debit, cash or bank transfer.

Through this collection of payment data, a report can then be generated as a list showing, for example, which participants pay cash, which attendees will send the invoice amount via bank transfer and which participants should be debited by debit or credit card.

Published date from/to and start/end of registration on booking page

When editing an event date, it is now very easy to define from and until the event date should be published on the booking page.

Additionally, a registration start date and end date can now be entered.

When entering a start date, the event date will still be visible on the booking page, but registration is not yet possible. Instead, the note: “Registration from” appears with the corresponding date. This can be very useful, for example, to market an event date and display it on the booking page even if the registration is not yet open.

In the same way, a registration deadline can be selected.

In this case, a yellow “Registration until” notice will already appear on the overview page.

Automatically attach report to emails

This is a new function that allows you to automate work steps that would otherwise take a lot of time:

Reports can now be automatically attached to confirmation e-mails (or other system e-mails). For example, attendee confirmations or certificates in PDF format can be automatically filled with all relevant attendee data and sent to the attendees.

In principle, there are no limits here, as reports can also be attached to all other e-mail campaigns, both for internal and external workflows.

The Add Report Template function can now be found for all e-mail templates in the Administration – Setup – Standard e-mail settings section.

Cost Templates

In SeminarDesk, costs can already be booked into an event. Until now however, this had to be done for each new event date manually.

From now on, new templates can be created under Administration – Cost Templates and then simply selected as a template in the Costs section of the Event Date – Event Details. The cost template can save you a lot of time and reduces repetitive work.

As always, we hope that these improvements will help you and we look forward to your feedback!

The SeminarDesk team

August 13, 2020November 26, 2020

Customizable prefixes and titles, optional attendee profiles, updated user menu and batch e-mail campaigns

In this article we would like to show you all innovations and improvements of the current SeminarDesk update from August 2020!

Salutations and titles

You can now assign prefixes or salutations (e.g. “Ms”, “Mr” or “custom”) and optionally titles (e.g. “Dr”, “Prof” etc.) to attendee and guest profiles.

Titles and salutations for existing contacts can be changed by clicking on Profiles – Show all people – Edit.

These dropdown fields are now also available when creating a new booking and in the booking form on the booking page:

Under Administration – Setup – Prefixes and titles you can define which salutations and titles should be available:

Optionally create profiles during group bookings

If a guest or participant is not yet in the system, a new participant profile is always created during a manual booking. Until now, this was done for the first participant as well as for all subsequent participants within a group booking. With the new checkbox “Create profile” it is now possible to determine whether a participant profile should be created for each additional guest or not.

If you do not choose to create a profile, this guest will only be included in the booking with their name, sex and age.

Changes to the user and administration menus

As part of our August update, we have slightly modified the main menu in the upper right corner: Language, password and theme changes as well as the logout function are now available by clicking on the user name.

On top of that, a new “question mark” icon directs you to our help center.

The link to the tasks and notes on the left side remains unchanged.

As some new functions went online in the last months, we have now also revised the structure of the administration menu. All settings that are defined especially at the beginning or before using SeminarDesk are now grouped together under the menu item: Setup.

Email Campaigns to all contacts

Until now, it was possible to send e-mails to all participants of a specific event date. We have now extended this function to make it possible to send email campaigns to multiple persons in your database – regardless of bookings and booking status. Up to 100 individuals can be selected under the menu item Profiles – Send batch e-mail:

The e-mail can include a subject line, text and the usual e-mail placeholders. If needed, you can also add an attachment.

As always, we are looking forward to your feedback!

All the best from us,
Christoph, Simon and Jan.

July 1, 2020November 26, 2020

New tax rates, ‘valid from’ date for price lists, labels and external accommodation

We would like to share with you the latest features and improvements of the July 2020 Update.

Temporary reduction of tax rates

The new tax rates came into force on 1 July 2020. If you have decided not to adjust your prices, no changes to the SeminarDesk settings are necessary from your side.

To easily update new price details or copy existing price lists, please read this Help Center article. (German)

New function: "Valid from" date for price lists

To make price lists more flexible, you can now first define a “valid from” date and then easily copy and adjust the price details within a price list.

Labels for grouping events, dates, bookings and profiles

Previously, when creating an event, the event type and topic could be named using a text field. You can now also define and assign a label to an event.

The entries that are available here can be set up under the menu item “Administration – Labels”.

Note: In the coming updates we plan to replace the event type and theme with these labels and their freely configurable categories. No manual intervention on your part is necessary here.

Outlook: External Accommodation

Under the new menu item “Administration – External accommodations”, external hotel partners including address can now be created. This function is currently still under development. In the future, it will be possible to assign external accommodations to events and then assign them to guests bookings.

We will inform you as soon as this function is fully available with one of the upcoming updates!

As always, we are looking forward to your feedback!

Best wishes from
Christoph, Simon and Jan.