Table/Seat Assignment

Galas. Specially seated dinners. Or just a preference to play chess with your registrants. All require thoughtful table and seat assignment!

Features

• Create as many tables as you need

• Tables can be named however you like, sorted however you like

• Tables can have varying numbers of seats

• Seats can be 'held' which prohibits assignment

• Seats can be assigned to at most one registrant

• Two flavors of reports to facilitate assignment (by person and by table)

• Seat assignment information included in event attendance reports

• Seat assignment information included in Gatekeeper UI

• Table/Seat assignment information can be printed on name tags

Configuration

Seating is managed on a per event basis; few events will be "seated" within any one master event (we hope - for your sake).

To activate seating capability for an event, edit the event and change this setting:

Managing Tables

Once it's active, you'll see a new panel on the view event screen just below the price options block:

This is where you'll manage table and seat creation - not assignment. What you're building here is your assignable inventory.

• click on Create Table(s) to do just that - and bulk-create seats at them

• Tables must have at least one seat (otherwise it's just weird)

• Table names (and notes) can be edited by clicking on the table name or selecting "Update Table" under the Actions button

• Table ordering is also governed under that same link

Managing Seats

Seats are max capacity 1. We go to great lengths to keep you from assigning two people to the same seat.

Some events may not care so much about seats - just tables. We have to care about seats, so even if your event is not quite as particular we require specific seat assignment in order to manage table capacities.

• Seats can be updated by selecting "Manage Seats" under the Actions button

• Seat counts, names, and ordering are updateable under that same link

Seat Holds

For those of you who manage housing through AlumnIQ, the concept of a hold is not new. A hold blocks that seat from being assignable to an individual.

Holds are useful if you know, for example, that a donor purchased table 10 but doesn't know the other 6 people joining her at it - so you want to ensure those don't get filled in by someone else.

Holds are set and released exclusively here.

Managing Assignment

There are two reports available to you for managing seat assignment: by person and by table.

Depending on how you think, one might work better for you over the other. Both accomplish the same goal.

The assignment by table report we expect will be the more popular one - it's more object centric than person centric. To move a person from one seat to another, first release them by hitting the red X button and then click "NOT ASSIGNED" on the seat you want to move them to.

When you assign a person to a seat you can also apply a seat note that specifically pertains to that individual. This information is included in reports and Gatekeeper - and is never shown to the registrant.

Reporting

We kept reporting really simple on this one - the seating assignments are available for inclusion in the event attendance report.

When exporting to excel be sure to select the "Event Attendance - Seat Assignment" checkbox. Four columns are included: table name, seat name, combined table-seat, and the seat note.

Because you can already pick and choose which information to include in your exports, it's super simple to build a check in sheet from the event attendance report with only the information in it that you need.

Gatekeeper

And because these events almost always involve moving people around as no-shows become apparent, we include the seat assignment information in Gatekeeper both in the list of registrants and on the post-check-in screen for easy reference.

Need to remind someone where they are sitting? Simply re-scan their name tag to see it again.

Future Plans

We're going to cook up a "table status" view for Gatekeeper so on site you can see which tables are actually filled and which haven't yet at a glance.

Other ideas

Send them our way!