Changes to the Online Item Award Process

1. Bidding will still be halted at the closing time you have specified for each online bidding group.
2. A pop-up window will display for everyone logged in as a Chair - asking if you're ready to award the items.  A single click launches the award and notification process.  If you're not ready, a button is provided to re-open and extend bidding.  
3. Once the award process is triggered, if any items in the bidding group require manual awarding, the pop-up window will display a list, with links to each for easy review and awarding.

We provide Event Night  phone support to all of our customers.    Many of the callers request assistance with "one-offs":   how do I fix this guest's order. . .why is this item. . .  but we noticed a significant number of calls involve confusion over the awarding process - when items would be awarded, why certain items weren't awarded, how to extend bidding and prevent awarding etc.    

These changes are being implemented to make it easier to monitor the awarding process and improves visibility and access to items which require manual awarding.   The decision to change the default Award setting on ALL event sites from Auto-Award to Require Confirmation was made because while Auto-Award works beautifully for 99% of events - for the 1% that do not go to plan - auto-award can be catastrophic.

Unforeseen issues DO arise:   a power or wi-fi outage interrupts bidding (and possibly access to your settings); traffic or weather issues result in belated attendance and/or bidding; distractions compete for bidders attention resulting in slower bidding than anticipated etc.  And event organizers often "hope for the best" and assume a surge of last minute bidding will produce the results they need.

With Auto-award enabled - items are often placed in carts before the organizers manage to prevent the awarding.  Then they are faced with the difficult decision of whether to accept the disappointing results or announcing to their supporters that all winner notifications are rescinded, won items will be removed from carts and bidding re-opened.  

It happens. It breaks our heart to get those calls during an event - which is why we made the difficult decision to change the default setting from Auto-Award to  "Require Confirmation" AND force the setting change to "Require Confirmation Step" on all existing event sites.      

The confirmation step takes less than 5 seconds and can be approved by any chair, from any device.   If your event has multiple chairs, we recommend deciding ahead of time which chair will be responsible for  confirming and triggering the awarding at the end of bidding.  .

You still have the option of using Auto-Award - but you will need to manually update your setting at Site Settings > Events > Online Auction/Mobile Bidding > Bidding Settings.     If you opt to re-enable the Auto-Award setting, and online bidding is not proceeding as expected - we recommend disabling Auto-Award to preserve the option to extend or continue bidding as needed.