Tickets for Good provides event tickets to disadvantaged and marginalised individuals free of charge. They believe that the arts and culture should be socially-inclusive and accessible to all; they work with event organisers, charities and community organisations to distribute otherwise unused event tickets, creating fantastic life experiences that provide wide-ranging benefits to health and wellbeing.
The Ticket Bank has built an integration with Spektrix, utilising the Agency API to allow you to offer tickets to their users.
In this article, we'll cover how to set things up in Spektrix to make use of this integration. However, ahead of doing this set up, you should reach out to The Ticket Bank; email simon.brown@ticketsforgood.co.uk and they'll talk you through the process and how the integration works.
If you've already partnered with Tickets for Good, the following steps will walk you through the different elements you need to set up on your system.
NOTE: If you've never used the Agency API on your system or are unsure of your set up, please contact the Support, Training and Consultancy Team and we'll be happy to help.
The steps outlined in this article will ensure you are in full control of what Events/Instances and seats Tickets for Good can access. In most cases, the majority of this setup will only need to be done once and can then be rolled into your standard Event setup procedures going forward, depending on your agreement with Tickets for Good.
In all the steps, we advise you to follow our naming conventions for each of the elements you need. These will all use the words ticketsforgoodevent and ticketsforgoodinstance, all lowercase and one word.
The process in a nutshell will involve:
An Event and Instance Attribute need to be created in Settings > Attributes. These Attributes will allow you to mark which Events and Instances you want Tickets for Good to have access to.
These should be:
To ensure consistency in the integration, we advise creating these as Check box Attributes and ensuring the This attribute is visible in your API integrations check box is ticked:
For more information about Attributes and a guide to setting these up, check out our article on Attributes.
A Normal Tag is needed to power some aspects of the integration. This can be created in Admin > Customers > Tags; you can either create this inside an existing Tag Group in Admin > Customers > Tags or you create a new group if you wish. We’d advise naming this Tag ticketsforgood:
Refer to our article on Normal Tags and Auto Tags for further information around setting up Tags/Tag Groups.
A new Lock Type will also need to be created to ensure Tickets for Good only have access to those seats that you wish them to. In Admin > Seating > Lock Types, create a new Lock Type named ticketsforgood, ensuring the Available for agents check box is ticked:
In the Limits section, set the Maximum seats per transaction to 10 and tick the In unreserved areas, sell eligible customers these seats before the general allocation check box:
In the Customer Eligibility section, add the ticketsforgood Tag:
For more information, see our article on Setting Up Lock Types.
In the Admin Interface, create a new Lock Overlay for the seating plan(s) you're using for these Events, locking off any seats you want to make available only through Tickets for Good by applying your newly created Lock Type to them. If your Event is already on sale and includes other locked seats, it may be easier to copy the existing Lock Overlay and edit that, locking these additional seats. Full guidance can be found in our article on Creating a Lock Overlay.
Make sure the Instances you want to make available to Tickets for Good are marked as both visible and on sale to agents in the Basic Details section of the Event:
NOTE: if the Agent option isn't appearing here, this means the feature isn't switched on; please reach out to the Spektrix Support, Training and Consultancy team. who'll be happy to sort this for you.
Here you'll also need to add the Event Attribute to the Events you want The Ticket Bank to have access to (in the Basic Details section of the Event), and the Instance Attribute to the Instances you want them to sell from (in the Basic Details section of the Instance).
Finally, in the Seating Plan section of the Instance(s), click Edit and tick the Change the lock overlay? check box to select the newly created Lock Overlay from a dropdown list and hit Save to apply it.
NOTE: if you need to make changes to a number of Instances, you can use the The Bulk Instance Update Tool to do so.
Before setting up Tickets for Good as an agent on your system, you need to set up an Agent Commission Structure to define the level of commission that an agent receives when selling your tickets. You can do this in Admin > Pricing > Agent Commission Structure.
For this integration, as tickets will be processed at zero value, you'll need to set up an Agent Commission Structure that's also at zero value. You can name this Agency Commission Structure in line with your usual naming conventions.
For guidance around setting this up, read our article on Agent Commissions.
As tickets bought through this integration will be free, you need to create a Multibuy Offer to discount tickets by 100%. You can do this in Admin > Other > Offers, with the discount set to 100%:
The Instance Attribute you created as the event criterion:
And the Tag you created as the customer eligibility:
For a more detailed look at Offers and how they're set up, check out our Intro to Offers and our guide to Setting Up Offers.
In the Sales Interface, create a new customer record for Tickets for Good, ensuring you add your newly created ticketsforgood Tag to it.
Tickets for Good will provide you a phone number and the email address you need to set against this record. Once you've added this information, scroll down to select the zero value Agency Commission Structure you set up from the dropdown list:
Tick the Allowed access to agent API check box and leave the Api Credit Limit at £0.00.
NOTE: it's possible that the Api Credit Limit won't appear here for you; don't worry if it doesn't! An API credit limit isn't necessary for this to function properly.
Hit Save and you'll be prompted to enter the mobile number The Ticket Bank provided. This will then send them everything they need to gain access to the Agency API.
Full instructions can be found in the Setting up API Agent customer records section of our article on Setting Up and Managing the Agency API.
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If you have any questions about this or anything else, please don't hesitate to get in touch with the Support, Training and Consultancy team.