Hi everyone,
I can't do what I need to be doing at the moment, so I thought I'd open a thread on disaster recovery/coping scenarios should anyone need it! Our procedures seem to be holding up so far today, and we have ONE user who has managed to stay logged in since this morning and was able to batch print tonight's tickets. How are you all doing?
Hi from Maine, we've been down all day. In the spirit of discussing disaster strategy:
My box office is really down and out today, telling people that systems are down and we will complete their ticket requests tomorrow and not able to do much more. We do have a contingency plan for our opening day (tomorrow, no pressure). If we are unable to scan tickets to a theatre performance, we will ask guests to have their order receipt ready at the door rather than their tickets. We will equip ushers at the door with a spreadsheet on a laptop. They would verify that the guest's receipt has a transaction for this day's show, then write down the guest's name and seat assignments on the spreadsheet. If a guest is at the door without a receipt, we would accept the comp "ticket" as it's our system's issue and take their name and let them in, then perhaps make a note on their record explaining the event later. This way we at least have a real-time attendance record that can be retroactively entered by our box office later on.
It's entirely prehistoric, but without Tess we really have no data about the current day's attendance, nor do we have a way to verify or scan them in.
If you have nscan/access control, you might be able to scan in offline mode! and then you can upload the data once you have a stable connection again. And if you can get onto your website, you might be able to at least see what seats are still open/not, in case you have people who come that you need to seat somewhere.
Offline is an excellent idea, thank you for that. We are fully down - application and website - but we do still have seats available for the performance should that scenario present itself. Thanks Kathleen.