NScan Season Passes

Thanks so much for this information!



>>> "Jonathan Smillie" 8/1/2011 12:30 PM >>>
Unfortunately a truly re-scannable barcode, tied to multiple performances, isn't possible with the current N-Scan technology.

While you could create a generic performance that would be available for scanning on any day (by programming the scanners to recognize it in addition to the "real" shows for that day), there are drawbacks:

1) The scanners (and Tessitura) assume that one barcode = one ticket, and one ticket is tied to one seat for one performance, and that scanning that ticket renders it invalid for reuse. That said, there is a table (LTR_NSCAN_ATTENDANCE) that records each scan attempt, successful or otherwise, of each ticket.

2) The generic ticket would technically only be valid for the first scan. After that point, you would need either to implement a custom procedure to revalidate the tickets (set the status back to "ticketed" from "attended") each day, or accept the fact that although a scan of the ticket is being recorded, it will show up as "already recorded" and produce an error to that effect- which has its own drawbacks in confusing ushers as to which are actual valid vs. invalid tickets.

3) The inventory for the generic event would not be counted against the attendance for the real event. You would have to implement a reporting procedure whereby you reported on scans for the generic event for the date in question /as well as/ the real event, before you did whatever process reset the tickets for the generic event back to their pre-attended status.

4) The generic event, not being tied to the performance date, would need to be manually programmed into the scanners each day in addition to the performances that the software would pick up automatically based on the device profile settings.

All in all, it's not theoretically un-do-able, but implementing a solution like this would be essentially working around and subverting the way that N-Scan is intended to work.

Thanks so much for this information!



>>> "Jonathan Smillie" 8/1/2011 12:30 PM >>>
Unfortunately a truly re-scannable barcode, tied to multiple performances, isn't possible with the current N-Scan technology.

While you could create a generic performance that would be available for scanning on any day (by programming the scanners to recognize it in addition to the "real" shows for that day), there are drawbacks:

1) The scanners (and Tessitura) assume that one barcode = one ticket, and one ticket is tied to one seat for one performance, and that scanning that ticket renders it invalid for reuse. That said, there is a table (LTR_NSCAN_ATTENDANCE) that records each scan attempt, successful or otherwise, of each ticket.

2) The generic ticket would technically only be valid for the first scan. After that point, you would need either to implement a custom procedure to revalidate the tickets (set the status back to "ticketed" from "attended") each day, or accept the fact that although a scan of the ticket is being recorded, it will show up as "already recorded" and produce an error to that effect- which has its own drawbacks in confusing ushers as to which are actual valid vs. invalid tickets.

3) The inventory for the generic event would not be counted against the attendance for the real event. You would have to implement a reporting procedure whereby you reported on scans for the generic event for the date in question /as well as/ the real event, before you did whatever process reset the tickets for the generic event back to their pre-attended status.

4) The generic event, not being tied to the performance date, would need to be manually programmed into the scanners each day in addition to the performances that the software would pick up automatically based on the device profile settings.

All in all, it's not theoretically un-do-able, but implementing a solution like this would be essentially working around and subverting the way that N-Scan is intended to work.