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Anyone had guests find event links before launch?

Sarah Cardona-Noriega

Hi all,

Has anyone had a guest find and purchase tickets for an event before the event page was officially published on your website?

We recently had a guest purchase tickets for an event that was not yet linked on our website, and they said they found it using AI (ChatGPT). The event had been approved for online sale in Altru so we could test the ticket sale process and then send the link to our web team for publishing on our official website.

While investigating, we found that the AI was able to locate a Blackbaud-hosted page that appears to list all the events marked available for online sales. Since we were not aware of the page, we're trying to better understand how approved events may be discovered before they're officially promoted or published on our website. It also raises concerns since we have private events that are not for the general public.

Has anyone else run into this? If so, how did you address it? Do you have any best practices to keep events available for internal testing while preventing public discovery and ticket purchases?

Thanks!

Sarah CN
Preserve Guest Services Assistant
Sarah.Cardona-Noriega@springspreserve.org

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Accepted answers

Sarah Cardona-Noriega

Thank you to everyone who has taken a look at this.

As a follow-up, I opened a support ticket with Blackbaud and received clarification on how this works. Blackbaud confirmed that if an event requires Online Registration, it must be available for Online Sales, and events available for Online Sales will appear in the public directory page that ChatGPT found.

They also confirmed that the directory cannot currently be made private or excluded from search engines or AI systems. Their recommendations were to use a staging environment for testing or keep the testing window as short as possible.

My remaining question is how other organizations handle invitation-only, sponsor-only, VIP, or other limited-access events that require online registration but are not intended for public discovery.

I have submitted an idea through Altru Ideas requesting either the ability to restrict access to the directory page or the ability to create events that allow direct-link registration without appearing in the directory.

I'd be interested to hear how others manage these types of events and whether you've developed any workflows or best practices around this. 😁

All comments

Crystal Bruce

Hi @Sarah Cardona-Noriega thanks for making us aware! I'm raising this up to my team for further insights.

Crystal Bruce

Hi @Sarah Cardona-Noriega in your investigations - did you happen to find out what the guest had typed in to find the event? Like, the prompt that would have found that information? We are still looking into this. It might be good to also open a Blackbaud support ticket, so they can start tracking as well.

Sarah Cardona-Noriega

I am working with my IT team on opening a support ticket for this right now. We were able to recreate it in ChatGPT. I can email you the screenshots, what would be a good email address for you?

Sarah Cardona-Noriega

We are communicating with Support to see how this was possible. If anyone else has a similar issue, please let us know - this is certainly an odd one.

Crystal Bruce

Perfect, support will be able to troubleshoot. Thank you for including screenshots!

Sarah Cardona-Noriega

Thank you to everyone who has taken a look at this.

My remaining question is how other organizations handle invitation-only, sponsor-only, VIP, or other limited-access events that require online registration but are not intended for public discovery.

I'd be interested to hear how others manage these types of events and whether you've developed any workflows or best practices around this. 😁