Swapcard's event management platform Avolio has been rebranded as Launchpad, bringing you a completely new admin interface, a dedicated help center, and streamlined workflows. This change marks the beginning of a series of enhancements aimed at modernizing your interaction with our platform.

Launchpad is more than just a visual update; it is a reimagined workspace designed for speed and clarity. We've streamlined the design to highlight important information and improve focus, allowing you to navigate tasks faster. 

What this means for you:

• New Admin Interface: A cleaner, more intuitive management portal.
• Dedicated Help Center: On-demand support resources to guide you. You can explore the help center now.
• Optimized Workflows: Improved components that make event management smoother.

Rest assured, while your admin experience is getting an upgrade your public registration sites remain unchanged. Your attendees will continue to have a seamless experience, and any future public-facing updates will be communicated well in advance through your Account Manager.

Thank you for being part of our journey. We are can't wait for you to experience Launchpad.

Displaying the In-app registration form section helps you capture attendee data faster by placing your registration form right where the action starts: the Home Page. Instead of forcing potential participants to hunt for a "Register" button or navigate through menus, you can now bring the signup process directly to them.

🚀 Why this matters

Traditionally, visitors had to navigate away from the homepage to access the registration flow. This extra step can slow down decision‑making and reduce conversions.

By embedding registration directly on the homepage, you can now:

• Capture intent immediately when visitors land on your site
• Reduce navigation friction in the registration journey
• Highlight your ticket offers at the most strategic location

🖥️ What is the Registration Section?

The Registration Section is a new Builder component that lets you display your registration form and available ticket types directly inside your homepage layout.

🛠️ How to use it

From Studio, while building your Home Page, you can now:

• Add the Registration Section to your homepage
• Position it anywhere in your layout
• Preview it in desktop and mobile modes
• Publish changes instantly

Take full control of who attends your events

We’re excited to introduce Moderated Registration, a new capability designed to help organizers review and approve registrations before confirming attendance. This feature ensures that only qualified or approved participants join your event, protecting its quality, relevance, and integrity.

🔍 Why Moderated Registration?

For many events, not all registrations should be automatically confirmed. Whether you’re hosting a professional conference, a private workshop, or an invitation‑only session, Moderated Registration allows you to:

• Vet participants before granting access
• Enforce eligibility or qualification rules
• Maintain a curated, high‑quality audience

⚙️ How it works

Once Moderated Registration is enabled on a ticket type, the registration flow becomes approval‑based:

1. Registration submission
   Attendees submit their registration through the usual online form.
2. Pending review
   The registration is placed in a Pending state and is not yet confirmed.

3. Approval or decline
   The organizer reviews the request based on predefined criteria (eligibility, payment status, profile, etc.).

   • If approved → the attendee is confirmed and notified.
   • If declined → the attendee is informed of the decision.
4. Automatic communication
   Confirmation and rejection emails are automatically sent, ensuring full transparency with registrants.

🧩 Availability & Packaging

Moderated Registration is available as part of the Advanced In-App Registration add-on. Please contact your Swapcard sales representative if you're interested for a free trial or learn more about our in-app registration solutions.

Sherlock is the Event Virtual AI Assistant by Swapcard, built to guide participants through exhibitions and help them get maximum value with less effort, less stress, and a lot more clarity.

For a limited time, Sherlock (Beta) is available for free so you can try it out, share feedback, and help shape the smartest AI companion for your events. Enable Sherlock by going inside the Studio > AI Assistant > Enable Assistant. 

What is Sherlock?

Sherlock is an AI-powered assistant natively built in the event app. Participants can simply chat with it in any language, and Sherlock will help them:

• Find the right people to meet and connect with
• Choose and register for the most relevant sessions
• Discover exhibitors, products, and booths and bookmark them
• Navigate the venue, halls, and facilities
• Get support on how to use the event app

Because Sherlock is part of the Swapcard platform (not a generic external chatbot), it understands your event setup, including:

• Who the participant is (attendee, exhibitor, speaker, etc.)
• Their past actions and behavior in the app
• Visibility rules and content access
• Permissions and feature access
• What each person can and cannot see or do

The result: contextual, tailored answers that feel specific to each participant and your event.

Why Organisers Will Love Sherlock

Sherlock helps organisers scale support and service quality without scaling onsite staff.

Reduce basic questions to onsite support

• Participants often ask the same simple questions: “Where are the restrooms?”, “How do I find my badge?”, or “Where is Hall B?”. Sherlock handles these repetitive, location, and logistics questions, freeing your staff to focus on high-value interactions and problem-solving.

Native, configuration-aware intelligence

Because Sherlock is built directly into Swapcard (not a third-party widget), it can:

• Respect visibility rules and access rights configured by the organiser
• Adapt answers based on the role and permissions of each participant
• Provide context-aware help, such as: suggesting only the sessions participants can actually join, showing only exhibitors or products that are visible to their group, or explaining what they can or can’t do in the app, according to your setup.

Security Audit & Protections 

The agent has been audited for security, prompt injection protections are in place to prevent malicious manipulation, and safety filters are configured to block harmful content.

Outcome: Fewer support tickets, happier participants, and an assistant that truly understands your event.

Why Attendees Will Love Sherlock

Large exhibitions can be overwhelming. Sherlock is here to remove the noise and surface what truly matters: Turn overload into a clear plan!

• Handle content overload: Sherlock quickly surfaces the most relevant people, sessions, exhibitors, and products aligned with each attendee’s interests and goals.
• Avoid missed opportunities: In a few days, it’s easy to miss key meetings or sessions. Sherlock helps attendees spot who to meet and where to go so they don’t leave thinking, “I wish I’d seen that.”

• Reduce decision fatigue: Instead of endlessly scrolling through lists, attendees can ask,

  “What should I do this afternoon to get the most out of the event?”
  Sherlock suggests a personalized itinerary based on their interests, schedule, and what’s happening onsite.

• Uncover hidden gems: Sherlock highlights side sessions, niche exhibitors, or special activities that might otherwise be overlooked.
• Get in-app guidance: Sherlock answers questions about how to use the event app and features, tailored to what the organiser has made available to that attendee.

Outcome: More meaningful meetings, smarter content choices, and a smoother, more efficient event experience.

Why Exhibitors Will Love Sherlock

For exhibitors, every minute counts. Sherlock helps them focus on what generates value: Smarter networking, less manual work!

• Find your best leads: Sherlock helps exhibitors identify relevant leads or partners to target during the event instead of relying on random walk-ins.
• Make better use of exhibitor tools: Exhibitors often don’t have time to learn every feature in the app. Sherlock can answer questions like:
  

  “How can I capture leads at my booth?”
  “How do I see the meetings my team has today?”
  This guidance helps them fully leverage the platform.

• More professional networking: Sherlock can suggest ways to organize meetings, highlight networking areas, and help exhibitors structure a more professional and efficient onsite presence.

Outcome: Better-qualified leads, stronger conversations, and higher ROI from the event.

What Sherlock Can Do (Beta Capabilities)

In this first Beta release, Sherlock focuses primarily on Attendees and Exhibitors and interacts with all key elements of your event:

People

• Recommend relevant attendees or exhibitors to connect with
• Highlight interesting leads based on preferences and behavior
• Help participants send connection requests and advise on scheduling meetings
• Suggest suitable on-site locations for meetings

Sessions

• Help discover sessions by topic, format, level, or interest
• Recommend sessions tailored to each profile
• Answer logistic questions related to onsite information

Products

• Surface exhibitor products that match a participant’s needs
• Make it easy to bookmark and contact the seller

Exhibitors & Booths

• Help participants find specific exhibitors and their booths
• Show products, services, and availability for meetings
• Guide them on how to get there on-site

Personalized itinerary

• Help attendees build the must-have by combining meetings, sessions, and visits
• Adapt recommendations as time, interests, or priorities change

Facilities & Event Help

• Answer questions about parking, accessibility, opening hours, maps, or app support

Beta Launch & Pricing

To ensure Sherlock truly serves the needs of your exhibitions, we’re launching it as a Beta with the following conditions:

• It will be available for free for a limited period
• We’ll collect feedback from Organizers, Exhibitors, and Attendees
• This feedback will be used to refine the experience, expand capabilities, and shape future plans for the feature

Our goal is simple:
👉 Build the most helpful, reliable, and intuitive AI assistant for exhibitions.

What’s Next?

If you’re interested in activating Sherlock (Beta) for your future event, please contact Swapcard's teams to enable it!

We’re excited to see how Sherlock will help your participants navigate, connect, and succeed at your next event.

This update makes session registration clear and intuitive for attendees by replacing ambiguous actions with explicit calls to action. Instead of relying on a bookmark icon that can be misunderstood, attendees immediately see what to do and what happens when they register for a session. The result is less confusion, smoother navigation, and higher engagement across the agenda. 

How it works

When an attendee views a session, the interface clearly adapts to the session type and availability:

• Limited-seat sessions

  • Attendees see a visible seat counter with clear color indicators such as “Only X seats left”.
  • A clear CTA button such as “Add to schedule” or “+ Add” on mobile is displayed.
  • Once clicked, the button updates instantly to “Added to schedule”, confirming registration.
  • If no seats are available, the CTA is removed and replaced with a “No seats left” message.

• Unlimited-seat sessions

  • A simple “Add to schedule” button allows instant registration.
  • The label updates after the action, confirming success.

• On-demand sessions

  • Attendees see “Save to bookmarks”, clearly differentiating on-demand content from live session registration.

Each scenario gives immediate feedback, so users always know their action was successful.

Value for organizers

For organizers, this improvement removes friction at a critical moment in the attendee journey. Clear actions reduce hesitation, lower support questions, and improve overall usability of the agenda. By guiding attendees with explicit buttons and confirmation messages, sessions are easier to discover, easier to join, and more likely to be attended. This directly contributes to higher satisfaction and stronger engagement throughout the event.

More precise segmentation for smarter campaigns

You can now target emails to exhibitors, or their members, who have or do not have access to certain premium features. This new targeting option can be combined with existing filters, allowing you to create more refined and powerful campaign audiences.

A powerful lever to drive adoption and sales

This enhancement brings multiple benefits:

• Encourage adoption of premium features already included in certain packages.
• Boost conversions through the Marketplace, now available in the Exhibitor Center, where exhibitors can directly purchase or subscribe to premium features such as Lead Capture or Lead Qualification.

By reaching out specifically to exhibitors who don’t yet have access to certain tools, you can highlight the value of these features and motivate them to upgrade.

A feature with multiple added values

With this new targeting capability, your email campaigns become more relevant and impactful. It helps you better segment your communications, promote premium features, and drive engagement and revenue across your exhibitor community.

You can now decide how taxes are applied to ticket prices, giving you greater flexibility to match local requirements and attendee expectations.

What’s New
Event organizers can configure ticket pricing in two ways:

• Tax-exclusive: Taxes are added on top of the ticket price.
  → Example: A $100 ticket + 10% tax = $110 total.
• Tax-inclusive: Taxes are already built into the ticket price.
  → Example: A $100 ticket (tax included) = $90.91 + $9.09 tax.

This update gives you full control over how ticket prices are displayed and charged, depending on your event’s location and compliance needs.

Default Setting
By default, ticket pricing remains tax-exclusive (taxes are not included in the displayed ticket price).

By default, the setting is set on tax-exclusive, meaning that taxes are not included in the ticket price.

Organizing content across multiple item categories is now simpler and more flexible. This update improves how item views are configured, giving organizers clearer control over what is displayed, without adding complexity.

What’s New

When creating or editing an item view, organizers can now select several item categories at once instead of being limited to a single category or an “All” option.

The previous dropdown has been replaced with a checkbox-based selection, where:

• Each category has its own checkbox
• All categories are selected by default
• At least one category must always remain selected

This makes category selection clearer, faster, and more precise, especially for events with complex item structures.

How It Works

• Multiple category selection: Organizers can select one or several root item categories to include in a view.
• Checkbox interface: Categories are displayed as a list of checkboxes, making selections easy to review and adjust.
• No “All” category: The former “All” option has been fully removed to avoid ambiguity and improve clarity.

Seamless Transition for Existing Views

This enhancement makes item views more intuitive to configure while supporting the growing complexity of large trade shows, congresses, and exhibitions.

We’re excited to bring a set of new improvements to the Backstage platform, designed to give moderators more control, ensure smoother live experiences, and make team communication clearer during production. These updates help organizers manage high-stakes sessions with greater confidence and efficiency.

Customize Your Streaming Background

Moderators can now personalize the background of the streaming content directly from Backstage. This simple visual enhancement allows organizers to align each session with their event branding or create a cleaner, more polished look before going live. It’s an easy way to elevate the on-screen experience without requiring external tools.

Monitor Each Speaker’s Connection & Quality

Technical issues are one of the biggest challenges during live sessions. To help prevent disruptions, Backstage now displays real-time connection status and quality indicators for every speaker.
Moderators can immediately spot weak connections, anticipate potential audio or video problems, and take action before they affect the broadcast. This brings more stability and peace of mind to both organizers and speakers.

Highlight Key Messages With a Custom Backstage Banner

A new custom banner feature allows moderators to display important information to attendees during the session.
This banner is ideal for sharing information, highlighting questions coming from the chat, or signaling key moments during the session.

These additions make Backstage more intuitive, more reliable, and better suited for managing complex live productions. Organizers gain new tools to enhance visual quality, anticipate issues, and guide speakers smoothly, ultimately delivering a more professional and seamless experience to their audience.

A new feature has been released that enhances the organizer experience by making it easier to manage participant profiles. As part of our ongoing development of people profiles refactoring, we have introduced two distinct email fields for each participant profile: the account email, used for login and communication, and the profile email, which is displayed to connections on the App.

To streamline the process of creating and editing people profiles, we have added these two email fields to the People Excel import and export functionality. This update allows organizers to manage participant information more efficiently and with greater flexibility.

Additionally, we have removed the "profile with account" column. Now, if you need to transform a user into a user with no account, simply remove the account email.

This new feature will make organizers' tasks smoother, more flexible, and more intuitive. Just go to the Studio > Content > People > Click Export or Create people > Import via Excel file.