New this summer: Custom Fields, Venue Information Board, and stronger sign-in

This summer, we have introduced three new features in MyHallWizard:

Custom Fields let you record what matters to your venue — membership numbers, dietary needs, chairs required — on bookings, customers and your enquiry form.
The Venue Information Board allows you to show today's bookings on a screen at the entrance to your venue.
Two-factor authentication can now send codes by email as well as an authenticator app. And to secure your data, we recommend you make 2FA mandatory for everyone in your team.

Find out more about these features below.

Custom Fields

Custom Fields let you decide what MyHallWizard asks for.

Create a field, choose its type, and it appears on your booking or customer forms. Membership numbers, dietary requirements, chairs needed, which key was handed over — if you need to record it, you can.

There are eight types: short text, longer text, numbers, dropdowns, radio buttons, multi-select lists, tick boxes and dates. Numbers can have a minimum, a maximum and a step. Dates can be restricted to the past or the future — useful when you're asking for an event date and want to rule out last month.

Fields belong either to a booking or to a customer. A booking field is answered each time — "how many chairs?" changes with every event. A customer field is answered once and applies to everything that customer books — a membership number doesn't change between bookings.

Your Booking Enquiry form can ask too. Any field can be added to your public booking enquiry form, and you can make it required, so a visitor can't send an enquiry without answering. When you accept the enquiry, the answers arrive with it — on the booking, or on the customer, wherever they belong.

And your emails can use them. Each field gives you a code you can drop into any email template, so a confirmation can quote the membership number or repeat back the dietary requirements you were told. There are also two codes that list everything answered at once, if you'd rather not name each one.

Everything you record appears in your exports too, ready for a spreadsheet.

Custom Fields is in beta. We've tested it extensively, but we're still refining it — so do tell us how you get on.

The Venue Information Board

A screen for your entrance, showing what's on today.

The Venue Information Board is a screen you can put up at your entrance that shows today's bookings — so visitors can see at a glance which room their event is in. It updates itself throughout the day, shows each booking's room in its own colour, and needs no one to operate it. You just put a link on a screen and leave it running.

You choose which rooms appear, and how private bookings are handled: show the name, show a generic label, or leave them off the board entirely. It uses your venue's own colours and updates itself, so once it's on the wall it looks after itself.

It answers the question every hall gets asked at the door — "which room are we in?" — without anyone having to be there to answer it.

Simply point any spare tablet, monitor or smart TV at a single web address, or use the Venue Information Board with your digital signage system.

The Venue Information Board is also in beta. Let us know any issues or how we can improve it.

Two-factor authentication, and making it mandatory

Your MyHallWizard account holds your customers' contact details and your venue's income. Two-factor authentication (2FA) means that a stolen password isn't enough to log in on its own — signing in also needs a code.

Two things are new.

You can now use email for your codes. Previously two-factor authentication meant you had to install an authenticator app on a smartphone. That suits some people and not others — committee members who share a role, treasurers who don't want another app, anyone whose phone isn't always to hand. Now a code can be emailed to you instead. An authenticator app is still the more secure choice, and still what we recommend where it's practical.
Venue owners can make it mandatory. Your data security is only as strong as the weakest link — if even one team member doesn't have 2FA set up, your data is vulnerable to phishing. You can now require two-factor authentication for everyone in your team. Anyone signing in without it set up is asked to set it up before they can continue. Set this up in Settings > Users.

Note that even if a user has not set up two-factor authentication, we may occasionally email them a code to confirm it's really them — for example when a sign-in looks unusual. This is a security measure and applies to all accounts.

Where to start

If you only do one thing, go to Settings > Users and set up mandatory two-factor authentication.

Then think of something you currently write in the Admin Notes field every time, and make it a custom field. That's usually the one that pays for itself immediately.

All three are in Settings. As always, tell us how you get on — what you'd like these to do next shapes what we build.