•What Size Should My Image Be?
•System Seat Values & Seat Labels
|
Worksheet Use this worksheet to plan your role configuration before you start building them or updating them.
For more information about configuring roles, refer to Event Configuration - Venues. |
There are a few things you need to consider before creating your venue:
•The information displayed on the venue image.
•The seat configuration, particularly the system values.
•The number of venues you may need to create even though it’s the same physical location within your building or campus.
Before You Begin
Here is what you’ll need to build a venue:
•Seating Details: Collect the following information using lists or a seating map if one exists among your season collateral, building drawings or from your legacy ticketing system:
oSections: You can either create a list of sections or outline them on a map. Do you call the large part downstairs the orchestra or 100 level?
oDoors, Gates or Entrances: Where customers will enter the venue based on their seating?
oAccessible seating locations: Are there gaps or removable seats? Do you need to indicate that? Is there a warning you want to display in the purchase flow?
oObstructed seating locations: Is there a warning you want to display in the purchase flow?
•Your seat manifest: A list of all of the seats in your venue. The list can be one-by-one or in ranges. This could be a clean copy of your seating chart or a printout from a legacy ticketing system.
•Naming conventions: If you have three versions of the stadium (football, soccer and concert), how are they named? This name is used internally and must be unique for each venue. You can display the marquee name to your customers in the ‘Short Description’ field.
•Venue Images: See below for further details.
Venue Image Checklist
Building a reserved seating venue will require two images: the overview image that customers see before selecting a section or when using Best Available, and the detailed image that will form the background when customers pick their seats. Create the detailed image first, then reduce the size and remove some of the detail. This helps keep the two images in proportion to each other.
The content of your image should clearly indicate the:
•Stage or field.
•Floors/sections/stands.
•Aisles.
•Rows (required on the detailed image, optional on the overview image).
•Accessible seating (recommended on the detailed image, optional on the overview image).
Your image can optionally include:
•Venue marquee name.
•Entrances.
The layout of your images should:
•Include a frame around the image. This can be narrow and barely visible.
•Be 300 kb or smaller JPEG or PNG file.
If you’re using a PNG, use a white background and not a transparent one.
•Both have the same relative proportion:
oThe overview image should be no wider than 600 pixels.
•You can include colored sections representative of your price breakdown or to differentiate between seat types like bleachers or regular stadium seats.
oThe detailed image should be no wider or higher than 2800 pixels.
•Sections should be gray or a pale color. The seats display based on their price zone and aren’t configured when building a venue.
•Not have individual seat outlines.
What Size Should My Image Be?
Here are some pointers to determine the appropriate height and width of your detailed image.
•Each seat has a 5 pixel diameter, and the space between each seat is 5 pixels. For ease of math, let’s use 10 pixels to represent a seat and the empty space between seats on a map.
•Make each aisle 20 pixels wide to ensure open space on your image.
•Plan for 20 pixels worth of margins.
•To get the minimum width
oCount the seats in the widest part of the venue.
oCount the aisles.
oInclude the margins to the right and left of the seating areas.
•To get the minimum height
oCount the seats/rows from the top to the bottom of the venue.
oCount the aisles.
oInclude the margins to the top and bottom of the seating areas.
When to Create a New Venue
If you have a venue that has multiple configurations, you may be able to use a single venue since you can add or remove seats when necessary. If there are vast differences between the seating configurations, you probably want to create a venue for each setup.
Removable Seats
If your venue has removable seats, you can use a single configured venue. These are typically seats at the front of the auditorium and are removed when the orchestra pit is in use. Your configured venue can include these seats, and then you can remove them for events when the orchestra pit is in use.
Alternative Configurations
For venues that have alternative configurations, like an arena with hockey, basketball, volleyball, wrestling and concert configurations, using uniquely configured venues ensures that the correct number of seats are available for sale and that tickets match the seat locations.
Once you create your venue with its base configuration, all of the fixed seats for hockey, use the ‘Save Copy’ functionality to create your other venue configurations.
Screens
Screens represent smaller areas of the venue and are where you’ll add seats to your venue. They’re also what customers see when selecting their seats online.
When determining how to configure your screens, keep in mind that you should aim to have no more than 500 seats per screen. You may have one screen per section, as in a large arena, or one screen to represent a single level of your performing arts space like the balcony.
Customers will be able to see the name of the screen, so ensure that you use descriptive words when setting the screen’s name.
System Seat Values & Seat Labels
When creating or making changes to an existing venue, notice that there are two sets of values for each seat: system values (sys section, sys row and sys seat) and label values (section, row and seat). System values are all numeric. They determine whether or not seats are in the same section or row, and whether or not seats are grouped together. The section, row and seat label values are what customers see during the purchase flow and on their tickets. They represent your venue.
When you adjust or add seats, the system doesn’t set the appropriate system values. You need to refer to other seats in the venue to ensure that you’re configuring the new or adjusted seats correctly. Use the Venue Proof report to ensure that your changes don’t introduce duplicate seats.
Let’s take a look at a section of seating where the seats are in the continental style, meaning that the odd-numbers seats are on one side and the even-numbers seats on the other.
Section Label: Orchestra Left | System Section: 10
Row Label: C | System Row: 3
Seat Label |
2 |
4 |
6 |
8 |
10 |
12 |
14 |
16 |
18 |
20 |
22 |
24 |
System Seat |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
Because the system seat values are consecutive, the system understands that seats 2 and 4 are beside each other.
Sys section values should loosely represent how you fill the venue by section. It doesn’t have to be exact since you can configure the fill zone on seats. You can also use the hundreds digit to group levels together. The Orchestra could be in the 100s, the Mezzanine in the 200s and the Balcony in the 300s. If your stadium already uses hundred-numbered levels or sections, feel free to use those as sys section values.
Venue Behavior
When configuring a venue, you have four options to control the ‘Default Screen’ behavior when selecting your seats.
•Screen with Best Available Open or Held Seat: Takes you to the section with the best available seat, including open and holds. This is the default option.
•No Default Screen: Lets you choose the section that you want to view. The Overview Image displays.
•Screen with Best Available Held Seat: Takes you to the section with the best available held seats.
•Screen with Best Available Open Seat: Takes you to the section with the best available open seats.
There are also two ‘Display Options’ you can select on the venue:
•Enable Pan and Zoom in Overview: This option allows customers to pinch to zoom on the venue overview image when using mobile devices.
•Full Map: If your venue requires multiple screens, selecting this displays the entire venue to users and enables them to click the different screens to view the seats associated with the screen. They continue to see the entire venue, with only a portion of the seats available to select. Customers can zoom in to view the seats. If you don’t select this, only one screen is displayed at a time and customers scroll through the screens using arrow buttons on the seating map.
