I've been wracking my brain trying to figure out the best way to do this -- we're doing a production that is going to end up being assigned-seating (but no web SYOS), but the thing is, the production won't have the seating plan done for a few more weeks, and we need to go on sale before that happens.
So far the best I've come up with is to start with a GA facility for our onsale and then create new perfs in the configured facility when that seating layout is finalized -- and then move every existing order from the original GA venue perfs into the final layout perfs. But I think you can all guess how much I like that idea.
I've never done anything with single tickets sold unseated -- is that something that is possible? To configure the perfs without a facility, or with a dummy facility, and sell tickets as unseated until the facility layout is finalized and configured?
I have a feeling it wouldn't let me create a price layer without a facility... Maybe the thing to do is create the new facility, design the price zone maps for it, but not actually lay out/number/zone/section the seats in the facility? Would that let me create pricing layers for the perfs and sell single tickets unseated?
Any guidance or advice is appreciated.
Hi Nick
Is the seating plan completely undetermined, or just not finalised?
Would it be possible to set up a facility with all of the possible seating options on it, but the uncertain ones on unbreakable hold until it's finalised, and just make the confirmed seats available? Or even make one set of the unconfirmed ones available, knowing you might have to re-seat those - but at least not all of them.
Ken
We do have a general idea of the layout at this point, but even the numbering scheme is yet to be determined.
Hmmm. That *is* a challenge....
I think I'd be looking at the possibility of selling seats in the dummy GA facility, then exporting the orders into a spreadsheet, switching the perf_no's and allocating the the seats in there, then importing them back in again.
Still messy, and you have to work out what to do with the junk orders left behind, but at least you don't have to shift them all manually.
In case anyone looks at this thread in the future, here's what I went ahead with (tested and works in 12.1, but unsupported!)
You can actually separate your seating chart from your event pricing in a way that allows you to sell tickets unseated and configure your seating chart AFTER going on sale -- all from the same events.
You must have your pricing structure decided on, however.
You start with a new facility. A screen should be added to the facility, AND ALL SEATS MUST BE REMOVED. The screen will look totally black, and will validate for completeness because there are no seats on it. The facility should be fully configured as far as the price zone and bestseat tables are concerned -- remember to select these defaults on the Facility tab. Basically, completely create a facility with the pricing structure you need, but never add any seats to it.
Create your events and assign them to this facility and your price zone map. When you configure pricing for your events, Tessitura is only looking at your designated zones, not at the seats on the map.
At this point, you should be able to sell tickets as unseated/paid for this performance, presuming you have a MOS applied that allows this.
Once your seating configuration is decided, go back into facility manager and add these seats to your seatmap screens, remembering to configure numbering, contiguity, bestseat, sections, and price zones. These should now validate just like any other facility.
Run the "Making facility changes after performances have been built" utilities. I believe UP_POPULATE_TX_PERF_SEAT and UP_REBUILD_ALL_BSMAPS are the only ones required in this situation.
Now that your performances are updated with the "added" seats, you can go back and seat your unseated SLIs into the configured seats, and continue sales as normal.
Hi-
Theoretically, you should be able to build a venue with only the appropriate number of zones, with maybe 10 or so seats in each zone. You could define the venue more definitively later on, but you can sell seats within this zone unseated until you can run a validation with your new venue.
You will need to run a number of script updates to the venue to reflect changes before you actually seat them, but at least you can sell zones unseated until then.
And with that, my two cents are spent.
Good luck!
-Mark