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Hi All

I’ve been asked to pitch for a site and I’m wondering whether it’s do-able. The client wants:

- A box office system to sell tickets for events
- A way to add telephone bookings (I guess that bit’s probably easy - they could just use the front end)
- A way to store/browse/export all customer details - they’ve asked for a CRM but I think they basically need to be able to see/export, for example, everyone who booked a specific event, everyone who’s ever booked an event, view all the events a specific customer has booked etc. Also they need to be able to add people to the database, even if they haven’t booked an event, so they can use it as their main contact manager.

There seem to be a few possible approaches here. moreEvents looks really great, but I’m a bit nervous about how new it is. I’d really like to set the client up with a system that’s been going a while. I guess there may be a way to do this with Solspace User + Solspace Calendar + Cartthrob or similar, but I suspect that’s going to lead to creating a lot of their interface on the front end instead of the back - it’d be nice for them to have an intuitive system in the back end for viewing all their contacts/exporting data etc, and having everything store in normal channels feels a bit clunky. And I always feel a bit funny handing over a system that’s half back-end and half front!

Has anyone had any experience building something like this?

Thanks loads for any pointers!

Frank

Hi Frank

You don’t need to worry about Moresoda (moreEvents add on). Their team is top notch and I know a few of them personally. They’re committed to EE and are very professional!

I’ve also gone down the road of using a commerce solution for events, take a look at Brilliant Retail and Exp:resso. I have a preference, but it’s ultimately for you to decide based on the requirements.

Let us know how you get on!

Matt

Hi Matt

Thanks for your reply. I’ve posted a question on the moreEvents forum to see whether there’s a way to do everything I need. I’m sure there would be a way with one of the normal commerce systems, but I’m concerned about how spread-out the interface could become. I suspect that to create what I outlined above, we’d need to tie all registrations to EE member accounts.

All the data (who’s booked for what) would be in there, but some things would be entries, some things in the members panel etc. And it looks like there wouldn’t be easy ways to display data such as “all events customer X bought” or “all customers who attended an event of type Y”. Those things would be there in the DB, but I guess I’d need to be building extensions/modules myself to have that data viewable/filterable/usable in the CP.

I’ll see what Moresoda say about moreEvents… I’m a bit cautious as it’s such a new product but might be the way to go, unless anyone knows any other systems that do all this out of the box?

Thanks!