DPCalendar did grow over the years from a pure calendar extension to a massive event booking system. In this release window we put a lot of energy to improve it on different areas and make the accounting with DPCalendar a breeze.
Following our established release strategy, we are excited to announce a new feature version of DPCalendar and a bugfix one for DPMedia, as it is the fourth Thursday of the month. Today, we are releasing the following updates:
The next chapters are highlighting some of the most important changes in this release window.
Multiple export configurations
Exports are crucial for proper and efficient accounting in any extension which processes payment data. The DPCalendar CSV and Spreadsheet plugins allow now unlimited export configurations. Each configuration will appear then as individual download button on the front or back end bookings or ticket lists. Additionally it is also possible to extend the exported data and completely modify it with a layout override. This is very powerful together with the new date range filters, to get only the report data you need.
We did this features for a client of us who needs a tailored export of the booking data with specific accounting numbers per VAT country. Like that they don't have anymore to manually insert the DPCalendar bookings into their DATEV compliant accounting software. All they do now, is to export the bookings and import them into DATEV. Together with the "EU VAT" import button it is now a fully integrated and fast solution. It reduces their work load from hours to seconds. More information about this new feature can be found in the CSV plugin or Spreadsheet plugin documentation.
First name field
Over all these years we saw many sites where they created a first name custom field with many overrides for bookings and tickets. DPCalendar 10.3.0 adds a native first name field to the booking and ticket entity. During the upgrade will the existing name field automatically be split into the first name and name field. If you want to migrate your existing first name custom field data, we added a hidden migration function. Call the following url with the id of that custom field and the data is migrated automatically:
https://{your web site}/administrator/index.php?option=com_dpcalendar&task=bookings.firstname&id=5
Payment provider fee
Every payment provider service like Paypal, Stripe or Mollie do charge a fee per transaction. Now it is possible to forward this fee to the customer. So they can choose the best payment provider option with the lowest fee during checkout. The fee can be defined as fixed value or as percentage of the booking price. More information can be found in the payment provider docs.
Stripe payment methods
Stripe is our choice for credit card payments from day one. It is a PCI compliant, developer friendly, low fee payment provider with a robust API platform that turned in recent years into a massive beast with tons of features. They support automatic tax handling, offline payments, excellent fraud detection, shareable payment links, etc. all with a simple user interface for the customer and the admin. Till now are only credit card payments supported in DPCalendar, tightly integrated into your web site. Additionally can the Stripe payment plugin now display all enabled payment methods from Stripe like banks, pay later services or wallets. After choosing the best payment method, the customer get redirected to the respective page and when everything got payed, he will be redirected back to your Joomla site.
More information can be found in the Stripe plugin documentation.
Small features
The following list highlights some more noteworthy features in DPCalendar 10.3.0:
- State filter in front views, when user has edit state permission.
- Receipt will be downloaded when no invoice exists in the back end.
- Download id is moved from the settings to the update site configuration which was introduce in Joomla 4.
- The calendar can be navigated back and forth with left and right swiping.
- Events tickets discount is shown in the invoice.
- Booking form ticket list renders more clear on small screens.
- Calendar list filter can be hidden in list/calendar/map menu items.
- Location ids are added to the API event endpoint.
- Rerender events on the map when it gets dragged over 360 degrees.
Upgrade considerations
- The booking and ticket names will be migrated automatically to the new first name field, but we advise to manually check the bookings and tickets after the update.
- Check if the update site of DPCalendar core contains the download id in the update site configuration.
- Double check your template overrides as some features (first name) were affecting layouts like the booking details or invoice.
Bugfixes
We are eager to improve our extensions on a regular basis. That's why every major/feature release does contain also bug fixes and small enhancements as well to improve the stability and performance.
A full changelog is added in the respective download release description on our download site.
Kind regards
Allon Moritz aka laoneo
Founder of Digital Peak