Hello, everyone!
So, I'm trying to setup the Auto scheduling of the Expire Hold Codes Report Utility, and have a couple of questions:
1) I've set the report to run daily & to expire all seats with Development hold codes, two days before the report is run (basically all holds for a particular performance should be released two days before the show starts). Now, when we set up these development holds in the first place do we really need to set an expiration date & time within the Season Overview Seat map? Or will this utility expire them all for us, without an expiry date manually attached to the individual seats?
Ok, so I guess this was my only question. Here's how I've set the utility to run:
Thank you :)
For the current parameters you have selected, yes you need an expiration date on the hold codes.
If you don’t want to do that, you can use the relative date options for Performance Start and End Date instead. If you leave Expire As of blank, it expires any of the selected hold codes in the selected performances, regardless of expiration date.
Kevin Sheehan
Documentation & Learning Resources Specialist
Tessitura Network
+1 888 643 5778 x 329
ksheehan@tessituranetwork.com
Thank you, Kevin you made that really clear.
So then in this case it's best to leave the parameters as is. If I setup performance start & end date (then leave expire as of blank) then the seats will expire as the report runs - rather than two days prior to the run.
If you want to expire hold codes two days before the performance, you would set the relative date on the performance date range to run date + 2 days (that’s not the right formatting, so don’t copy it directly in). That way each time it runs it would select the performances two days in the future and expire the development hold codes in those performances.
That makes perfect sense, I went about it backwards!
Thanks again Kevin!
I spoke too soon, the parameters I set up didn't take.
So simple, yet so complicated! Here are the parameters as I understand them...
Performance start date: Can either be an exact date m/d/yyy that the holds are being pulled from or a designated rule (ex. 2 days after today's scheduled run).
Performance end date: Same as above. Don't need to enter in end date just because I fill out a start date, or do I?
Hold Code - I enter Development, therefore all Development holds will expire regardless if there's a specified date within the individual held seats? Unless I enter the next 2 parameters:
Expire as of (date) - which will only expire all devo hold codes that have the expiration date that I specify. (this isn't for updating the holds to expire on the date I specify)
Expire as of (time) - same deal, goes with the date. if time is specified, date needs to be entered as well.
I think you want the perf END date to be 2 days after rundate, so it's perfs up til two days later that get expired, but perfs later than that do not. If you start with two days later, you'll end up with no holds farther into the future.
That didn't work either... anyone use this utility & it's actually worked?
I even tried specifying a particular performance and hold code type (leaving everything else blank) & it didn't expire anything.
We had problems working out how this worked, but when we set the expiry date on the Hold Code to an actual date then it worked.
The expiry date on the hold code can be any date you like as they can only be expired using this report, so you can set them to the performance date and then set the hold expiry date in your parameters to the the maximum performance date (or the day after that)
Have you run the report not on schedule just to test it out? Perhaps the problem is how you are entering your relative dates for the schedule.
Another thing to check is that you have the correct season selected. In my testing just now I didn’t have the correct season selected and nothing happened. Once I fixed that it expired hold codes as expected. I don’t currently have my report server set up so I can’t test it out on a schedule.
If you continue having problems getting this to work I suggest opening a help ticket so that the support staff can sort it out for you.
I've finally got it!
Conslusion: This report will release all VIP seats within the range of the “Start Performance Date” to “End performance date”. The “Expire As of (Date)” is equal to the day the report is run. Which would mean the individually held seats should have an expiration date equal to the date the report is run.
Thank you everyone for your help!
Mark: I've found the way to expire holds with no expiration date, you just leave "Expire As of (Date)" & "Expire As of (time)" blank in the parameters while scheduling. Of course, the seats themselves will just need the hold on them, without an expiration date attached. Hope it works for you!