Scanning mobile devices with N-Scan

Hey Tom,

This was an important feature for us when we were looking at implementing scanning and the types of scanners we could use. We definitely welcomed and encouraged people to not print their tickets and just display it on their phone at the gate. At present we only use it for our outdoor film festival.

It is a little bit slower than scanning paper tickets. The brightness of the screen is a big factor (most people were ok though) and barcodes generally had to be zoomed in before they could scan. This was just off our first year though so we'll be doing more testing before our next Festival to see if we can fit a larger barcode and make sure it is right where we want it to be when it's viewed on a mobile device. I think that's the big thing out of this. 

As the season went on we found more people were presenting their tickets on their phone and not printing them out and this seemed fairly consistent across both our younger and older audience members.  

Our film venues have external toilets and the venues just issue a separate pass-out/toilet pass that customers surrender on the way back in. They've been doing it this way for years and we felt this was a lot simpler than constantly scanning in and out.

I think the biggest thing to get right is the way the barcode displays on the mobile. If you can get it to be the right size for scanning then you've only got to worry about the brightness at the gate and that's not going to be an issue for every phone. 

Hope this helps. Let me know if you want anything more specific. 

Hey Tom,

This was an important feature for us when we were looking at implementing scanning and the types of scanners we could use. We definitely welcomed and encouraged people to not print their tickets and just display it on their phone at the gate. At present we only use it for our outdoor film festival.

It is a little bit slower than scanning paper tickets. The brightness of the screen is a big factor (most people were ok though) and barcodes generally had to be zoomed in before they could scan. This was just off our first year though so we'll be doing more testing before our next Festival to see if we can fit a larger barcode and make sure it is right where we want it to be when it's viewed on a mobile device. I think that's the big thing out of this. 

As the season went on we found more people were presenting their tickets on their phone and not printing them out and this seemed fairly consistent across both our younger and older audience members.  

Our film venues have external toilets and the venues just issue a separate pass-out/toilet pass that customers surrender on the way back in. They've been doing it this way for years and we felt this was a lot simpler than constantly scanning in and out.

I think the biggest thing to get right is the way the barcode displays on the mobile. If you can get it to be the right size for scanning then you've only got to worry about the brightness at the gate and that's not going to be an issue for every phone. 

Hope this helps. Let me know if you want anything more specific. 

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to flag that with Tessitura V12.5 includes the capability to print QR codes on Ticket Designs (both client and PAH). I know that when we do mobile ticketing, using QR codes will be our preferred approach for sure.

For more info on this, check out page 72 of the What's New in V12.5 document.

Beau.

Thought I'd just post an update on this. 

I started testing some QR scans both in printed form and on my phone and the scanner picked up the QR barcodes with much more ease than a standard one. This also worked without having to zoom in on the phone which would make things quicker. 

We're using the Motorola MC40 and I'll definitely be changing over to QR codes on 12.5. Early days yet but it looks very exciting. 

Thanks so much for posting this tidbit Tim. QR codes have been frowned upon here (we don't have scanners yet) so I wasn't going to present it as an option. Now I know it may be preferable. Do you know if a PAH ticket can have both the QR code and the standard barcode sent to the patron? 

Thanks.