Help setting up serials for festival tickets

-- url of the page with the problem -- : www.fayretimesfestival.co.uk
-- HikaShop version -- : 2.2.0 (Starter)
-- HikaSerial version -- : 1.7.3
-- Joomla version -- : 2.5.14

Before I start on the main problem: If I go to the "Documentation" part of Hikashop, and then click the link for "Hikaserial Documentation" it brings up the following page: www.hikashop.com/support/documentation/1...l-documentation.html where NONE of the links work - they all throw up 404 errors. Also if I type "Hikaserial" into Google 9 out of 10 of the links it throws up do the same!


I started using Hikashop about 3 or 4 months ago and am very happy with your product. A fair bit of it is fiddly to understand (steep learning curve) but generally everything is doable. I would love to have VIDEOS made available on how to do things however. Anyway, I bought Hikaserial a few days ago as we would like our festival tickets to be able to have serial numbers on them.

I am finding Hikaserial to be quite hard to get going. The documentation explains what each and every item does brilliantly (thank you for that) however I can't find any "step-by-step guide" explaining how to do things. Also, it would be a MAJOR help if you could implement "help bubbles" across the Hika range - when I hover my mouse over "Remove Data on unassigned" it would be a massive help to have a brief explanation of what that setting does!

I have checked the configuration, and I think I have that set up right.
Assignable Order Statuses are set to "Confirmed, Shipped".
Link Product Quantity to "No" so the serials do not alter the number of tickets available.
and I think the other settings are okay too.

I then made a Pack called "FTFestival Adult Tickets" - the idea here being the Adults would have serials such as A000001 etc, children would have C000001 etc, Students/OAPs would have S000001 etc and Family tickets would be F000001.

I assigned this to a free test product which is in the Advertise area of the shop.

I bought five of these free products but got no serials on the order. It took some digging but I discovered I needed to set up a Plugin (no mention of this was made in the documentation that I could find!).

Made a "Series" plugin. Named it "#FTFestival-Serial-Adult". Set the Min Value to "A000001" and the Max Value to "A999999".

I had read on the forums here that you could go into the ticket order screen of Hikashop, bring up the individual order and hit the refresh button next to the serial number section so I did that. Partial success!!! I now have Serials 1,2,3,4,5. But that doesn't have the "A" in front of it as I wanted. It should be "A000001/2/3/4/5". Changed the "Truncate serials" config to blank and hit refresh - still the same.

Please help, I am fishing around in the dark here. With no proper walk-through I am just changing and doing things at random.
I would love your documentation to have a whole section on "Example set-ups" - a visual and written walk-through of Hika, but there is nothing.

I have set up a user for you to log in with, please let me know who I should PM these details to.

I truly look forward to your help in this matter.

Sam / Bifford

Thank you for fixing the documentation links - I will go have a look. I have noticed that when loading/refreshing this forum it displays correctly sometimes, but often loses all CSS...though this may have something to do with my using my phone as a Tether for my laptop

So, if I understand correctly the Series Generator plugin will only do Numbers, and not Alphanumeric. Okay, I guess I shall have to allocate ranges then, so Adults have 0-10000, children have 20000-300000, OAPs/Students 40000-50000 and Familes 60000-70000.

It would be nice to be able to have "prefixes" for the series, so you can set the prefix to "Adult-" and then have the numeric serial after so that you end up with serials like Adult-00001, Adult-0002 or Child-00001, etc. Feature request please??

The random serial generator - where do I find documentation on the format of these? Again - this is where a Mouse Hover Help bubble would be invaluable.

Thank you for your time and help.
Sam / Bifford.

Awesome thanks

Now I'm trying to get the addserial to work...I've put together a inage, added in details and stuff like in your own example...and when I hit pay on the test ticket it throws up a white pop up box then stops and does nothing. the order is not placed, no ticket generated and the CSS on any refresh of the shop only gets FUBAR'd....

most odd. I think I need to check things by taking out the different "add-ins" to the generated ticket to see if one of them was breaking it.

Darn this is soo complicated!

Hi again!

A few things: The HELP module on the AttachSerial page (and also the corresponding page in the documentation) does not list and explain all of the options with regards the "Type"

Serial Data
Serial
Order
Order Product
Product
Order Customer
Order Shipping
Order Billing
Entry
Raw Text
Dynamic Text
Translation
Product Price (inc vat)
Product Price (ex vat)

The ones that are shown in your example make sense such as RAW text and Serial Data and Translation (VERY useful!!) but it doesn't say the difference between Serial Data and Serial, or Order and Order Product.

It also doesn't list Parameters for these types.
Can you please explain here and also expand the Help section to incorporate that information? Thanks!

Oh, and any idea when that "next version" will be out so I know how long it will be before I can implement the prefix data? Thanks!

Jerome wrote: Hi,

Documentation updated.

The package is ready but I look for an idea of a feature to implement, otherwise the change log will be a little bit "low".

Regards,

haha nice. you could release it as a subset release!

Btw - the Characteristics settings in Hikashop is broken:
When you create a characteristic the "Name" and "Alias" boxes do not line up nicely. Then when you add in a Value I only get a box for Name, and not Value. Click OKAY and come out of the pop-up I then click on the EDIT icon and nothing happens.

Apologies for yet another question - I promise I am 99% done with setting these ticekts up...in fact I actually am finished, but I want to test them using my actual Public Tickets rather than a fake ticket in a different part of the shop.

To do this I'm trying to make a Coupon to give me (as webmaster) a 100% discount on the tickets.

I have:
* In HikaSerial > Plugins > CouponGen made a "Test-System-Coupon" entry, published it, set Coupon ID to 3, Variable discount to 100%, validity to 1 year, serial size to 10 (so people can't type in 1 and accidentally get the discount).
* I have added the Coupon button to the Checkout Workflow.
* In Hikashop > Orders > Discounts made a coupon called "Admin 100% Discount". Set % to 100. Did NOT publish it (as per docs).

But then what?
Where do I see what coupon has been generated?
Will this only do one coupon?
Will what I've done above work right?

EDIT:

Ah, I think I've finally worked it out - and it's basically the same as with serial data for the tickets. I searched and searched the forums for answers and finally found a *similar* problem that tipped me off.

So I have now:

* Done the above steps
* Made a new pack called "100% Discount Coupon" and set it to the coupongen item from earlier. No products assigned.
* Saved then hit "Generate" and made 10 coupon serial numbers.
* In shop front picked my item, added to cart, added in coupon code I'd cut and pasted from the generated list (how do I send these serials out??) and got my 100% discount. Though it still wants to charge me the £2 paypal fee!!??? (What on...?)

So I now mostly sorted! Just that paypal charge to get rid of. humph. Must be a setting to apply the coupon's discount After that somewhere....

I still think the docs for the coupon creation and *use* needs more info becauseit doesn't walk you through the process completely.

I am sorely tempted to make a video for youtube on the entire process (I did this for Admiror Gallery and it was well received) to help other poor souls!

Thanks again!
Sam

Those Restrictions REALLY need to have a "Category" or "Brand" option!!

Anyway, I thought you might like to see the finished result of all our hard work!

If anyone who reads this is into or curious about LARP, Re-Enactment, COSPLAY, Airsoft, RPGs, BB (guns), Martial Arts and the like you should come to our festival!

www.fayretimesfestival.co.uk/


Once more thank you to Hika, and especially Jerome for all your help

Sam / Bifford

Jerome wrote: Hi,

The implementation of the format for the "series" generator is done. It will be include in the next release.
The option uses the PHP sprintf format. So you will be able to use:

A%05d
Adult-%05d
Child-%05d

for your formats.

Regards,

Have tried Adult-%05d and also Adult- but neither of them produce anything in front of the serial number?
And the php page linked to is no help to me at all....! :/

Oh, and the COPY function in Plugin/Packs still doesn't work for me :}

Sorry, it was late and I was being thick....I didn't think to delete the already generated serials and then re-generate them :/

It now works perfectly, thank you

[EDIT]

Sigh, okay, so the serial numbers in the database are showing up correctly as "Adult-1000" however on the ticket itself I still only see "1000"....groan. Do I need to add something into the AttachSerial page?

Okay, I've clicked on the serial named "Adult-1000" and it seems the "Adult-" part of it is not following through into the actual data stream. Please see the image below:

Sam

Jerome wrote: Hi,

Yes it's logical. You can see that in my screenshot it's the same thing.

When you edit the serial you edit his content... So the number
You don't want to store "Adult-1000" in the database, you want to display "Adult-1000" when the serial is "1000"

So when you edit the serial, you need to access to the raw data, not the processed one.

So you're basically saying that the serial data gets pulled in, but it's not possible to do the same with the prefix (Adult-)?

I guess I shall have to duplicate the AddSerial template three more times then, and edit each so that it prints the Adult- / Child- / Family- / Concession- bit before the serial. Lots of extra work, but ce la vie. If it can't be done then it can't be done.

I am very happy that I can have it on the serial number in the backend though as this makes seeing what's sold a lot quicker and easier at a glance. So thank you still

Sam