Creating a Seating Chart

Creating a Seating Chart

To create your seating chart, you will be using something that we refer to as seating chart canvas. In short, this is an area to which you can freely place different elements available when creating a seating chart. To access this, you should navigate to Tickera menu and select Seating Charts menu item. This will load a page where you will be able to find a table with all of your existing seating charts (if this is the first time you are accessing this area and don't have any of the seating charts created yet, it is perfectly fine if it is empty).

If you click Create New button (1), seating chart canvas will load which we will be using to create our seating chart.

In the top right corner you will notice that there is a toolbox with several sections (1) more of which we will discuss later. In the bottom left, you will find zoom (+ and -) buttons (2) although zooming can also be done by scrolling your mouse wheel and moving can be done using arrow key of your keyboard. Last but least, on the bottom right you will find two buttons: View Chart (3) which will load a preview of your seating chart and Save (4) which will save your seating chart.

Now, let's talk more about what are the options offered in the top right corner toolbox. Right at the first glance, you can see that there are several panes available so let's see what each of those has to offer.

Settings

This pane will be used to name your seating chart using Chart Title field and to select an event to which this seating chart is associated.

Seating Group

This pane is actually a place where really interesting things begin to happen as it allows you to create seating groups. To do this, you should first enter some name for your seating group (i.e. front left, middle, front right, etc.) and then set the number of rows and columns this seating group should have either by moving sliders or by entering the exact number in the field. However, the title is not mandatory so you can leave it empty if you want.

Once you have entered those parameters, hit this nifty yellow Create button and your first seating group will appear on the seating canvas.

Looks nice, right? But this is only half way to the end result as we have just created a seating group which still doesn't do anything until we assign some ticket type it. To do this, you should click and hold your left mouse button and select seats which you would like to assign to certain ticket type (1)

Once selected, a dropdown menu will appear in the top right corner (2) which will allow you to select a ticket type that should be assigned to the selected seats. Go ahead and select the one you would like to have assigned to these seats and then hit Assign button below.

You will notice that the color of the seats changed to the color you have selected for that ticket type. Also, you don't have to assign all of the seats in the group and those seats then won't be displayed on the front end which comes very handy if the seating group in your venue has an empty row without seats. Now, if you make a mistake with the selection, don't worry as this process is fully reversible: just select the seats again and then hit Unset within the same pane you have used to assign seats or simply assign different ticket type to those seats and you're done.

But wait, there's more! After assigning seats to desired ticket type(s), you can select them again, and additional menu will appear letting you choose your seat labels (1).  Over there, you can use Letter box and add your custom prefix (2). For example, you can select one row of seats and add letter A as prefix and hit Assign button. This will result in having seats named A1, A2, A3,... and you can do this for each of the rows. As for the from and to numbers (3 and 4), Seating Charts add-on will automatically calculate the numbers and will offer you, by default to assign unique number to each of the selected seats.

Needless to say, this seat label will be added to the ticket type name on the ticket template so that an attendee knows, once they enter the venue, which seat they should look for.

Of course, if by any chance you mess something up, you can easily select the seats again and hit Unset button which will remove all of the seat labels from the selected seats so you can start over.

IMPORTANT: Assigning seat labels is very important step and should not be skipped as it defines the exact seat number and labeling. Without this, attendee won't be able to know which seat they purchased the ticket for.

Apart from this, you can freely move this seating group on seating canvas by simply dragging and dropping it to the desired place. Also, you will notice that if you hover seating group, three purple icons will appear at the bottom. First button is to edit this seating group (1) and will load Seating Group pane on the top right where you will be able to rename it or adjust rows and columns. Second one is the trash bin icon (2) which, you guessed it, is used to delete selected seating group. And the final one, in the bottom right is rotate icon (3) which allows you to freely rotate this seating group by clicking and holding and than rotating to the desired angle. Hint: try holding shift button and rotating - this will allow you to rotate elements in larger increments.

Standing Area

Next up is Standing Area pane. This pane will allow you to create a standing area of your venue for people with general admission tickets. This area, logically, does not have seat labeling.

Creating a standing area is as easy as selecting standing area pane within which you can select the ticket type this area should be associated with. Of course, as soon as you select the desired ticket type, this area will turn to color selected for that ticket type.

Apart from this, standing area can be freely moved around and can also be resized to resemble the proportion of the real standing area of your venue. To resize it, you should hover standing area you have just created and then select one of the eight points that will appear on the edges of this area and similarly to many graphic editing applications, you can then resize this area according to your needs.

Additionally, there are three standard icons for each of the areas/groups when hovered: edit, delete, and rotate icons.

Tables

This pane will be very useful if you are hosting an event that includes seats around the tables. Within this pane, you can enter the title for your table select number of seats (by using slider or by entering the exact number), select the shape of the table (round or rectangle) and define a table color (this does not affect the color of seats).

If you select round table shape, you get to enter only the number of the seats which will be placed evenly around the table.

However, if you choose rectangle shape of the table, one extra option will appear, letting you select End Seats. This means that you can directly affect the shape of the table by entering the number of end seats. For example, if you want your table as perfect square, you can set, say 16 seats and then set 4 end seats which will result in four sides with four seats each which makes perfect square. Now, based on the number of seats for the table, number of available end seats will change dynamically in order to make it mathematically possible to place seats evenly around the table.

Once you have entered all the desired parameters, hit Create button and new object on the seating chart canvas will appear. The table with selected shape will be automatically sized to match the number of the seats.

Once you have placed the table you should select seats around it and assign ticket type these seats should be associated with.

Now, similar to the seating group described earlier, these seats should also be labeled by selecting them again and using seat assign menu on the right.

Element

Elements pane will allow you to select from many of the available elements and place them to the seating chart canvas. This may greatly help to display the venue layout and may also serve as a "map" in a certain way so that attendees know where, for example, is stage located, where are the entrances, parking areas, toilets, dance floors, camping areas, etc.

To create an element, simply select it from the offered ones, select an icon and background color and hit Create button.

Once an element is created, it can be freely moved around the canvas, resized, rotated, edited, etc.

Text Element

This element comes in handy for various purposes of titling, labeling, naming, etc.

To use text element, simply enter desired text, select color and font size and hit Create button.

Once created, it can also be freely moved around the canvas and placed exactly where you need it.

So, there you have it. Although Seating Charts add-on has many options is by far the most comprehensive add-on we have released, we did our best to make it as easy as possible to use and to organize all the things as logically as possible. Of course, it may happen that you get stuck with so many options and if that happens, please do not hesitate to contact great guys from our support team who will easily point you to the right direction and help you get Seating Charts working as you want it.