FAQ

General

Q: Do I have to install any add-on apps?
A: Yes, Blackthorn | Payments. It's included in the cost of Events and is needed for both free and paid Events as it handles the checkout flow.

Q: How is the Events app priced?
A: See our AppExchange listing.

Q: How do I access our data in the Events app once our annual maintenance expires?
A: If you don't renew before the contract ends, you will lose access to our apps and related objects when your contract expires. You will also lose access to all data if you don't export/migrate your data before your contract ends.

Q: Is all data native to Salesforce?
A: Yes.

Q: Is there an integration to build?
A: No.

Salesforce-related

Q: How do I mass update Attendees' Registration Status to "Invited"?
A: Try one of the following options:

Option 1: Create a List View on the Attendee object and add the Attendee's First Name, Last Name, and Registration Status. You can now update the Registration Status in mass.

Click here for information about how to update records inline from a List View.

Option 2: Use a Data Loader
Download a CSV report with all the Attendee Record IDs, including a column for Registration Status. In the CSV document, update Registration Status to "Invited".

Click here for information about updating records with a Data Loader.

Q: Waitlisting?
A: Yes, manual or automated, with multiple criteria.

Q: Is there matching logic?
A: Yes, we Salesforce's duplicate matching rule logic, so you can get pretty creative with your matching rules. Generally speaking, email matching is your best bet.

Q: Why can't I delete Attendee records?
A: If your Events users can’t delete Attendee records, it is likely caused by Role Hierarchies. If Role Hierarchies are enabled in your org, and the Events user is lower in the hierarchy than the owner of the Attendee record, who is usually the Blackthorn Events Authorized User, then the user won’t be able to delete the record.

To resolve the issue, please assign the Blackthorn Events Authorized User a role that is lower in the hierarchy than that of the Events app users or instruct your users to take ownership of the record before attempting to delete it.

Q: Why won’t the Clone button on the Events record page work?
A: If you have the same API name for a managed package and a custom field in the Session, Line Item, or any other BT objects, the Clone button won’t work. This is a Salesforce limitation.

The error can be found by running debug logs and should appear something like this. “ERROR|duplicate field selected: conference360__Event__c.”

The same error will be displayed in the console when inspecting the page during testing.

For more information, please read the Salesforce article.

Q: How do I hide the Register button on an Event that belongs to an Event Group?
A: Complete the following steps to hide the Register button on the Event's webpage.

1. Go to a specific Event record.
2. Set Hide Register Button = "Yes".
3. Click Save.
4. Go to the related Event Group.
5. Click the Event Group URL.

The Register button will now be hidden on the Event.

Checkout Process

Q: Where does the checkout "go"?
A: All checkouts process through Salesforce. Payments process through Stripe in a PCI-compliant method.

Q: What happens during a checkout?
A: Event Checkout Flow

Q: Does it work with Salesforce Communities?
A: Yes.

Q: How do I hide the Contact Information page?
A: A Contact's Phone is a required field for the BT Events Attendee Matching Rule as noted in our documentation. The Contact Information page is required when using the tabbed UI experience. If you use the Simple UI experience, the Contact Information page will not show.

Q: How do I make the Phone field a required field so Attendees don't have to fill their phone number in twice - once on the Attendee Form and once on the Contact Information screen?
A: To make the Phone field a required field, go to the Event record, open the related Event Item, scroll down to the Attendee Form section, and set Phone to "Required".

If information is populated on the Attendee Form, then the information will be populated automatically on the Contact Information screen so the Attendee won't have to enter the information twice.

Emails

Q: Can the app send emails?
A: Yes. All data is native to Salesforce so you can utilize native Salesforce features to send emails, such as Workflow Rules or Process Builder processes with Email Alerts. You can also utilize Pardot, Marketing Cloud, IBM Watson, MailChimp, or any other email app that can work with Salesforce Custom Objects.

Q: What is the email balance?
A: The email balance is the total daily email limit per org that is enforced by Salesforce. Blackthorn has no control over the amount.

Webinars/Zoom

Q: Is the Zoom link in the confirmation email updated if the field is edited on the Event record?
A: If you modify the Webinar/Meeting Account or Webinar/Meeting URL fields on the Event Page, then the link will be automatically updated on the AttendeeLink.

Also, make sure that the Attendee record’s Webinar/Meeting Join URL field is blank if you use Webinar Accounts. Removing the value in the Attendee record’s Webinar/Meeting Join URL field and populating the Event record’s Webinar/Meeting URL field will make sure the AttendeeLink is correct.

Attendee Check-in app

Q: Do you have a mobile app?
A: Yes, for Event organizers to manage check-in.

Security

Q: Issues migrating data?
A: Try setting the batch size to 1 if you're running into errors.

Q: Caching issues
A: Caching issues are one of the biggest problem for any developer. At Blackthorn, we do our best to address caching issues. We have a database cache via connect360, an application cache on Events backend split into multiple partitions, Content Delivery Network (CDN) Caching where applicable, and we try to take advantage of browser caching. With all of these implemented, you may still receive a caching error (Error 2004) and may need to do a hard refresh for the page to load. This will only happen when making a change to the page, end-users will not see this error.

SEO

Q: Is there a way to hide Event pages from appearing in Google search results?
A: Blackthorn cannot hide Events from search engines or prevent browsers or bots from crawling an Event’s website. We load the SEO metadata on the first page render, so the page gets basic Blackthorn information. At the same time, we can’t promote Events either.

When an Event appears in Google search results, the following is true.

• A Google search will pull the Event name, but it will not pull any other Event information.
• Each Event webpage will not have a unique description. The description in the Google search results will be the same as the Event’s generic text.
• Anyone viewing the search results will be able to click the Event link and register for the Event.
• To search for a specific Event, a user needs the exact Event name.

Q: Can Event information in an iframe be found by a search engine?
A: No, Event information in an iframe cannot be discovered by a search engine. Since an Event’s content is loaded asynchronously after the page is rendered, the content is not accessible by search engines.

Q: Can we manually use event-structured data markups?
A: The short answer is no. The front-end is loaded synchronously BUT the data is loaded asynchronously. This means that by the time the crawlers have gone through the page, the data is still not ready to be rendered. As a result, any SEO tags would need to be updated asynchronously, and those updates would have no impact on the crawlers’ results.