Release 4.6.0 of pretix

Today, we are releasing pretix 4.6.0. This release brings some improvements around our COVID certificate checking feature, cookie consent management, and a new way to configure e-mail settings. Of course we've also added in lots of minor improvements throughout the system.

Big thanks go to Aya Yabuki, cpoisnel, DJG Bayern, ExtremX-BB, Felix Rindt, Felix Schäfer, Ilona Zilgalve, Ismael Menéndez Fernández, Maico Timmerman, Mikkel Ricky, Ondřej Sokol, Tonda Pavlík, and Yuriko Matsunami who contributed to this release. ❤️

pretix 4.6.0 is now available for installation via pip. The new Docker images will appear on Docker over the next few hours. All customers of pretix Hosted are already using the new version and do not need to take any action.

Upgrade note: pretix 4.6.0 is no longer supporting Python 3.6, please upgrade to a newer version of Python.

Improved COVID validation

Unfortunately, validating COVID immunity status at the entrance of an event is still a big deal and has even gotten more complicated. In some German states you currently need to have both a vaccination certificate and a negative test certificate to enter some venues, but you can skip the test certificate if your vaccination was recent enough. The rules vary between states, but most importantly, they are really hard to properly follow as a human since you need to compare lots of data points.

Computers are much better at this, which is why we've integrated this as a new option into the COVID certificate validation feature of our pretixSCAN Android app. You scan the certificates in arbitrary order and after every certificate the system will evaluate the configured rules and tell you if additional certificates are needed or if you can admit the attendee.

To use this feature, you need pretixSCAN 1.13.1 or newer, and you can configure your rules in the COVID certificates settings section after you installed and activated the corresponding plugin.

Cookie consent management

In many countries, especially in Europe, there are regulations that require you to ask your users for consent before you use cookies for any non-essential purposes. While pretix itself does not use cookies for non-essential purposes and therefore usually does not require consent, some plugins do. We've therefore added a new centralized cookie consent management tool that plugins can integrate with. For ticket buyers, it looks like this:

You can activate this new feature in the new "Privacy" section in the organizer settings. Our enterprise "Tracking" plugin already is compatible, while the "Campaigns" plugin is not.

Since very recently a new law about this became effective in Germany, we've published a more detailed blogpost on this in German last month.

Email settings

We've restructured the way you configure how pretix sends emails. Configuring the sender address and possibly SMTP server are no longer two separate steps, which allows us to do more in-depth validation and prevent the most common mistakes, such as misconfigured SPF records. We've also introduced a verification step for the sender address to prevent misuse of addresses.

Smaller changes and bugfixes

Ticket shop and widget

• Navigation between different time frames in the monthly, weekly, and daily calendar views has been improved.

• When event-specific domains are used, login to customer accounts is now always processed through the organizer-specific domain and login sessions are propagated between domains whenever possible.

• The checkbox that is shown if a product can only be bought once has been improved visually.

• Customers can now add a phone number to their customer account.

• If there is only one available add-on that must be selected, it will now be selected by default.

• Fix of multiple issues with incorrect behaviour of the self-service add-on change process introduced in 4.5.0.

• The day calendar view introduced in 4.5.0 now properly auto-scrolls to the current time of day.

• The order information block at the end of every order-related e-mail now includes the location of the individual dates in an event series.

• A layout issue was fixed that caused e-mails to be center-aligned instead of left-aligned.

• When submitting question answers during checkout, answers to questions that are hidden due to a dependency are no now no longer stored in the database.

• Public calendar feeds no longer include events that are more than 31 days in the past.

• A bug has been fixed that wrongfully caused event names not to be shown in calendars.

• The performance of rendering large calendar pages has been improved.

• The performance of generating calendar feeds has been improved.

• Thumbnails of PNG files with a custom color palette as well as transparency are now generated correctly.

• A bug was fixed that caused file upload fields to wrongfully require a new upload in some conditions.

Ticketing backend and configuration

• It is now possible to manually create customer accounts in the backend.

• A new global search option allows to view all incoming payments.

• Product variations can now trigger an order to require a manual approval.

• Tax rules now can have an internal name that makes it easier to tell them apart.

• A new option for tax rules has been introduced to keep the gross price constant if the tax rate changes during checkout.

• Custom tax rules can now trigger orders from specific countries to require a manual approval.

• When modifying an automated e-mail rule that has never been sent out to a date in the future, the e-mail will now be sent again.

• A bug was fixed that caused manual refunds to not have an execution date in exports.

• The list of devices can now be filtered for revoked devices.

• The VAT ID is now automatically checked after every manual change of an invoice address.

• You can now attach a PDF file (such as your terms of service) to an order confirmation e-mail.

• A bug was fixed that caused gift card transactions to be reverted accidentally when submitting a different form with the return key.

• A bug was fixed that caused badge layouts copied from other events not to work with question fields properly.

• A bug was fixed that caused log entries to be created when saving the event settings even if there was no change.

• The notice "Optional" was removed on a few event settings options that are not really optional.

• Web check-in: Timeouts of the user's login session are now properly handled.

• Passwords are now limited to 4096 characters.

• Error pages now respect the user's browser language.

Runtime and server environment

• Python 3.6 is no longer supported.

• A few new config options related to e-mail sending are available. Specifically, you now need to opt in if you want organizers to be able to configure SMTP servers in private networks.

Updates to official plugins and tools

• The COVID certificates plugin has been released in version 2.0.0 to support the new features described above.

• The Closer2event plugin has been released in version 1.1.0 to support the new cookie consent management described above.

• The pretixPOS backend plugin has been released in version 2.5.0 to improve rendering of reports and receipts.

• The Reporting plugin has been released in version 1.11.3 to fix an issue in the quota utilization report and improve general performance.

• The Resellers plugin has been released in version 2.2.1 to resolve a compatibility issue.

• The Shipping plugin has been released in version 1.13.2 to fix creation of transaction records if the shipping method is changed.

• The Stay22 plugin has been released in version 1.1.0 to support the new cookie consent management described above.

• The Tracking plugin has been released in version 2.3.0 to improve piwik.pro integration.

Plugin API changes

• An API to integrate with the cookie consent mechanism has been added.

• The payment provider API features a new property confirm_button_name that allows customizing the label of a button used when paying an already existing order.

REST API changes

• Breaking change: The settings item mail_from can no longer be changed through the API.

• New attributes have been added to the tax rules resource.

• The orders resource supports a new query parameter subevent.

• The invoice line resource supports a new attribute subevent.

• When using the "Return URL" plugin for a pure-payment workflow, the target URL will now receive a error or success query parameter with feedback on the result.