New Releases

Handbid Release 2.46 - Private Live Streams, Reserve Bidding & more!

New features including live stream restrictions, reserve bidding, custom donations, and more
New features including live stream restrictions, reserve bidding, custom donations, and more

Happy summer and welcome back to our product updates blog! Here's a rundown of the new features and tools you can now take advantage of on our Handbid software. Drumroll please…

Handbid's New Features Update

Restrict who can view your Live Stream programs!

With Handbid's new Live Stream settings, we have added the ability to restrict those who can view. 

The first option below allows only those who register for your event to view the Livestream. This gives you the ability to capture the information of all the individuals that are viewing your stream. 

The second option is to require a ticket purchase to view the Live Stream. This can give your viewers a more private viewing experience, by restricting additional viewing from non-ticket purchasers.


 

Reserve Bidding

For those that have a minimum price you are willing to sell an item for (reserve) but would like to start the bidding lower than the set reserve, you may now do so and Handbid will not sell the item until the reserve is met.

Reserve bidding has a different logic than regular bidding, so it is important to understand how reserve bidding works. See details below. 

Managers can set a reserve price on an auction item (or they can import the reserve price).  This can be managed on the Item Edit page:

 

 

Here is the bidding logic that is important to understand

  1. If a user bids and that bid is below the reserve price, they will be notified that they have the winning bid (but it is under the reserve) and will be asked to bid higher. 
  2. A bidder can "outbid” themselves as much as they want below the reserve price.  
  3. If a bidder sets a MaxBid and that MaxBid was below the reserve price, then the current price will be set at that MaxBid. This is critical to understand. For example, if an item is at $50, a reserve price is at $100 and a person sets a MaxBid at $75.  Handbid will place a bid for that user at $75! 
  4. Once an item's current bid exceeds the reserve price, then regular bidding logic takes over. 



Custom Donations

We made some updates to our donations page and how your donations will be populated. You will now be able to set your donations in your event settings. Set up to six donation increments you would like to appear on your donation page. You may also create "Appeal Items” and mark them as "Featured” to appear on the Donation Page.

 

These levels will then show up on the events site donation page:

 

 

Accessibility Improvements

To improve our user experience and give more people the ability to participate in an event on the Handbid website and app, we have implemented improvements to the accessibility features. We added an accessibility plugin that allows end-users with disabilities to better use the site. The accessibility plugin will appear at the bottom corner of the event's website. 

Your donors and end-users will be able to choose this accessibility button and adjust the website to their desired features. For example, the colors, displays, and images will be changed to enhance the overall experience for colorblind users. 

 

We have also improved the accessibility of our native apps for iPhone and Android, improving their functionality with voice-over, text size adjustments, and contrast!

 

Updates to Terminology

We updated the terminology for two key event/fundraising types of Handbid to more recognizable terms. "Fundraisers” has been replaced with "Peer to Peer” and "Event” has been replaced with "Campaign”. Melissa from our team is jumping for joy and we hope you are too!

 

 

Contract Tracking Updates

New updates for Handbid contracts were implemented in this release. This allows for the ability to see your remaining auctions and events available for use. Additionally, you can track your SMS text messages sent. We have a tracker on SMS messages used on the organizations' main dashboard, this will not yet be enforced. Lastly, we have noted your contract expiration date for the year. This will remind you when your renewal is due and/or if your Handbid contract is expired. 

 

 

Other bug fixes and feature additions

  • Users can now choose to make their donations anonymous during auctions and campaigns. 
  • The iOS app also has been upgraded to improve its voice-over capabilities for those that are blind.  
  • Names will no longer be shown on the live ticker. These have been switched back to Paddle IDs
  • The Messages Report under Reporting/Bidders will now show the status of an SMS text message if the message was sent via SMS (status column). If nothing is in the status column then the message was sent via PUSH.
  • Auction currency on newly created auctions should now default to the org currency. 
  • Max bidding has been improved. 
  • There was a pagination issue on the donations grid view on peer-to-peer that was fixed. 
  • Sometimes donations from temp users were not showing up on fundraisers. We have rebuilt that logic and it should work much better now. 
  • Users were able to set a MaxBid at the buy now price on the Events site. That has been fixed.
  • If custom terms were on a ticket that also had a discount code, the UI would hide the "purchase” button. This has been fixed.
  • The "Create Item” modal got a facelift and we now explain what each item is and whether the user can purchase it and how many items they have left.  
  • If an inactive contract has its dates updated to the future, then it will be automatically enabled again. 
  • Currency should be properly formatted now on the events site so that "$10000" now looks like "$10,000". 

What’s a Rich Text element?

The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.

Testing image caption text
  1. Numbered list
  2. Numbered list 2
  3. Numbered list 3

Static and dynamic content editing

A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!

How to customize formatting for each rich text

Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.