Chris,
I feel your pain! As a large-ish consortium we've definitely needed to establish some standards around this, in particular where there are custom reports or elements depending on perf codes.
Fully extended, ours might look like this:
GTCS17BS01 = Granada Theatre Concert Series, Fiscal Year '17, Brian Setzer Orchestra, first performance.
or
RENT17AW03 = Rental, Fiscal Year '17, Ali Wong, third performance.
Your idea of using two digits for identifying the space would work - but I'm curious why that needs to be encoded in the Perf Code? We've developed our code format primarily to avoid ever having duplicate performance codes, so if you're often producing the same event in multiple spaces, I can see the need to distinguish between the event in the park versus the event in the studio!
Good luck with your standards-setting.
--Stacey
How do staff identify the show?
In the tehatres I ahve worked in the Perf Code has consisted of a Show identifier, date and a Time slot (normally M(atinee)/E(vening)) in whichever order they chose.
As a data techie I always wanted to go with full date YYMMDD plus an hour of day (0-9 a-m to cover 0-23) leaving 3 slots available for space and/or event indicator
This makes sense to me because it sorts by date and time and you have the choice of whether space/eventis more important than date or vice versa. ie D(ate)H(our)S(pace)E(vent), EDSH, ESDH, SEDH, DSEH, DESH and this preference would come down to that first question. As are you looking for the Space, Date or Event first.
The only reason any of that matters is because perf code is the more easily viewable unique identifier and is often used in drop downs so having a natural flow to it makes it easier for the people seeing/using it on a daily basis.
Mark
Hey Chris,
We have a standars across all our performances, which links back to our GL codes so everything is linked from Artifax to Tessitura to our Finance system.
We use the first two digits of the year, followed by two letters of the Promoter then two letters of the show (for our event codes in Artifax and the GL codes) and then add an incremented number to the end of this for each show.
e.g. A run of 3 Eric Clapton show promoted by 3A would be 173AEC01, 173AEC02, 173AEC03
It works well for us as it's standard across all shows regardless of which space in the building they are in.
For ancilliary procudcts we also have a standardised set up, car park is 17CAUG01 and restaurants/bars are 17ERAUG01 with the two letters being the restaurant or bars we're selling in.
Caryl
Our perf codeas are one character for the space, the date in YYMMDD format and a character for the time slot. For example, M170815E is the Evening performance on 8/15/17 in the MAX theatre. This is a holdover from our previous system, but when we moved to Tessitura our box office was adamant about keeping this system. Our time slots are A-AM, D-Day(for Matinees), E-Evening, L-Late. Since we almost never have more than 4 performances this covers everything. We use D instead of M so that when alphabetizing a list of perf codes they come out in date/time order. Other departments struggle a little bit with the year coming first, but the benefit in the box office and using performance dates rather than perf codes in reporting helps.
For events that don't have a specific space I use a replacement for the space and time slot. The space relates to the purpose (E for education, F for fees) The time slot is usually just S for special, to indicate that this isn't a standard event.
Dorothy
You will indeed see me at TLCC - with my Open Space Space Planning Committee hat on, this could be a really interesting Open Space Discussion to convene ...