All-in-one business event management platform for a Swedish company
Invajo Beyond is an innovative event management system that simplifies the planning and execution of business events. It empowers event organizers with a comprehensive suite of tools to handle ticketing, registration, marketing, and communication seamlessly.
Overview
Beyond streamlines the entire event management process, adapting effortlessly to different event types like conferences and networking events. It ensures optimal experiences for attendees and offers the convenience of creating recurring events with just a few clicks.
Beyond also offers robust event marketing and promotion tools. Organizers can easily send email invitations, promote events on social media, and run targeted advertising campaigns to reach their desired audience. The platform allows customization of event pages with branding, themes, and engaging content to captivate attendees.
Beyond adopts a modular approach for ease of management by dividing its functionality into distinct repositories, including Atlas, Registration, Virtual Conference, Check-In, and MyPages. This division simplifies system management and maintenance. The backend application, Atlas, leverages Laravel and MySql as its database, while the front end of all portals is developed using the Vue.js framework and Tailwind CSS. This combination ensures a modern and user-friendly experience.
Key features
Event management: Beyond’s event management system provides users with the ability to set up custom events in just a few clicks. This feature makes event creation faster and more straightforward, allowing organizers to focus on other aspects of their event. After setting up an event, users can easily update the details to suit their unique requirements. For instance, the date, time, and venue can be changed if needed, and additional information can be added.
Beyond also offers a simple and efficient way to create tickets and set prices for paid events. Event organizers can add tickets to their events with ease, specifying the number of tickets available and the price per ticket. This feature streamlines the ticketing process and allows organizers to sell tickets quickly and easily.
Virtual conference: It offers a range of tools and features to provide users with a seamless and engaging conference experience. One of the key features of the virtual conference is the live-streaming option, which allows attendees to view presentations and conferences in real time. The interface is similar to Google Meet, which is user-friendly and easy to navigate.
Users can also see a list of exhibitors, contributors, and conference attendees making it easy to network and connect with others. They can participate in any conference that is assigned to them and engage with others using the chat feature. Q&A sessions are also available, allowing attendees to ask questions and engage with presenters directly.
Custom invitations: Beyond allows users to create visually appealing email invitations for their events using customizable branding or pre-made templates. Customized branding in email invitations helps build trust and engagement with potential attendees, create a positive first impression, and set the event apart from others. Overall, Beyond’s email invitation feature helps event organizers design unique and attractive invitations that encourage attendance and promote the event’s branding and identity.
Registration system: Beyond provides event organizers with the ability to create a registration system for their events. They have full control over the registration system and can customize it to fit their unique needs. This includes adding or changing fields and changing the overall theme to match the event’s branding.
Event organizers can also include questionnaires within the registration system, allowing them to gather additional information from attendees. Fields can be made mandatory or optional, depending on the organizer’s needs. Additionally, they can add tickets, activities, and hotels to the registration system, making it a comprehensive solution for event management.
Beyond also offers attendees the convenience of purchasing tickets directly through the registration system, making it a streamlined process. This feature reduces the workload for event organizers while also providing attendees with a simple and efficient way to purchase tickets.
Surveys: Beyond allows event organizers to create surveys for feedback and gather important information from their participants. Surveys are an excellent way to understand the participant’s opinions, satisfaction, and expectations regarding the event.
By using surveys, organizers can gather feedback and use it to improve future events, making the experience even better for participants. Surveys can also help organizers understand their audience better, providing valuable insights that can be used for marketing and outreach.
Communication Center: Beyond’s event management system logs all emails and SMS sent from the platform and saves them under the message center for each event. This feature helps organizers keep track of their event’s communication in one place. The system also records email responses from participants in the same thread, providing better clarity. Users have the option to resend messages if needed, which is useful in case participants miss an email or SMS.
Time zone: Beyond’s event time zone can be easily configured to meet the organizer’s specific needs.
Technical information
Application programming interface: Atlas is the backend of the Beyond event management system, which powers all the portals such as Beyond, Registration, Virtual-conference, Check-in, and MyPages as an API. Atlas is built on the Laravel framework and it handles user authentication and authorization.
Database: The MySQL database of the application has been configured using the Amazon RDS service for better data security and easy backup. The system also uses Redis for shared session storage and Laravel queues.
Responsive design: The front end is built over the Tailwind CSS framework to provide a responsive and optimized user experience on all portals.
Amazon Web Services (AWS): We use AWS Simple Storage Service (S3) to store the documents and deliver results to the application upon requests for document previews and downloads
Error and performance monitoring: We use Sentry as our go-to error and performance monitoring software. It helps us quickly diagnose and fix errors, and also helps us optimize the performance of our code, saving valuable time.
Communication/video conferencing: Vonage is our choice for cloud communication services, which allows our customers to conduct online meetings similar to Google Meet. With Vonage, we offer a range of communication tools including voice, video, and messaging capabilities, as well as powerful collaboration features for file and screen sharing. The platform is integrated into our application to provide our customers with an efficient online meeting experience, enhancing productivity and connectivity from anywhere in the world.
Coding standards: PSR-2 coding standards are followed in the application to keep the code readable and easily maintainable with proper documentation blocks. We use Test Driven Development (TDD) as the primary methodology for application development.
Technology stack: The application backend, called Atlas, is powered by Laravel and utilizes MySQL as its database. The front end of all the portals is built using the Vue.js framework and Tailwind CSS, ensuring flexibility and a high level of user-friendliness.
Next priorities
Group booking: Planning to integrate a new feature where a single user/organization (aka Booker) can book tickets/hotels for a group of people (Companions).
Anonymous registrations: In connection to Group booking, anonymous registrations are also being enabled through the system, (since the user’s details may not be readily available for the Booker).
Unit tests: We have plans to replace the PHPunit with the Pest testing framework.
- Christian Ramel
