You run general admission, a planetarium show, and a behind-the-scenes tour. In Altru each one is its own program with its own events. A visitor planning a Saturday wants to see all three on one calendar and pick times that don’t collide. Your website, meanwhile, shows three separate ticketing pages, or one long list with no sense of the day.
This is one of the most common gaps between how Altru organizes ticketed inventory and how visitors actually plan a visit. Below is what’s going on, what you can try inside Altru, and the workarounds organizations tend to settle on.
Why programs end up on separate calendars
Altru builds ticketed inventory around programs and the events scheduled under them. That structure is good for pricing, capacity, and reporting: each program carries its own price types, and each event carries its own capacity. It also means most of the views you get, both on the staff side and on the web, tend to be organized one program at a time.
For staff in daily sales and advance sales, that’s usually fine. Cashiers know which program a guest wants. The friction shows up online, where a visitor doesn’t think in programs. They think “What can we do on the 14th?”
What to check inside Altru first
Before you look for a workaround, confirm what your own setup can do. Altru’s web ticketing options and form settings have changed over time, and what’s available depends on your configuration.
- Review your ticketing web form settings. Look at whether the form you use for online ticket sales can be set to include more than one program, and how it displays them when it does. If it can, test how the result looks to a visitor on a phone, not only on a desktop.
- Test in a sandbox or on an unpublished page. Add a second program to a test form and walk through a purchase. Watch for confusing ordering, mixed price types, and whether availability for each event shows clearly.
- Ask Blackbaud support directly. If you can’t tell whether a combined view is supported for your form type, a short support case with your form name and the programs you want together is the fastest way to get a definite answer.
- Check the staff side separately. Staff calendars and event lists in Altru may filter or group differently from the public form. Don’t assume that because staff can see everything together, visitors can too.
Workarounds organizations use
Restructure as one program with multiple event types
Some organizations fold closely related offerings into a single program, for example several tour times that differ only by theme. This puts everything on one calendar automatically. The tradeoff is reporting: if leadership wants revenue and attendance by offering, splitting one program’s results back apart takes extra query work. It also only makes sense when the offerings share price types. Don’t merge a free member preview and a paid evening lecture just to get a shared calendar.
Build a “what’s on” page that links out
A plain website page listing each day’s offerings, with a link to the right ticketing form for each, is low-tech but works. The weakness is that it’s static. It won’t show sold-out times, so visitors click through to find nothing available. Someone also has to keep it current every time the schedule changes.
Bundle or package the combination
If the reason you want programs together is that people usually buy them together (admission plus a show, for instance), it may be cleaner to sell that as a combination rather than asking visitors to assemble it from two calendars. Whether a bundle fits depends on how you price and report on it, so talk to finance before building one.
Use an embedded calendar that reads Altru availability
The other route is a separate calendar on your website that pulls events and availability from Altru and shows multiple programs together, while purchases still go back into Altru. This keeps your program structure intact for reporting and gives visitors the single view they’re looking for.
Things to decide before you combine anything
- How visitors tell programs apart. If everything sits on one calendar, each event needs a clear name. “10:00” means nothing without “Planetarium: Night Sky” next to it.
- Which programs actually belong together. Members-only events, school groups, and private rentals usually shouldn’t appear on the public calendar at all.
- What happens at capacity. Visitors should see a sold-out event as sold out before they reach checkout, not after.
- Who maintains it. Any approach that needs manual updates will drift out of date the first time someone adds an event and forgets the website.
Where Social Good fits
If Altru’s own forms don’t give you the combined view you need, our Calendar Builder creates embeddable timed-ticketing calendars for your website with real-time availability from Altru. Your programs and events stay set up in Altru as they are now.
Quick answers
Do I have to merge programs to show them on one calendar?
Not necessarily. Merging is one option, but it changes how you report. Check your web form options and consider an external calendar before restructuring programs.
Will a combined calendar change my Altru reporting?
Only if you restructure programs to get it. A calendar that just displays existing programs together leaves your program-level reports as they are.
