Exchange Solutions News for 27 March 2024

Hello there! We have some exciting news from the product team regarding big improvements for Cvent Passkey and The Cvent Supplier's new experience that we know you'll love.

Let's start with the Cvent Supplier Network

What's New? Publish new CSN RFPs to RFP Client Portals

Introducing a game-changing feature for CSN Planners! We understand that managing and publishing RFPs can sometimes be a time-consuming and complex process. That's why we are excited to announce that you can now effortlessly publish RFPs created in the new CSN experience to your RFP Client Portals.

With this new feature, we have made it easier than ever for you to streamline your workflow and ensure a seamless experience for your clients. The best part? We have kept the functionality of RFP Client Portals intact, so there's no need to worry about any changes or adjustments. We have simply added the ability to publish new CSN RFPs directly to those Portals.

What are the most important for valuable things to know about this release?

• Client Portals can be created by an administrator under the admin section under Reporting on the left hand side > Portals

• The Portal Publisher will live under the side navigation within an active RFP

• If an RFP has yet to be published to a portal, the user will be directed to select a Publish RFP button which will land them in a 4 step wizard to pick the portal, select venues, and manage response and publish settings

  

• If an RFP has been published to a portal, the published information will be accessible through 4 tabs- Portals, Venues, Response settings, and Publish settings. All of which can be updated if edits are necessary.

  

• Important - not all response and publish settings that are available in the legacy experience will be available in the new at this time:

  • Response settings:

    • Cost summary categories

    • Budget information

  • Publish settings - high level RFP data points that can be displayed first to customers on the portal. This information is still available in the Portal, just not on the summary tile.

    • Package pricing by package type

    • Cost categories

By keeping these important details in mind, you can confidently utilize the Client Portals feature and make the most of the publishing capabilities within the new CSN experience. Simplify your workflow, enhance collaboration, and optimize your RFP management process today!

Date Change - Newly improved and localized CSN Planner Emails will now be released on March 27th, 2024. Click here to read more about this release!

Moving over to Cvent Passkey...

Cvent Passkey will be bringing a range of exciting improvements to enhance your experience in 2024. Get ready to take advantage of these game-changing updates that will revolutionize your use of Passkey.

New Sub-block Group Management Workflow

Release Date: March 6, 2024

We have significantly improved the experience around creating and managing sub-block groups in Passkey. We will be rolling out this new workflow initially to a small number of customers then enabling remaining customers in a few waves over several weeks.

What have we done?

• Built a vastly improved workflow for creating and managing sub-block groups incorporating updated UX and modern backend technology.

• Added ability to manually approve sub-block groups created via Auto Block.

• Added a "Sub-Blocks" section to the event-level side navigation and grouped all sub-block group-related functionality.

• Removed the sub-blocks section from the old "Planners and Sub-block Groups" page and renamed that page "Planners".

What's next?

These features will be released shortly after this initial release

• Ability to associate a credit card with a sub-block group and record a deposit against it

• Ability to view and manipulate inventory associated with a sub-block group

What else is coming with Passkey?

Auto Block Launching as a General Availability Feature

Release Date: March 20, 2024

We have exciting news! The Auto Block block requests feature, which has been exclusive to a select group of Early Adopter customers in Passkey for several years, is now expanding its availability. With the recent addition of key features like Customizable Confirmation Emails and Manual Approvals, we are thrilled to make this feature accessible to a wider set of customers. Get ready to experience the enhanced capabilities of Auto Block block requests and revolutionize your room block management process.

What is Auto Block?

A new type of block request called Rooms from available free-sell extends our existing block request functionality and helps organizations using Passkey for Citywide events be more efficient when working with multiple sub-block groups.

It allows contacts to request room blocks within Passkey based on live availability, subject to rules that you can configure.

Some of the key features include:

• Ability for you to expose hotels and rooms within a block request

• Ability for you to impose rules for the maximum number of rooms that can be requested

• Ability for a contact (e.g. coach or admin) to temporarily secure multiple hotel rooms at 1 or more hotels without complete reservation details or method of payment

• Ability for you to automatically or manually approve the room block

• Ability for attendees to book rooms within the secured allotment

• Release of unused inventory based on configurable settings

A few other recent updates

We've made significant enhancements to this feature based on feedback from our Early Adopters, ensuring a more robust and user-friendly experience:

• Added the ability for you to tailor the confirmation email that is sent to sub-block group contacts when you request room blocks.

• Added a way for you to manually review and then approve or decline an incoming request for room blocks.

  Please note: these new workflows are currently available exclusively for Organizations in Passkey, and not for Sister Property Organizers or Hotels.

What's Next?
Looking ahead, we are actively working on incorporating your suggestions and further improving the feature. In the next quarter, we plan to introduce a read-only view of inventory associated with a Sub-block Group (SBG), facilitating the review and approval process for organizers. Additionally, we will enable organizers to edit inventory directly and introduce the capability to send emails to SBG contacts.

Stay tuned for these upcoming enhancements as we continue to enhance your experience with Cvent Passkey!

Visit our Community with questions

Questions about anything we’ve rolled out in this window? As always, you can get product questions answered in the Cvent Community via the Open Forum. Also, plan to attend our next quarterly Product Update webinar coming in May where our product team will share release/roadmap news and answer questions.