We are trying out a new way of booking drink vouchers in Tess as tickets to a large GA drink ticket "performance", where tickets can be scanned using Nscan and are valid/can be scanned for the entire fiscal year.
At first I thought we could just set up one performance with the performance date being the last day of the fiscal year. However, Nscan will only scan tickets that have a performance date during the day that it's scanning - we don't want to enter the drink ticket perf_no in the Perf_str column of TR_NSCAN_PROFILES as this makes the scanner only use-able for that performance.
My thought is to set up a nightly SQL Server job that just does:
UPDATE T_PERF SET perf_dt = GETDATE() WHERE perf_no = [drink ticket performance]
Are there any negative ramifications to updating T_PERF like this that I'm not thinking of?
Thanks!Sheela
I'm won't pretend to be enough of a SQL expert to comment on T_PERF updates, but will mention that we have set up drink vouchers as a fiscal-year-end perf for several years, and circumvented the scanning issue through our lobby flow. Drink vouchers are printed on standard ticket stock and then mailed or held at will call as appropriate, but don't get scanned at the door - instead, our concessions staff collects any physical vouchers used at the bar that night and delivers them to the box office, who then mark them as 'attended' via Record Attendance in the client as part of standard opening/closing. It's not immediate, but all the vouchers get marked as 'used' within a business day so we can confirm there's no funny business when someone claims they "lost" their drink voucher and asks for a reprint (which has happened!). Not sure if your lobby setup would allow for this but it's worked pretty smoothly for us!
Sheela Sur-Luk said:My thought is to set up a nightly SQL Server job that just does
I assume you mean an "early morning SQL Server job"...
I don't know off the top of my head, but I'd check to make sure that NSCAN is looking at T_PERF, and not looking at the ticket itself (i.e. TX_PERF_SEAT or similar location).
Yes! It will run after midnight.
Thanks, Gawain! My main concern is there are other places I need to update the perf_dt that I'm not thinking of.
Unless there are customizations in play, NSCAN usually looks to T_PERF for the date, so I think Sheela should be good to go with her suggested method. I myself have never tried updating the perf_dt like that, and obviously there would be things like MOS, Doors Open/Close, possible Client/Web publish and Price Type start/end dates to take into account (either regularly updated or just set for a wide span), but otherwise I think this should work.
I have my own regularly scheduled job that updates T_PERF but that one only takes care of on-sale/off-sale and things related to that. As long as it is late night/early morning, there should not be anything in transaction on it at that time, but that might also want to be taken into account. Also, potentially if any other sort of reporting or quicksale set-up or shortcuts and other business needs are related to the perf_dt.
So I would want to do some testing, but otherwise, I THINK this should be an excellent solution.
HI Sheela,
Did this solution end up working for you? Did it have any unintended consequences?
Thanks!Sara