This article 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 article 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 name of the Hall is often only used for communication on the website.
Video Manual: Halls
Language: English Captioned: Yes (English) Duration: 11 minutes, 40 seconds
Halls are managed in Dashboard > Event Metadata > Halls
Creating and Editing a Seat Map with Seat Selection
For each new Hall or Hall version with seat selection, a new Hall needs to be added in Peppered. This is necessary to retrieve the correct coordinates from the ticketing system to the seat map, as shown during the order process. Peppered will import and check the seat coordinates of the new venue variant, after which we will ensure that the seat map is correctly displayed.
Information about the Hall can be added and modified in the Halls module:
- Name: Is visible on the website. This field is not used to match imports and can be changed manually in Peppered.
- Space: These are the unique areas within a location. Read more about Spaces in this article.
- External ID:
- Box Office ID: This is imported from the Ticketing System
- Last tickets buffer: Setting a last tickets buffer per Hall. This is useful if the capacity of your Halls are 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.
- Display ranks: For halls with less than 2 ranks, the ranks are typically hidden.
- Open Seating: Used when seat allocation is not needed. More on this below. Set to Yes to hide seat information from e-tickets and email confirmations.
- Display seat numbers: Set to No to hide seat numbers.
- Seat Selection: Enables seat selection for this Hall. More on Seat selection below.
- Remarks: A short note can be added under the seat selection legend. For example, to indicate that some seats have limited visibility.
- Sort seats: Set the order of seat. 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.
- Use Dashboard config: Set to Yes to use standard settings.
- Validation: Please refer to our Seat selection article for more about details about Seat Validation.
The remaining settings are detailed in the Configuring a Background for a Hall section below.
How to Remove Halls
It is only possible to remove a Hall if no events are attached to it. To check this look at the numbers in the last column - Events (history) - in the Halls overview. It indicates the number of events in the future and the past (in grey) linked to the 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.
Seat Selection
Seat selection is possible when the Seat selection is set to Yes in the Hall set up. The visitor will then be able to select seats on the seat map during the order process.
Best Available Seats
Alongside Seat Selection, you can offer visitors a “best available seats” option. For Best Available, there is no seat selection (no visible seat map). 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 do not need to open the seat map and only select prices (the latter is optional). This option can be quickly turned on and off in the Control Panel > Ticketing > Enable both “best seats” and seat selection.
Open Seating
Open seating is used when seat allocation is not needed i.e. the Visitors can sit anywhere in the Hall or is most often used in music venues where there are no seats and the event is Standing.
To set a Hall as Open seating go to Dashboard > Event Meta Data > Halls and select the Hall you want to edit. Set Open seating to Yes.
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 Image
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.
How to create the SVG Image for the Seat Map
- 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.
- 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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