Halls | Settings & Background Image

This document provides instructions on configuring settings and background images for Halls in the dashboard. It covers topics such as seat selection, best available seats, open seating, creating new seat maps, editing current seat maps, and configuring background images. The document also includes recommendations for creating SVG background images and provides steps for configuring the background for a hall.

There are multiple versions of halls: this can mean you have several venues or use several seat maps within one venue.

Halls are generally imported from the ticketing or planning system. However, a hall can also be created manually. In that case, the hall’s name is often only used for communication on the website.

You can find ‘Halls’ in the dashboard under ‘Event metadata’.

Seats

Seat selection is possible if the hall is set to “Seat selection” in the "Halls" module. The visitor will then be able to select seats on the seat map during the order process. Ensure that the setting "Use Dashboard config" is on “Yes” as well.

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Take note! For further instructions concerning Seat selection (like the types of validations, etc), please see our Module Manual on Seat Selection.

Best available seats

In addition, you can offer your visitors a “best available seats” option for halls with seat selection. In that case, there is no seat selection (no visible seat map), only “Best Available Seats”. The option to only book seats next to each other is offered during the ordering process. Specific seats are automatically assigned to the order. This way, visitors can skip the seat selection: they don’t need to open the seat map and can only select prices (the latter is optional). You can quickly turn it on and off in the Control Panel > Ticketing > Enable both “best seats” and seat selection.

Open seating

As shown in the picture below, you must set the settings for a venue with open seating (no seat numbers).

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Take note! When using Open seating it is not possible to use Display seat numbers and Seat selection. Make sure these two options are set to No when using Open seating.

New Seat Map with Seat Selection

For each new hall or hall version with seat selection, a new “Hall” has to be added in Peppered. This is necessary to fetch the correct coordinates from the ticketing system to the seat map, as shown during the order process. We will import and check the seat coordinates of the new venue variant, after which we will ensure that the seat map is correctly displayed.

Ensure the "Number of tiers" is filled in correctly. The tier setup is only used in the dashboard to find the correct hall version easily.

Example:

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Take note! Seat blockades are automatically copied by the site; this does not require a separate hall variant.

Adjusting the “Sort Seats”:

See if the hall uses even rows with uneven numbers or rows with only descending numbers. By adjusting these settings, you manage the Peppered overlay like your hall is set up.

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Take note! You can use alerts and custom icons to provide warnings of things in development!

Editing your Current Seat Maps

A lot of information about the halls can be modified in the "Halls" module:

Name: the hall name is visible on the website. This field is not used to match an import and can be changed manually in Peppered.

Assign locations to a hall: Within a hall, you can select the location. This is useful for theatres having venues at different addresses.

Remarks: A short note can be added under the seat selection legend (to indicate that some seats have limited visibility, for instance).

Last tickets buffer: Setting a separate last tickets buffer per hall is possible. This is particularly handy if the capacity of your different venues is different.

Number of tiers: this field is important for any hall with more than one rank. Once this is set to a number higher than 1, the system can recognize that the event has several ranks.

Tier setup: this field is shown in the Events Module, where you can select a hall. The tier setup is only made so that you can easily find the proper hall in the dashboard and is not shown on the website.

Remove halls: it is only possible to remove them if no events are attached. Look at the numbers in the last row, "Events (history)" in the “Halls” overview: it indicates the number of events in the future and the past (in grey) linked to this hall. If there are more than 0, the hall is still used in communication, for example, in the order of the history of events that took place in the past.

Additional Information that Cannot be Changed

System name: this field is important when the Halls are imported from an event updater. This field shouldn’t be modified.

Sometimes, the name cannot be changed. It may be that, in some cases, the updater matches the hall’s name. In that case, the name cannot be changed. Not sure? Ask a Peppered Consultant to check it for you.

Background Images & Hall Versions

For each hall, you can create a background image to visualize the location of the stage, balconies, etc.

A background can also contain additional information, like exits, space for wheelchairs, row numbers, etc.

Upload a hall Background image (for halls with seat selection). Upload a background image in SVG format and configure the padding and offset values for correct scaling and alignment. See below for more information on backgrounds.

Recommendations for the Background

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Take note! Background images should always be a SVG file. This is to scale the image with all screen sizes.

Please ensure the final SVG image adheres to the following rules:

It does not contain raster images (e.g., PNG); all graphics should be plain vector.

All text is converted to outlines. Browsers will not have the fonts used in the design; converting them to outlines will ensure the result matches the design.

Shapes should be as simple as possible for compatibility reasons. We’ve seen several cases where the design looks good in Adobe Illustrator but does not work in some browsers. Creating something new from scratch is usually safer than reusing graphics from a brochure design. For example, SVG images exported from Ticketmatic are a good starting point.

The SVG image should not contain graphic representation of the seats. The seats will be imported from the ticketing system to the seat map page on the website.

The SVG should not contain unnecessary whitespace around the drawn elements. Whitespace will make it harder to position the SVG.

Example of how it looks on the website once the seats are added

Steps to Take to Create the SVG Image

Start the order process for an event in the hall to which you want to give a background and enter the seat selection step.

Take a screenshot of the seat selection map.

Open that screenshot in a vector drawing application like Adobe Illustrator or Affinity Designer.

Draw the background on top of the screenshot. You can use colours or pick from the grayscale colours already used in the seat selection UI to match those.

Export the SVG (ensure text is converted to outlines).

Configuring a Background for a Hall

For correct positioning, you must add some padding around the hall and sometimes offset to stretch the background to cover the map correctly.

Start an order for an event in the hall you want to configure or use the hall checker.

Open the same hall in the dashboard. You will find eight fields for offset and padding:

Start by adding padding. Usually, you want the same amount of padding on both sides of the map and enough padding to fit the background image (50 on the four padding settings is a good starting point). Adjust the offset values to position the background image. There is no sure-fire approach here; it depends on the map coordinates and how the design has been made.

General suggestions

Padding moves the actual seating plan. Use padding to create room around your seating plan for the SVG to fit (if needed) before you start using the offset settings (which will move the SVG).

Offset moves the SVG only. Use offset to place the SVG exactly over the seating plan. Positive offsets result in a move to the right (or down). Negative offsets result in a move to the left (or up). So, a negative left offset will move the left side of the SVG to the left, making the SVG wider. A positive left offset will move the left side of the SVG to the right, making it narrower. Likewise, a negative top offset will move the top side of the SVG up, stretching the SVG higher. A positive top offset will move the top side of the SVG down, flattening the SVG.

Example guide for adding padding and offset

After every change to padding and offset in the dashboard, you can refresh the seat selection page in the order process or the halls preview in the event. It will immediately show you the result of your changes.

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Take note! If you have multiple versions of the same hall, you can copy-paste the padding and offset values and reuse the same background image in different halls. Hall versions are all configured separately, so you can also change the design (e.g. with or without orchestration or with additional ranking information).