Student Complimentary Tickets

We are brainstorming this as well for a day of "fill the hall" program.  We are looking to automate students obtaining a single comp ticket for the "best available" next seat.  We have a similar dilemma of verifying student status.  The thought is to have students submit a student ID or class schedule that could be used by the staff to verify their status.  Then assign a membership with an expiration that aligns with their expected graduation.  The membership would trigger a mode of sale shift allowing the selection of a comp seat on the day of the show.  We have the Instant Encore App that we are hoping to get this working through.  That way we can push the notification of ticket availability directly to the students and since they will log into the system through the app the mode of sale will trigger for their comp ticket.  They can then display their ticket on their device for entry.  (At least that's how it works in my mind!). We hope to implement it this fall.

We have a very similar situation like this at Ithaca College. We move a lot of complimentary tickets for each production, and we want to shift to possible making this accessible online since TNEW is such a powerful tool.

Like Jessica, looking forward to hearing ideas about this! 

Jesse Dillman on our Lied Center/University of Nebraska team might be able to share some info on a new student ticket process we're planning to launch this fall.

We get a daily update of student ID numbers and are currently testing how to use that to authenticate access to comp & student discount tickets. 

We have a custom integration that runs a nightly script to add new students and faculty/staff to our database. They are assigned a student or fac/staff constituency code and an automatic login is created for them using their university-affiliated email. They must be logged in to our website to access the free or discounted price type. It works beautifully but it isn't cheap and when it was developed no one thought about antiquated data so now we have years' worth of inactive emails from past employees and students which I'm currently trying to figure out how to manage in the future. I wish Tessitura allowed SSO integrations because that would be so much easier to manage than the custom integration we have. 

Hi Jessica!

We just implemented and integration this past fall with our TNEW site and it has worked very well so far.  We worked with our IT department and website designers to add NETBADGE authorization to our website (student's University login/password), where students had to sign in through NETBADGE to verify their student status. Once authenticated, they land on a page that describes the free student ticket program and contains a link to apply a discount code to their cart. The discount code then unlocks a free student ticket price type to qualifying events.  Really our IT department and Web Designers were able to set it up, but hopefully this gives you an idea where to start!  I've included pictures below of what it looks like.  Once IT/Web Developers completed the integration, we setup a price type/MOS specifically for free student tickets.  The promo code is automatically applied once they navigate to the ticketing page from their login.  I hope this helps!

We are in the process of enabling an integration like this for student discounts! As Staci mentions, it is not cheap, and has to be monitored once in place, especially after upgrades. We would love an SSO option as well, for similar reasons.

If you'd like to talk more about how we make this work, please feel free to reach out. Happy to chat!

Wow this looks like something we could use! Our IT suggested something similar, and it is very helpful to see a successful implementation. Thanks so much for sharing.

When I worked at the University of Richmond, we had it set so that student tickets had to be picked up at will call or at the box office ahead of time. They could order online but had to be picked up in-person. That way they would have to show their student ID. You could do the same with fac/staff. I would also periodically check the email addresses attached to these orders. If I saw one that was not a university email I would look in our directory to double-check that they were in fact a student. If they weren't, I flagged it in the box office so that the box office staff could be prepared to switch it to an adult ticket and have the guest pay the difference.