To access the High Holiday Seating system, go to Admin Menu - Event Seating. There are four steps to setting up your seating:
Locations Setup
Events Setup
Assign Seats
Form Setup
Locations Setup
Set up your seat locations by clicking on "Locations" on the left side:
Enter a name for your location, and then choose your type:
- Open Seating - no assigned seats
- Seats - assigned seats (see next section)
- Tables - allows you to create tables and assign people to seats at a specific table
- Seats (no defined numbers) - allows you to set up seat numbers for map purposes, but the seats are not assigned
- Get Map from Another Location: You can either create your own visual seating map, or upload a jpg or png to load the seats on.
- Visual Map Aspect Ratio: Enter in the ratio you want to use for your map (100x85 would be longer than wider by 15%, for example).
- Number of Seats Available: This will calculate automatically based on the seats you enter below.
- Requests Available on Public Form: Would add a field in the High Holiday Seating Request Block to allow people to enter in some seat numbers as requests.
When entering the actual seat information, you can choose a few options to start:
- 0-Padding: If on, will add a zero (0) to the start of each single digit.
- Display Seat 1: On maps, will start seat 1 on the left side of the row or the right.
- All numbers: New option to have each row show all numbers, odds only or evens only.
You also have the option to add a subsection, which will allow you to divide up the room into different sections of seats, each with its own seating options.
Events Setup
Once you have set up locations, you can create a new event:
- High Holiday: Since High Holiday and Event Seating have been merged, you need to determine if the event you are creating is a High Holiday event or not.
- Primary: Makes this the default event in forms.
- Locations: You will need to select which of the locations you just set up are to be used in this event.
- Past Year: Specify which of the other High Holiday events is to be set as "Last Year." This information will show on the page when assigning seats.
- Special Form Mode: The default of none allows the widget in the form to operate as normal. However, there are two options - people on account and permanent seats - that will automatically load either everyone on the account, or anyone on the account with a permanent seat.
- PLEASE NOTE: If you use EITHER of these special modes, it will load for anyone who is logged in to the site, and you will NOT be able to charge for anyone that loads automatically. If you are charging everyone for every seat, DO NOT use one of these special modes.
- Require Person Name on Form: Will force people to enter a name in the name field in the widget.
These last two options must be set BEFORE you either start accepting High Holiday form reservations or assigning seats. Once you accept any form submissions, DO NOT change these options!
- Sessions: This will be a drop down menu of possible sessions people can choose. The default is Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, but you can add or remove sessions before the form is set up. You MUST have at least one session, and any session that is displayed would appear as a choice on the form.
- Custom Fields: You can add additional fields to the seating block widget on the form, and make them required or not.
Once your new event is created, you can then view it on the Admin Menu - Event Seating page:
Assign Seats
Click "View" next to the event you want to assign. You'll then see a summary of your seat assignments, with filters to look for specific accounts:
- Seats: Will show you the number of seats that have been assigned, the percentage that has been assigned, and the number of pending requests to assign for that session.
- Account Types: Show only accounts of a specific account type.
- Status: By default, will show you every seat request status. If you want to see ONLY people who are pending, click that drop down and check "Awaiting Assignment."
Once you find the account you would like to seat, you'll see all of the information they submitted on their form. If you are NOT using a form, and admins are doing all of the requesting and assigning, click "Add Seat" to start assigning:
- Person: Name of the person to be seated.
- Location: Name of the location you are assigning them to.
- When: If they are coming for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, or both.
- Assignments: You can enter in the seat number in the fields below, or you can click on the magnifying glass to see a grid with your rows and seats. You can click a seat and assign this person to that seat.
- More: Any other questions you included in your custom fields will be added here.
As you assign seats, the status will change automatically from assigning to fully assigned. However, you can change the status manually to one of the following:
- Move to Declined Seats: Will change their status to declined and remove any submission or requests they've made.
- Empty Everything: Change their status to empty and remove anyt submission or requests.
- Put Seats on Hold: A new status that will hold someone's seats and not allow them to be assigned to anyone else.
- Put into Review Mode: Stops the assigning process until an admin has reviewed the request and changes it back to assigning.
Once you have assigned your seats, you can export your seat assignments to generate seat lists or seat labels. We also have a print function, that will allow you to generate lists that you can post in your shul or give to your gabbais:
- Which Session: Print a list for either Rosh Hashana or Yom Kippur (or whatever you have named your sessions).
- Which Status: You can print accounts that are fully assigned seats, or select any other combination of statuses.
- Which Locations: Select any one or combination of seat locations to print.
- Grouping: Choose if you want to print the list grouped by account (alphabetical order by account) or grouped by seat (alphabetical order by seat number).
- Field Template: Set the format of the names on the print list.
- Section Header: Add a header to the start of each seating row/last name.
Form Setup
Once you have set up your locations and event, you can now build you form. To read more about creating the form itself, please view these two help documents here and here.
Note: For the High Holiday form, there are three fields that you must include (if you do not, your form will not work correctly):
- Choose Number of Seats: Allows the user to select a number of free seats. You can restrict this field to only be visible to people who are logged in, admins only, or people with specific account types or tags, and you can allow people to select only specific locations.
- Choose Number of Seats with Payment: Allows people to select a number of seats at $X per seat. Use multiple fields to have different people pay different prices, or have different locations cost different amounts. You can restrict this field to only be visible to people who are logged in, admins only, or people with specific account types or tags, and you can allow people to select only specific locations.
- Seating Request Block: The field is required for the High Holiday form. This field automatically populates based on the number of seats requested in the Choose Number of Seats fields, with fields for the name, location being requests, sessions being requested (all High Holidays, Rosh Hashana only or Yom Kippur only), and a spot for note. Anything filled into this field will be added to the High Holiday seating module automatically linked to the user's account.
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