Awkward Offer Setup Procedures

We've only recently started using Offers, but it seems to me that there are a couple of unintuitive and problematic issues in the process.  I'm not sure if they are necessarily difficult, or if we're just currently too inexperienced to see how it should work.

The first issue is that Offers block price types in a funny way.  If a price type is attached to a show, and to an MOS, customers/box office staff using that MOS may buy tickets at that price.  A current Offer blocks that price, unless the customer/staff are using the correct source.  But a non-current Offer does not.  That is, if my offer is set to begin in a week, and I set it up today, then the price type will be available to all and sundry today (since the Offer hasn't started yet) and will only become blocked when the date on the offer begins.  While the logic is clear (the price type is only blocked when there is a current Offer in effect) I don't see the utility: why would you ever want to have that behavior?

I can't just restrict the dates on the price type because that would not allow me to do things like have staged Offers -- that is have an offer that starts earlier for, say, our donors (who have a different Web MOS) than our regular customers.  What I've done to work around this is create a source called "Generic Offer Block" that covers the whole season.  That can then be applied, no promotion code exists for people to access that Offer, and then a price type can be blocked off generally, after which timed Offers can be applied.  Once the timed offer expires (or before it begins) the default "Generic Offer Block" hides the price type.  That's fine, but a little confusing for the Box Office staff to have to remember.

The second issue has to do with the sequence of steps necessary for creating a Source and Offer.  The majority of our Offers are part of targeted email campaigns, so our marketing staff creates an Extraction for finding the customers we want to target, and then runs it to generate source codes and then promote them to the customer records involved.  Then we have a Source, which the box office can use to create Offers on the performance in question.  Once the Offers are in place the marketing staff associated a Web Promo Code with the Source, and then send out an email with the promo code and the details of the Offer.

The problem is that the marketing staff naturally want to run the Extraction at the last possible minute before sending out the email, so that the data is most current.  This is particularly important when we are screening out current ticket holders from getting the Offer email.  This can often be at off hours, like midnight.  But with this sequence of events necessary, the marketing staff must run the extraction, then turn it over to the box office to update the performance, and only when that is done can they actually send the email. 

This division of labor is natural otherwise, and it would confuse our security scheme to start allowing Marketing direct access to Ticketing Setup.  It would be clearly better for us if the Source could be created in advance, and then applied to the appropriate Extraction segment when the Extraction is being created, rather than a new source being generated every time an Extraction is run (or re-run).  As I understand Extractions there is no way around this.  Am I wrong?

Thanks,

Gawain