Ticketing when Tessitura is down

A few months ago we had an unplanned network outage a few hours before a show that put us into a "system down" state. We survived, but this incited us to put together a mitigation strategy. Some of this involves network troubleshooting procedures and alternate connection methods like LTE hotspots, presuming the servers themselves are fine and it's just the hard connection to our building that is broken, but we of course have also planned for when the database is completely inaccessible. Here are the key points, noting that we do not use N-Scan:

• Our organization is on Google G Suite, so emailed reports are accessible from a cell phone even if all of our infrastructure is down.
• We have a Google Group set up as a BCC recipient of all scheduled functional reports, that acts as an archive. Ticketing has access to the group, so they don't have to track down individual report recipients.
• We have various attendee and seating reports set to email at 9am the morning of a show.
• Some of these reports are specifically for outage mitigation, and so are only sent to the archive group.
• Each assigned seating venue has a complete set of preprinted "blank" tickets that only display the seating locations. These can be used in an "in case of emergency break glass" situation in order to distribute will call tickets (based on those pre-run reports) when printing real tickets from the BOCAs is not possible.

Hope this provides some ideas!

I've been assessing this recently. In case our IT can't switch to back-up servers quickly enough (which should be within an hour) we have automated reports emailed at midnight, 12.30pm and 5.30pm (as performances usually start around 7.30pm, occasionally 2pm), which are:

- Custom seating book report, which contains all contact and seat details for any show within 7 days of the report being run
- House Map Print report for current season(s)

Have a biro and some blank tickets to hand. Hoping we'll never need to though.

Hi All, 

Not to dig up an old post, but for your "pre-printed" blank tickets. How did you print them? Or are they literally just blank stock with the seat numbers written on them? Trying to figure out a way to print "unassigned" tickets for an org that doesn't have a BOCA at the venue. Thanks!! 

For opening night/VIP I've assigned late cancellations to our org and popped them in my top pocket for the inevitable emergency.  To our protocol that meant unassigned and when necessary we'd add the receiver as recipient when we could

We use tickets that are paid to Consignment, and then returned to Consignment and re-sold the proper way, once we are back on site at our main office location.  Helps a ton for auditing purposes to not just comp a bunch of tickets, plus it prints out with an assigned seat on it and a price. We use this method quite regularly and have a tracking system in place for receipts and quantity at a venue that is super small and can't fit a BOCA in.

We use tickets that are paid to Consignment, and then returned to Consignment and re-sold the proper way, once we are back on site at our main office location.  Helps a ton for auditing purposes to not just comp a bunch of tickets, plus it prints out with an assigned seat on it and a price. We use this method quite regularly and have a tracking system in place for receipts and quantity at a venue that is super small and can't fit a BOCA in.

Hi Anne, 

Interesting! I will explore this with the ticketing manager and see if this might be the solution. I bet they'd like having the seat numbers on the tickets as well. They're able to sell at the venue, just can't print. Thanks!!