To accommodate local social distancing ordinances enacted for most entertainment venues, we have released a feature to help make it easier for you to provide buffered assigned seating for your patrons. Please follow the instructions below to set up Social Distancing in your account.
To set up Social Distancing buffer seats for Assigned Seating:
- Navigate to Setup > Global Settings and check the Show social distancing settings on performances box under TICKETING, then click the blue Save button
- Note: your show must be set to Assigned Seating
- On the Performances screen, for each performance, add Enforce group distance X-axis and Enforce group distance Y-axis parameters (for example 1 and 1) to an Assigned Seating performance
- Select Grid or Parallel from the Enforce group distance mode drop-down. Grid mode demarcates all seats surrounding a seat in a grid, while Parallel mode only demarcates the seats that are parallel to a seat. See below for a visual example of how the different modes apply with X-axis 1 and Y-axis 1 settings
- Click the blue Save button. You can also set these parameters in the Performance Generator section if you are setting multiple performances
Testing your Social Distancing buffer setup:
- Once you have the performance set up with the social distance X-axis and Y-axis parameters filled out, add several holds for the performance (this is just for testing purposes)
- Navigate to Box Office > Box Office Sales and select the performance then add seats to your order
- On the seat map, verify that any existing sold seats are surrounded by a buffer of unavailable seats; note that existing holds show as held seats in the Box Office, but as buffer seats on your public pages (refer to screenshots below)
- Sell tickets to your own patron record using a test transaction
- Navigate to your main ticketing public page
- Select the show and performance
- Verify that the same buffering exists (sold seats with buffering around them, and held seats showing as buffer seats)
- Verify that you are unable to reserve a buffered seat
- Verify that the holds you configured are rendered in the same style as buffered seats (and do not appear to be reserved)
Sample venue using social distance buffer seating:
A visual example of how the different Group Distance Modes apply with X-axis 1 and Y-axis 1 settings:
NOTE: Box Office administrators can manually override the functionality and reserve an unavailable buffered seat, but only after clicking through the following warning:
