Your audience already has a login they use every day. Asking them to create another one just to register, manage a booth, or submit a talk adds a step nobody wants. Launchpad now supports single sign-on, so people can sign in with the account they already have and get straight to what they came for.

What’s new

A new Sign-in Providers page in your Launchpad setup lets you connect your organization’s identity provider. Once it’s connected, your users see a “Sign in with…” button on the portals you choose:

• Registration
• Exhibitor portal
• Call for Papers
• Speaker portal

Launchpad supports OpenID Connect (OIDC) and SAML, the standards used by most enterprise identity platforms.

How it works

1. Open Sign-in Providers in your Launchpad setup.
2. Add your provider using the details from your IT team, and give it a name your users will recognize.
3. Choose your portals and decide who the provider applies to.
4. Go live. Your users sign in with their existing account.

Key behaviors

• Set it up once, use it everywhere: Configure a provider for all your events or for a single event.
• Your audience, your rules: Send everyone through your provider, or only people from specific people. Everyone else keeps the usual sign-in.
• SSO only, or SSO as an option: Make your provider the only way in, or show it alongside the standard email sign-in.
• Portal by portal: Turn on single sign-on for Registration only, or for every portal. Each one is configured independently.
• Invitation links still work: Invited registrants and exhibitors still get straight in from their link.

Why you'll love it

The login page is the first impression of your event experience. With single sign-on, every Launchpad portal feels like part of your own ecosystem rather than a separate tool with its own password. Registration is faster, “I can’t log in” tickets drop, and attendee data stays consistent because it comes from a single source. Set it up once for your whole event portfolio, and still keep control over each event and portal.

Reconciling extras sales used to mean lining up Stripe payments with your catalog by name and amount. Now each extra can carry your own product code (SKU), and that code is sent with every payment to Stripe. Your finance team and your accounting tools see the same reference from day one.

How it works

1. In Studio, go to Exhibitor marketplace and create a new extra or open an existing one.
2. In Additional settings, enter your product code in the SKU code field.
3. Save. Done.

When an exhibitor buys that extra, the Stripe payment includes your SKU in its metadata, under the sku key. The metadata you already receive stays exactly as it was, so your existing reports and integrations keep working.

The field is optional and only visible to your team in Studio: exhibitors never see it. You can also reuse the same code on several extras when they map to a single product in your catalog. 💸

A meeting request means nothing if the person on the other end was never free to begin with. Until now, availability wasn't very visible, so requests landed on people who couldn't take them, and the frustration piled up on both sides. This update fixes that at the source: everyone sets their own availability, and the booking flow respects it.

What's New

Two things change on People and Exhibitor lists:

• Manage availability: a new button appears wherever time slots exist for an event, opening a simple flow to mark yourself available or blocked, day by day.
• Book a meeting: a dedicated "Need to meet?" section with a clear Book a meeting button, shown only to groups actually authorized to send requests.
• My Schedule/My Meetings: manage the availabilities directly from my schedule or my meetings with a quick new button "Manage your availabilities"

How It Works

1. Open the People list or Exhibitor list 
2. Tap Manage availability to open the availability sheet.
3. Each day lists your time slots: tap any slot to toggle it, or use the day checkbox to enable a whole day at once.
4. Slots already tied to a confirmed meeting show the other person's name and can't be toggled off.
5. Save: your availability is now visible to whoever books you.

Key Behaviors & Options

• Color-coded slots: green means open, grey means blocked or already booked (with the other person's name shown for context).
• Bulk day toggle: the checkbox next to a date enables every open slot for that day in one tap; a partial day shows a dash instead of a full check.
• Dismissible, not gone: on mobile, closing the availability/booking card with the ✕ hides it for the day, but it resurfaces every day through the event so it's never permanently missed.
• Request volume counter: once an event passes 50 total meeting requests sent, a running counter ("+50 meeting requests already sent," "+100," etc.) appears next to the Book a meeting button, updating every 50 requests.
• Scoped to who's eligible: the Book a meeting section only shows for attendees and exhibitors actually part of a group allowed to send requests.

Why Organizers Will Love It

Unavailable-participant requests were a quiet source of no-shows and support tickets, and for high-touch programs like hosted buyer tracks, they were becoming a real risk. By putting availability directly in the hands of attendees and exhibitors, every meeting request is sent against real, current availability. Fewer wasted requests, fewer awkward "sorry, I can't make it" replies, and networking numbers that actually reflect people showing up.

💡 Pro tip: Encourage attendees and exhibitors to set their availability before the event opens; the earlier it's filled in, the fewer meeting requests get blocked by an empty schedule on day one.

💡 Pro tip: The request counter is a nice social-proof nudge; if your event has strong meeting activity, it reinforces to attendees that the networking is real and worth engaging with.

A suggested meeting only works if people believe in it. Until now, the AI explanations behind Hosted Buyer meetings and people recommendations could feel generic, so buyers had trouble seeing why a match made sense. Now every explanation points to concrete common ground taken from your own profile fields.

What’s new

Our matchmaking AI now highlight more of your event’s profile data when it explains a match:

• Interest and Knowledge custom fields: when two participants have similar values, the explanation names at least one of them.
• Tree custom fields: hierarchical fields like Industry > Sub-industry now count too. If two people share a category, the explanation says which one.

How it works

1. Participants fill in their profile. They add their interests, knowledge, and any tree custom fields you set up for the event.
2. The AI generates the match. This covers suggested meetings in your Hosted Buyer Program and people in the AI recommendations carousel.
3. The explanation shows the overlap. It compares both profiles and cites the shared values.

Key behaviors

• Most specific match wins: if both people pick the same sub-category (e.g. Energy > Solar), the explanation cites Solar. If they only share the parent category (Solar vs. Wind), it cites Energy.
• No overlap, no mention: a field is never cited when the two people share nothing in it, or when one of them left it empty.
• Each tree field counts on its own: if your event has several tree fields (Industry, Job function, Region…), each one is checked separately. Only the ones with a shared value show up.

Why organizers will love it

• More meetings accepted: when a buyer can see why a match makes sense, they’re more likely to say yes.
• Fewer “why am I meeting this person?” questions: the explanation answers that on its own, so your team gets fewer support requests.
• Your profile data does more: the fields you collect at registration now show up right where participants decide whether to meet.
• Better exhibitor ROI: clear, relevant matches lead to better conversations, and that’s what keeps exhibitors coming back.

💡 Pro tip: Explanations can only cite fields that are filled in. Make your Interest, Knowledge, and key tree fields required in the profile, or prompt hosted buyers to complete them before meetings are generated.

💡 Pro tip: Build tree fields with clear parent categories. Even when two people pick different sub-categories, a good parent category (Energy, Healthcare, Retail) still gives them a solid reason to meet.

Your HubSpot portal already knows who's a member, whose membership has lapsed, and where everyone works. Until now, your registration form didn't. Registrants hunted for member codes and retyped details you already had, and your team checked pricing by hand afterward. The new HubSpot integration for Launchpad fixes that. Registration reads your HubSpot contacts as people sign up, so the right price and the right details appear without anyone asking for them.

What's new

One HubSpot connection gives you two features:

• Registration Lookup: Launchpad finds the registrant in HubSpot by email, or by another contact property you choose, such as a member number. It then writes the values you've mapped onto the registration, such as membership status or a Classification. Your existing pricing, promo code conditions, package visibility, and approval rules act on those values. There's no new engine to configure.
• Profile Pre-fill: Once registrants verify their email, Launchpad fills in their name, company, and other profile fields from HubSpot. They confirm or correct the details and move on.

How it works

Set it up in Launchpad

1. In HubSpot, create a Service Key under Settings → Integrations → Service Keys with the crm.objects.contacts.read scope.
2. In your event's Integrations, select HubSpot and paste the key into Connection Details. Launchpad checks the key with HubSpot before saving it, then shows which portal you're connected to.
3. Turn on Registration Lookup and click Configure. Choose the property to match on (email by default). Then map HubSpot properties, custom ones included, to registration fields, for example membership_status → Membership.
4. Run a test email through the test panel to see exactly what would be written. Testing changes no data.
5. Optional: turn on Profile Pre-fill and map HubSpot properties to profile fields such as first name, last name, and company.

What registrants see

1. They enter their email and verify it with a one-time code.
2. Launchpad looks them up in HubSpot. Members see the member price. Everyone else sees non-member pricing, plus any membership package you've set up for them.
3. If Pre-fill is on, a quick confirmation shows a masked version of the name found in HubSpot. They choose Use my details or Not me, start fresh.
4. Every pre-filled field stays editable, so outdated details get corrected on the spot.

Key behaviors

• Nobody gets blocked: If there's no match, HubSpot is down, or a rate limit is hit, the registrant continues as a non-member. They see no error, and the screens look exactly like a no-match.
• Privacy built in: Personal details appear only after the registrant verifies their email or signs in. Until then, matched and unmatched emails look identical, so nobody can type in an email to find out who's in your CRM.
• Your properties, ready to map: The mapping screens list your portal's contact properties as HubSpot groups them, including one you created yesterday. Hidden, archived, calculated, and sensitive properties are left out.
• Dropdowns just work: HubSpot values are matched to list fields such as ticket type, package, Classification, or country by their label.
• Registrant edits win: Pre-fill never overwrites a field the registrant has edited, and an empty HubSpot value never blanks a field.
• Health at a glance: The Configuration page shows Connected, Token rejected, HubSpot unreachable, or Scopes missing. It also shows failed lookups from the last 24 hours, with a link to the integration log.
• Always current: If a registrant changes their email, or you change a mapping, the lookup runs again on the next save.
• Read-only: Nothing is written back to HubSpot. Corrections stay in Launchpad, and each registration stores the matched HubSpot contact ID for traceability.

Why organizers will love it

Members expect to be recognized. Now they are: the right price on the first try, no "email us for the member rate" detour, and a form that already knows them. Your team stops cross-checking registrations against HubSpot. Your membership logic stays in HubSpot, where it already lives, and registration becomes a smooth path into membership instead of an obstacle to it.

💡 Pro tip: Before go-live, run three emails through the test panel: an active member, a lapsed member, and an unknown address. You'll see every pricing path in under a minute.

💡 Pro tip: Keep your HubSpot values aligned with your Launchpad option labels. If HubSpot says "Gold" and your Classification is "Gold tier", the value won't be written.

An API key pasted into a script for last year's event, then forgotten, is still a way into your event data. Now every new key gets an expiration date, Studio shows when each key was last used, and keys that sit idle for a year switch themselves off.

What's new

Choose how long a key lives

When you create a key, pick its Expiration date: 7 days, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days (the default), 1 year, or Custom to set an exact date.

See every key's status at a glance

The API Keys list now shows, for each key, when it was created, when it was last used, and when it expires, or that it already has. Spotting a key that hasn't been used in months takes a second.

Unused keys expire on their own

A key that hasn't been used for 12 months expires automatically. Events run on yearly cycles, so a key nobody has called in a year is almost always a forgotten one. This applies to existing keys too, including those created without an expiration date.

A heads-up before anything breaks

You get an email shortly before a key expires, and another once it has: enough time to swap the key in your integration before anything stops syncing. Expired keys stay in the list, marked as expired, but they can't be turned back on. Create a new key and update your integration.

How to create a key

1. In Studio, open API Keys and click Create a new key.
2. Give it a Key name and choose an Expiration date.
3. Click Generate the key, then copy it right away: for security reasons, it's only shown once.

A wall of plain text doesn't sell an upgrade. Extra descriptions in the exhibitor marketplace now support formatting, so you can spell out what's included, how it works and where to learn more. Exhibitors understand the offer before they hit Buy now.

How it works

Write it in Studio

1. In Studio, go to Exhibitor marketplace and create a new extra or open an existing one.
2. In Basics, format the Description: bold, underline, bulleted and numbered lists, and links, with up to 5,000 characters to work with. It's the same editor you already use for session descriptions.
3. Save.

Translations work just like before, and existing extras keep their current description untouched.

What exhibitors see

On Boost your ROI in the Exhibitor Center, each card shows the image, name, price and a short plain-text excerpt of the description, so extras stay easy to compare side by side, along with View details and Buy now.

Clicking View details (or the extra's name) opens the full picture: a large image, the formatted description, the price, Learn more when you've added a link, and Buy now. 🎯

Until now, every Sponsors block showed every sponsor section, so your home page and custom pages all carried the same full list. Now you decide, block by block, which sections appear. Put your premium partners front and center, dedicate a page to a single tier, and give every sponsor the visibility they paid for.

How it works

1. In the builder, open your home page or a custom page and select a Sponsors block.
2. In the Content tab, under What to display, switch each sponsor section on or off. Enable all turns everything back on in one click.
3. Click Publish this page.

Sponsor sections themselves are still created, managed and ordered in Studio, under Event builder → Sponsors & advertising. Every block follows that order, so to move a section up or down, change it there.

Good to know

• Existing blocks keep showing all their sections: nothing changes until you edit them.
• New blocks start with every section switched on.
• New sections you create later start switched off in your existing blocks. Turn them on wherever you want them to appear.

Organizers can now tailor registration confirmation emails to different ticket types in Swapcard Registration, making it easier to provide attendees with the information most relevant to their registration.

What's new?

You can now duplicate the default Registration Confirmation email and associate the copy with one or more tickets. When a registration is confirmed, Swapcard automatically sends the email associated with the attendee's ticket.

For example, ndee's tickd:

• In-person ticket holders: Venue details, check-in instructions, and practical event information.
• Virtual ticket holders: Online access instructions and information about joining sessions.
• VIP ticket holders: Exclusive benefits, special access details, or personalized instructions.

Each ticket can be associated with only one specific confirmation email. If a ticket doesn't have a custom email associated with it, the default Registration Confirmation email is sent.

How to set it up

1. In Studio, go to Communication → Emails.
2. Duplicate the default Registration Confirmation email.
3. Customize the email content for the relevant ticket type.
4. Select the ticket or tickets to associate with the email.
5. Save your changes.

How does it work?

• Default confirmation email: Remains the fallback for tickets without a specific email association and cannot be deleted or repurposed.
• Group Registration: Each registered user receives the confirmation email associated with their own ticket. For moderated group registrations, the primary contact continues to receive the payment link email, while confirmation emails are sent to the registered users.
• Event duplication: When an event is cloned, registration confirmation email templates are duplicated when the organizer chooses to duplicate registration-related items.

Why it matters

Organizers can deliver more relevant, personalized registration communications without having to rely on a single confirmation email for every ticket type. Attendees receive the information they need based on their registration, helping organizers improve the registration experience and communicate more effectively.