Export seat map as excel?

While I feel like an SSRS solution is more elegant for general seat map visualization, I too have found a need to export seat maps to Excel for certain tasks. There are a number of different ways that Excel can interpret seat map data.

The the easiest way I've found to visualize a seat map and basic metrics laid on top of the seatmap in Excel is to do a scatter plot of the xpos and ypos from a given seat map.  Seat metrics can be added as additional series (pairs of x,y data columns). In this way, you can create basic zone or heat maps on the scatter plot.

It's also possible to create a color-graded heat map by using a Pivot contour surface chart referencing (x,y) as well as your metric of choice on the z-axis. This is basically a topographical map of your venue with the color/surface height representing whatever metric you choose. 

I've also been able to import seat maps to an Excel grid by building a VLOOKUP matrix that appropriately matches concatenated x,y coordinates from source data to concatenated COLUMN() and ROW() values of Excel cells. In this way, you only have to make your VLOOKUP matrix once can convert any venue into an excel worksheet grid that is comparable to the seat map in Tess by pasting in source data. You can even have the vlookup pull in a measure (e.g. Average Ticket Price) and then apply conditional formatting to color the cells based on that metric (a basic heat map).

Output Samples

While I feel like an SSRS solution is more elegant for general seat map visualization, I too have found a need to export seat maps to Excel for certain tasks. There are a number of different ways that Excel can interpret seat map data.

The the easiest way I've found to visualize a seat map and basic metrics laid on top of the seatmap in Excel is to do a scatter plot of the xpos and ypos from a given seat map.  Seat metrics can be added as additional series (pairs of x,y data columns). In this way, you can create basic zone or heat maps on the scatter plot.

It's also possible to create a color-graded heat map by using a Pivot contour surface chart referencing (x,y) as well as your metric of choice on the z-axis. This is basically a topographical map of your venue with the color/surface height representing whatever metric you choose. 

I've also been able to import seat maps to an Excel grid by building a VLOOKUP matrix that appropriately matches concatenated x,y coordinates from source data to concatenated COLUMN() and ROW() values of Excel cells. In this way, you only have to make your VLOOKUP matrix once can convert any venue into an excel worksheet grid that is comparable to the seat map in Tess by pasting in source data. You can even have the vlookup pull in a measure (e.g. Average Ticket Price) and then apply conditional formatting to color the cells based on that metric (a basic heat map).

Output Samples

Very cool.

We also saw the mini magic on the subject.  

Wondering how you are handling the offsets for each screen. With a 2,000 seat house we represent our seat maps on multiple screens in Tessitura.  Have you worked through an easy way to plot the multiple x,y scatter plots?