How to Prevent Orphan Seats?

Orphan Seats, are the seats that remain unoccupied due to various reasons including customer preferences over specific seats thus leaving a gap in what should ideally be a seamless arrangement. This article explains how you can enable the Prevent Orphan Seats feature to maximize attendance.

Note:- This feature is only available for the latest online interface and Reserved Seating Module, also it functions on the account level, meaning as soon as it is been enabled all the current and upcoming reserved seating events will start preventing Oprhan seats.

It's advisable, that you go through the various scenarios outlined below before enabling it to get a fair understanding of how it would function.

How it will function? 

In this functionality, the system will verify whether an unselected seat might become orphaned, and it will display orphan alerts for that specific seat (depending upon the number of seats available in a particular row/section). Users will be unable to proceed with the booking in such cases. This method ensures that the occurrence of orphaned seats is minimized by prompting users to select seats before finalizing their bookings.

A) What type of seats will show as orphans? 

• The first and last seat in the particular row will show an orphan alert when the user selects the seats beside it.
• Upon finding potential corner seats. 
• Also, the seat left in the middle between 02 seats will display the orphan alert. 

Examples:-

• Row A consists of 14 seats and the maximum number of seats are available, the ticket buyer selects seat number 2 or 13 Orphan Alert will appear on seat number 1 or 14. 
• Out of the few rows of a section that have seats remaining, Row B consists of 14 seats, out of them seat numbers 07 to 14 are booked, when a ticket buyer attempts to book the remaining seats from 01 to 05 it displays an alert on seat number 06 because after booking only 1 seat would be remaining which may lead to Orphan because other rows have a good amount of seats available ticket buyer can choose the different row. 
• The user selects seat numbers 1 and 3, Orphan alert will be displayed on seat number 2.

B) Can a user book a single seat? 

• Absolutely! However, if the system recognizes that the seat next to it can be abandoned, then it will show the orphan alert. 
• Example:- The corner seats cannot be left thus it will show the orphan alert if a ticket buyer selects the seat before or next to it.

C) What type of seats will not show as Orphans? 

• Orphan Alert wouldn't be displayed, if the customer selects different seat colors (different Seat pricing/ticket types) available in the same row. 
• Available to book only 2 seats in a different section and colors.

Examples:-

• 10 seats are available in a row, and seat number 1 and 10 are assigned a different color (different pricing) from the rest of the seats (02 to 08), now if the customer selects seat number 9, it will not display the orphan alert for seat number 10 due to different seat color assigned to them however if the same customer selects seat 8, an orphan alert would be visible on seat number 9.
• If there is a section with 2 seats or there are only 02 seats available in a section and ticket buyers select a seat, then it will not show the orphan alert, simply because there are fewer seats left in a particular section/row.

D) How the Orphan Alert would be displayed on the seats? 

Seats Left/detected orphan would display a Red exclamation sign on them (displayed in the following image) and prevent ticket buyers from completing the ticket purchases. 

How to enable this feature?

i) Hover the mouse cursor on the Organization Name at the top left and select "Settings" from the list of options.

ii) Next, click "Transactions" from the list to your left and scroll the page down until you see "Enable Prevent Orphan Seats" and check the box before it, followed by "Save."

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