Setting up seating plans

Ticketmatic supports selling tickets for seated events. Buyers have the option to automatically buy the best available seat or to select the seats they want. In order to setup a seated event, you have to create a seating plan and link it to the event. Seating plans can be reused for many events.

Seating plans are managed in the Seating plans module in the Settings app. Click the button below to go there:

Creating a seating plan

Creating a seating plan involves a few steps:

• First, the designer creates a graphical outline for the seating plan. This is done outside Ticketmatic using standard vector graphics software. The result is an SVG file containing the seats and all structural graphical info like location of the stage, steps or exits. For a single-zone seating plan, the designer should provide a single SVG for the whole seating plan. More info on drawing a seating plan and some examples
• The box office administrator will import these SVGs in Ticketmatic. Using the Seating plan module, he will then add the necessary information to the seating plan. He will define:
  • which seats form rows and what the row and seat names are.
  • the ranks.
  • the priority of the seats. The priority is used by Ticketmatic for selecting the best available seat.
  • the seat description for the seats. This defines how the row and seat name will be displayed to buyers.
• When everything is ready, the box office administrator will publish the seating plan after which it becomes ready to be attached to an event.

Seating plans are managed in the Seating plans module in the Events app. Click the button below to go there:

Getting started: creating a seating plan

Add seating plan SVG

Go to Settings -> Seating plans, click the + Add button and select single-zone seating plan.

Give the new seating plan a name, and select the SVG file you received from the designer. In this example, we will use this file

When you select an SVG, a validation of the SVG will take place. You will see the result of this validation and some statistics about the seating plan. Make sure to check if the number of seats is correct. If everything is OK, press Continue. You arrive now in the main editor for the seating plan. On the right you see the steps that need to be done:

1. Seats
2. Ranks
3. Priorities
4. Seat description
5. Lock templates

1. Define rows and assign row and seat names

The first step defining which seats form a row and are next to each other, and assigning row and seat names to all seats. This is very important information, that is used by Ticketmatic when assigning best available seats. The process works row by row. Start by clicking on the + Assign new row button:

Let’s start with row A, that contains 8 contiguous seats:

• Fill in A for Row name
• Fill in 1-8 for Expression and keep increment to 1
• You will see a list of badges for all seat numbers that will be created:

Click on the Continue button. Then assign the seat names on the seating plan by clicking on each seat in the right order. For straight rows, first click on the first seat and then shift-click the last seat to assign seat names for all seats in between.

When finishing the row, you will see the seat numbers appearing on the seats. The lines between the seats indicate that these seats are contiguous and form a row.

Now continue with the other rows. It is important to process all contiguous seats in a row at the same time, you cannot process first part of a row and then continue: the result is that the seats will not be interpreted as being contiguous. And the opposite holds also: if the seats in a row are not contiguous (for example because of a passage in the middle), they should be processed as 2 separate rows (but of course you can give them the same row name).

In the example above, we used a very simple expression. Use expressions and increment to define the range of seat names. Some other examples of expressions:

If you made a mistake you can simply select a numbered row and click Remove row numbers.

When you are ready with all rows, you are ready for the next step.

2. Assign ranks

Clicking on Ranks on the right brings you to the next step:

In this step you will assign ranks to the seats. At the bottom, you will see all ranks available and you see the current number of seats that is assigned to each rank for this seating plan. Initially, all seats are assigned to the highest rank available.

In order to assign seats to another rank, first select the rank in the menu below. Then use the brush to select the seats. You will see the rank color for these seats changing. If necessary you can adjust the brush size. Continue until you assigned the right rank to each seat:

3. Assign priorities

Clicking on Priorities on the right brings you to the next step:

In this step, you will assign priorities to each seat. These are used when selecting the best available seat. Use the brush to select the seats that you want to assign the priority for. In this example we will select all seats. Then click on Define priorities of selected seats. You will see a control and heatmap appearing over the selected seats:

The color of the seats indicate the priority: green is highest and red is lowest. You can drag the crosshair to change the priorities of the selected seats. The closer a seat is to the crosshair, the higher the priority will be. The red circle segment indicates the seat with the highest priority, and the green circle segment the seat with the lowest priority. Optionally you can drag the upper and lower limit of the priority slider at the bottom to change the highest and lowest priority used.

When you are done, click Finish. The priority for the seats is now assigned.

4. Define seat description

Clicking on Seat description on the right brings you to the next step.

Here you can determine how the description of the seats will be shown to the users.

If all seats are named in a consistent way, edit the default template. If some seat descriptions are different (for instance the upper floor seats have a prefix) create a new seat description template and brush over the seats that should have this description.

To edit a template, click on the pencil icon:

In the template field you determine how the seat description will look like. You can use placeholders {{rowname}} and {{seatname}}. Some examples of valid templates:

These templates can be translated using the default Translate button for the seating plan.

5. Assign lock templates

Clicking on Lock templates brings you to the last (optional) step. In this step you can define lock templates for the seating plan. Click + Add template to create a new lock template.

In this example we will make a lock template that is used when the seating plan is used for a ‘Small setup’, meaning that part of the seats are not used. In the bottom left, you will see the list of lock types that is available:

Select the locktype that you want, and use the brush to apply this locktype to the seats. The locked seats will be filled with the lock color. If you want to erase some locks, select Erase and use the brush to remove the locks.

Publish the seating plan

As a final step, you need to Publish the seating plan by clicking on the Publish button. Once it is published, it can be used as seating plan for events.

Exporting and importing seating plans

You can easily export and import complete seating plans. This allows you for example to reuse seating plans from different accounts. An exported seating plan is self-contained and includes the complete layout, row and seat numbering, rank information, priorities, seat descriptions and lock templates. When you import a seating plan existing ranks will be mapped. If ranks do not exist, they will be automatically created.

Exporting a seating plan

• Go to the seating plan detail page
• Click the Export button
• The seating plan will be downloaded as a json file

Importing a seating plan

• From the overview in the Seating plans module, click the Import button and select the seating plan json file