New Bidding System Release Notes from 3/15-3/28

Development Team | April 8, 2025

Below is a summary of the updates made over the past few weeks on the online Bidding platform. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the updates below, please don't hesitate to contact your account manager.

DEV-476- Webcast Viewer Timer Restriction

Previously this feature contained a timer for webcast viewers that prompted them to Register/Login to a bidder account after 60 seconds (point 13 from this article here) of viewing the webcast as a non-logged in Viewer. This timer has since been extended from 60 seconds to 15 minutes. The adjustment of this timer was made after examining the growth of bidder databases in the first 10 weeks of 2024 compared to the growth of 2025 and due to customer feedback on the feature.

As a reminder, Important notes- this timer is ONLY applicable to people on the auction site who are NOT logged into accounts. As shown in the below screen shot, this particular person is NOT logged into an account on the site and is thus presented with the Register/Login prompt for their account and the Register to bid Button.

DEV-1315- Downloadable Report from the Clerking Grid

With the release of the Clerking Grid, a downloadable report containing its data is just as essential as the current downloadable reports for Timed Auctions (Timed Report) or Webcast Auctions (Webcast Brief Report). Since this data is used for invoicing, having a downloadable report is crucial for clients who transfer some of their data into third-party accounting programs, such as AuctionFlex. This new report will mirror the Timed Auction report (for timed auctions) and the Webcast Brief Report (All tab) for webcast auctions, allowing us to use the same report template, with the data being pulled directly from the Clerking Grid. You can download this report by clicking within the Clerking Grid and then clicking the green "Download Report" button. See below.

DEV-1324- SiteAdm: Edit bids on Webcast auction: allow only valid Bidder to be set

Previously, when an admin used the "Edit Bids" feature during a webcast auction, they could assign any bidder with a valid bidder account as the winner of a lot. This could lead to issues if unapproved bidders were marked as winners, as they wouldn't have a valid "BiddingWarrant" for that auction. We've now updated this feature so that while admins can still set any bidder as the winner, the bidder must have a valid BiddingWarrant (i.e., an approved bid request) for the auction. Please see the video below for a demonstration of the updated feature.