6 | Locations
Seatmap and Location Basics & Introduction
The central part of all organisations within Flowte is the clients' location(s) and seatmap(s). These are the building blocks which the system will use to help you manage your organisation more efficiently. It is essential that you add your location before you move on to add bookings, products or other items for sale. Typically, Flowte clients have two main types of locations. These are seated location (eg a stadium where the customer can choose their own seat from a seatmap) and non-seated location (e.g. an open space with standing room only such as a concert in a field) This article talks you through the process of adding these two location types.
Seated & Non Seated Location
Navigate to
> Storefront
>E-Commerce
>Location >
Layouts > Non-Seated Location
You have two options to consider: the first is the E-Commerce location, which is suitable when you wish to link a physical location with the products or items you're selling. The second choice is the booking location, which is best utilized when you need to specify a location for your booking. These alternatives provide you with flexibility to select the location type that aligns with your specific needs, whether it's for your e-commerce setup or booking.
Step 1 | Enter Location name and address
Step 2 |
Within a location, you may wish to have different areas, e.g. 'Premium' or 'VIP'. Here you may add as many of these sections as you require. When you create tickets for bookings at this location, you will be able to set tickets for each of these areas.
Select the location type that suits best, or begin a new layout by selecting Mixed Layout. Using the tools provided, create your layout.
To add Sections to your layout
To add a section to a seat map, simply edit the seat map, select category, highlight your rows and click the edit sign. You can now name this section i.e. Premium and then associate a separate price for this category when you are creating your booking.
A mixed location has GA and Seated sections.
Creating a Mixed Location
1. Create a Seated map containing all seated sections and a GA map that has all GA sections
2. Create a new booking using the Seated map and define all settings for those sections
3. When created, in the booking info page, click on "Add Time" and now add the GA sections with the same date and time as the Seated booking
4. Once created, edit the settings for "Times and Pricing"
(see example)
a.
Set the "Custom Select Text" to "Select Section" (you can change the wording to anything that you feel suits)
b.Set the select option to "Buttons" or "Dropdown"
c.Set the "Custom" name for each item on the table to either "Seated" or "Standing" or whatever similar naming makes sense for your booking
5. When a customer clicks on the booking you created, they will be offered the different Custom names
(see example)
Online Flow Display
A way to help your customers to know which section they are looking for online is to give them a guide to work from.
Example:
1. Make sure your map sets a common colour for all seated sections and a different one for seated (blue and red above, for example)
2. Take a picture of the map, this will be the guide for your customers
3. On the section name, make sure to indicate which colour is for seated and which for standing, and make sure they are set to "buttons" option type.
4. To display the map to the left of the section:
b. One uploaded, there is a link called "
1. Viewer links
":
Make sure to take note of this!
c. Go to Manage Booking > select the booking
d. In the description, click on "Source" and paste the following code:
<img src="
IMAGE_URL
" style="height:auto !important; width:100% !important" />
e. Replace IMAGE_URL with the link from step 'a' in the description code
5. Click "Save" for the booking. This image will now display in the description for an online sale, as shown in the example above.
Exploded or "Flat" Seat Map Creation
How to create a seat map with exploded sections from an image of the location
1 | Before you begin to build the layout in Flowte you will need to have available a seat map of the location which shows all areas
2 | Go to Layouts and select 'Add Seated Location'
3 | Select the floor plan 'Rows with sections'
4 | Remove the default template by 'click and drag' over the image and hit Delete
5 | Give the layout a name and upload the image of the seat map
6 | Once you upload the image you can use the scale feature to enlarge the map to make it easier to overlay the seats later on
7 | Proceed to identify sections on the seat map - click on Draw then Sections and outline the area you wish to define using simple mouse clicks
8 | Give the section a Label and position/size this appropriately
9 | Select 'Edit section content' to continue the process to draw rows and seats (you will see here the advantage of using a scale >100% for ease of overlay). You can apply the seat labels (row and seat numbers) and categories as appropriate. Once complete hit the green back arrow - this will return you to the full seat map
10 | Repeat steps 7-9 for all areas on the seat map then 'Save Seated Location'
3D Maps. Create a seating chart with multiple floors
Section-based charts can have subsequent floors created after the first one is drawn.
In order to create a new floor
1.Create a new section-based chart, or load an existing section-based chart
2.Start drawing the first floor
3.Once you are done, click the + (plus) button on the floor picker at the bottom right corner of the canvas, to add a new floor
Every time you begin drawing on a new floor, the + (plus) button will become available again, all the way up to nine floors.
Converting existing charts to multiple floors
If you are converting an existing floor plan where each floor is a separate section, simply add a floor, then copy/paste the relevant section into that floor, and delete it from the initial floor where you copied it from. You may need to readjust the sections/floors to ensure a good end user view, which you can check by clicking on the Preview button at the top left of the designer.