Theater Layouts

With TicketMaven you can define multiple seating layouts for your auditorium and use different layouts for different shows.

Layouts are managed from the Theater Layout tab on the main window. To manage layouts, select this tab and then hit the proceed button on the bottom of the screen after reading the warning message. Layouts drive how the ticket lottery functions and should be changed carefully.

The tabs that are used to manage layouts are described below:

Layouts Tab

This tab manages your layouts. It displays a table showing your layouts and information about them. This tab is where you would add new layouts and delete layouts.
When adding a new layout, you first need to select a type of table or auditorium style. Then, for auditorium style layouts, you need to specify the number of rows of seats in the layout and the number of seats per row.

When you first add a new auditorium layout by typing its information in and hitting the Save Layout button, the grid of seats is automatically created for you. The initial grid of seats is rectangular with the dimensions that you specify and a chair in each position. If you need to create aisles, remove chairs to create a non-rectangular pattern, or otherwise change individual seats, you would then use the Seat Grid tab.

When you create a new table layout, nothing is added automatically. You need to use the Table Layout Editor to graphically create your table layout.

Seat Grid

This tab is used for editing seats in a layout. Once a layout is selected via the Layout: button, the seats will appear in a grid. Multiple seats can be edited at the same time. To change the parameters of some seats, select all of the seats to be updated, then select the values to be updated in the Seat Update Options panel, and finally press the Update Selected Seats button.

Each seat in the grid is represented as a button. The button is completely blank if a seat is not available for a lottery – which means that there is no chair in a particular location. To remove seats from your grid, update the seats to make them unavailable for the lottery by using the Available for Lottery pull-down menu (value = N). Making seats unavailable allows you to create non-rectangular layouts.

All seats that are available will contain a number from 1 to 30. This indicates the seat quality with 30 being the best. The program initially sets seat qualities for your layout that start with 30 in the front row and decrease in quality by 1 for each row you move away from the front. Change these quality values as needed. The most common change might be to mark seats off to the sides of the auditorium as being of lesser quality than center seats. (if your auditorium is wide). This quality value is the critical factor in assigning seats to customers and in recording the quality of tickets a customer has received in order to assign seats for future shows.

Aisle seats are marked with a green border. Initially, the left and right sides of your grid are marked as aisles. You should mark seats elsewhere in your grid as being aisle seats if there are more aisles in your seating layout. Marking aisles correctly is critical to prevent the program from splitting a single request for tickets across an aisle. If the aisles are correctly identified, parties of 2 or more will not be split across an aisle.

Special Needs seats are shown in color. For each seat you can assign a single special needs type from the list of types you define under the Zones tab. Special needs types are described elsewhere under a separate help topic.

Zones (Special Needs) Tab

This tab is used to define custom special needs zones. The program is aware of a certain set of built-in special needs categories (front, rear, aisle, front-row-only). These are always available for customers and do not need to be specified on the Zones tab or in your seating layout. Custom zones created via this tab must be assigned to seats and customers in order for them to have any affect on ticketing.

Once a custom zone is created with this tab, seats and customers can be assigned to that zone. Any seats in your layout can be assigned to a custom zone via the Seat Grid mentioned above. Seats in a custom zone do not have to be assigned in rectangular arrangements. Seats can be assigned to any zones in any arrangement.
A zone can be marked as exclusive or non-exclusive. If a zone is exclusive, then seats in that zone can only be assigned to customers with a matching special need. If a zone is not exclusive, then seats in that zone can be assigned to non- special needs customers if there are no special needs customers that need them. Exclusive zones are not common.

An interesting use of zones would be to keep seats reserved for manual ticketing. If a zone were to be created called, “Reserved,” with exclusive set to Y (yes), and if no customers were given the “Reserved” special need, then these seats would be always be left unassigned during the ticket lottery, but would be available for manual assignment via the Assigned Tickets tab.