BlocksOffice

The Basics

BlocksOffice is provided as a cloud-hosted, software-as-a-service solution, that integrates with your Tessitura REST API to provide online purchase functionality, including ticket sales, subscriptions, donations, memberships, online video content, and account management functionality. It is mobile responsive, highly customisable, and extensible, with many users choosing to add significant customisation options on top of the core platform. It can be hosted at a sub-domain of your main website (e.g., my.venue.org) and styled to match the look-and-feel of your online brand.

Ticket Sales

BlocksOffice supports general admission and reserved seating, using our SeatCurve SYOS application (included in the BlocksOffice licence fee). SeatCurve provides tools such as view-from-seat images to help customers understand their seat location, as well as many tools to help users navigate any size of venue. 

Subscriptions

Out of the box, BlocksOffice provides support for both fixed and flexible subscription packages and renewals. Many BlocksOffice clients choose to focus on this area for extended functionality, in order to provide additional functionality for upgrade/change requests, donation asks and more.

Upsells & Add-ons

BlocksOffice includes an up-sell engine, allowing you to target upsells based on the contents of the user's cart. It also allows you to mask the ticket terminology within BlocksOffice, so merchandise, car parking, and other add-ons don't have to appear as 'tickets' in the cart or on the checkout screens.

Guest Checkout

Support for Guest Checkout is included as part of the standard BlocksOffice deployment, and can be configured to meet your business rules around duplicate users. By default, BlocksOffice will allow users to checkout as guests without creating duplicate records in Tessitura. We can also support third-party login tools such as Facebook and Google authentication.

Payment

BlocksOffice is integrated with each of the main Tessitura payment providers for credit card payments. BlocksOffice has also integrated Apple Pay via Windcave, and PayPal. With a little configuration, BlocksOffice can support payment plans online, and we have developed customisations to support online Direct Debit for UK clients.

Digital Ticketing

Standard BlocksOffice e-ticketing options allow for digital ticketing as standard, including Apple Wallet, SMS and emailed tickets. Customers can access their e-tickets via an email sent immediately after order confirmation, or can be accessed via their online account. E-tickets can also be configured to re-print on each access/download to prevent customers from sharing screenshots of their digital tickets.

Donations and Membership

BlocksOffice includes standard screens for donations and membership contributions. You can set up one-off or recurring donation patterns and memberships as needed, and depending on what payment methods you have configured, these can be linked to tokenised cards or online Direct Debit mandates.

Online Exchanges

BlocksOffice can be configured to allow customers to exchange their tickets online, with variable business rules depending on your own conditions of sale. Exchanges can be permitted for all tickets, or just subscriptions, and contained within the same production season, or season as needed. Fees can be applied based on constituent information or product type being exchanged, and you can decide what happens to any money left over after the exchange process. 

My Account

Users can access their order history, and tickets for upcoming performances, via a dedicated My Account page. The upcoming performances screen becomes a hub for customers who want to manage their tickets, including accessing e-tickets and kicking off exchange processes, depending on which features have been enabled within BlocksOffice.

Multi-language Support

All user-facing text in BlocksOffice can be edited via the Site Text Editor, which can also support multiple language libraries for multi-lingual support. Additionally, BlocksOffice can be configured to replace text strings coming from the Tessitura API, such as price type or price zone descriptions with a translated alternative. Finally, email confirmations can be configured to send in the language that the user used to check out, providing a fully multi-lingual, end-to-end solution.

Integration with Website

In its simplest form, your website can just hand off to BlocksOffice to complete ticket purchases, donations, and subscription sales, or to allow users to log in. However, much more sophisticated integration is possible, with key connection points being optimised through the use of the Tessitura API, proxied via BlocksOffice for security. We are very happy to advise on the best integration approach, and making the most of the data available to you from Tessitura, for personalisation and site optimisation.

Further Customisations

On top of the standard and configurable options outlined above, many BlocksOffice users have opted to significantly extend the capabilities of BlocksOffice, for example by re-flowing user journeys to better meet their users' needs, or by building whole new components on top of the core framework. This has included an airline-style loyalty programme, performance 'favouriting' and balloting functionality.