The Espresso Seating Chart plugin is a powerful tool that allows you to define a layout for your venue and sell individual seats to patrons. This guide will walk you through setting up your seating charts and adding them to your events. It assumes you have already downloaded and installed the Seating Chart add-on from the Event Espresso website. It is available with all Developer license purchases or as an a la carte add-on for $299.95. This document also assumes you have a physical theatre and that is the terminology that will be used throughout the guide. This does not mean that this is the only way you can use the Seating Chart; there are many ways you can use the Seating Chart plugin, if you think you’ve found a unique way to use the Seating Chart plugin, be sure to let us know in the forums!

Getting started

After you install and activate the Seating Chart plugin, the Seating Chart page in the Event Espresso dashboard will look pretty empty. The first thing to do is add your first seating chart.

Add a seating chart by manually adding seats

If you have a small venue, you may want to create a seating chart manually. You may also want to experiment with this method just to get a hang of how the seating chart plugin builds the layouts. To do this, click the Add a Seating Chart tab, enter a name for your seating chart and give it a short description that’s easy to remember. Click Save to create the seating chart and start adding seats.

You will see a notification that says “Seating chart created”. Click the My Seating Charts tab to see your new seating chart and view the options available.

Click the Seats link to view or edit the seats for your venue’s seating chart. This will create a new tab for Add Seats. Since you have not added any seats yet, this screen will be empty. Click on the Add Seats tab to start adding seats.

You will be taken to a new screen to add a seat with all the information that the plugin needs to add the seat to the seating chart. While a seat will be added whether the fields are filled out or not, it’s important to include as much information as applicable to ensure that the seating chart layout generated by the plugin is an accurate representation of your venue’s floorplan. Make sure for Price and Member Price you set the numeric value only. Do not enter the price like $20. Decimal values can be used (or not). Click Save to add your seat and add another one.

An explanation of some of the terms

Custom Tag – This is used for the ‘Seat’ value on the front-end seating chart. Certain values will also give added functionality such as reserved seating (explained below)

Level – If you have several floors to your venue, level allows you to split up the chart into several levels.

Section – Separate your floor or plan into different sections.

Row – Within a section the rows determine where the seats are (or aren’t, placeholders can have their own rows)

Placeholder – Used in the custom tag area. Inserts an invisible block (seat) to help you structure the charts and bring gaps into the plan.

Reserved – Used in the custom tag area. Similar to the Placeholder, but these are visible, allowing you to demarcate seats that exist but are reserved for VIP’s or another reason.

Repeat this process until you have all your seats entered. Once you’re ready to move on, click the Back to seat list link to go back to the list of seats. You now have seats! If you see a problem in multiple seats in the seat list, you can bulk edit them and resolve the problem by selecting the Seats option for the seating chart and in the next screen, select the appropriate seats and then the Edit option from the dropdown menu and click Apply. This will open the Bulk Seat Editor which will apply your updates to all the selected seats. This way you can move entire rows or sections or change the prices for all the seats in a section or row at once!

Add a seating chart by uploading a spreadsheet

If you don’t want to add each seat manually, you can upload a CSV file for your venue. On the New Seating Chart page there are sample layout files in XLS or CSV format. It doesn’t matter which you use, but CSV files seem to work most consistently in uploading. If you save the Excel XLS file, be sure to save it as a CSV before uploading.

To get started, download one of the example files on the New Seating Chart page and open it in your spreadsheet application. You can edit all the same fields as you can in the Add Seat screen. However using a spreadsheet application may be preferable because you can create many similar fields at the same time by pasting a value into multiple cells.

When you save, be sure to save as a Text CSV file.

If prompted, set the character set to UTF-8, field delimited to , and text delimiter to ". You may receive a prompt when saving as a CSV from an XLS.

Section Alignment

You’ll notice that my seating chart has three sections: Left, Right and Center. But, as mentioned above, since the seating chart displays alphanumerically by default, the sections would display like this: Center, Left, Right. That’s not going to work, so we need to edit the section alignment.

Go back to My Seating Charts. From there, click on the Section Alignment link under your seating chart name.

Here you will see two  list of all your sections with two important columns: Alignment and Sort Order.

By changing the sections Alignment you can reorder the sections into the correct position.

By changing the Sort Order you will change the direction the seat numbers go (example: default is seats 1-3, by swapping the sort order to right to left, the seat order becomes 3-1). This can be very useful in venues that have reversed seating numbers.

The Roles and Permissions Pro add-on for Event Espresso expands upon the features included with the Roles and Permissions Basic add-on.

View quick links for this add-on –> 

Installation

This add-on is a plugin for WordPress and can be installed through your WP dashboard (WP-admin).

Download the latest version of the Roles and Permissions Pro add-on for Event Espresso 3 from your Event Espresso account.

Then login to your WordPress dashboard (WP-admin) and go to Plugins. Next, click on Add New –> Upload and browse to the plugin on your computer. Then select the zip file and begin the upload process. Wait for the plugin to upload and then click on Activate.

Setup and Configuration

Have you already read through the documentation for the Roles and Permissions Basic add-on? If not, you can view the documentation for the Roles and Permissions Basic add-on. Then continue to the sections below to learn about the new options in the Roles and Permissions Pro add-on.

User Permissions

In addition to the standard Minimum Page Permissions, there are now two new boxes in the User Permissions page: Current Roles/Capabilities and the Advanced Options section.

Current Roles/Capabilities

This section lists what the different roles can do and the number of users with that particular role. Clicking the links takes you to the Users page which will show only those users with that role.

Advanced Options

Events created by “Event Managers” require approval?: Selecting yes will mean the Admin will need to authorise an event created by Event Managers, before it will be published and go live. If set to No, the events will be published as normal.

Setting a pending event to published in the event editor

Regional managers can edit venues assigned to them?: Gives Regional Managers the ability to edit and delete venues assigned to their locale. Note that the permission for Venue Manager must be set at Regional Manager level.

Regional managers are in charge only of their staff?: If set to yes, staff added by other users will not be visible to the Regional Manager in question.

Anyone can create a post when publishing an event?: Setting to yes will remove the Post section in the edit Event page.

Enable sharing of categories between users?: Allows categories to be shared with all staff. If set to no, categories will be on a per staff member basis.

Locales/Regions

Create and manage multiple regions and areas where your events occur, for example USA, UK, Finland or right down to a local level like Salt Lake City, Bountiful, Ogden.

Roles and Permissions Pro – Locale overview

Adding a new locale is simple. Start by clicking the Add New Locale button.

In the box that appears, add the locale name and click the Save Locale button.

Roles and Permissions Pro – add new locale

Regional Managers

This new menu will list all of your Regional Managers, and you can obtain important contact information and edit which regions they deal with.

Regional managers overview

Hovering your mouse over the Regional Managers name will reveal the edit link. Click that to edit which regions that manager covers, if any.

Usage

The Roles and Permissions Pro adds additional features to Event Espresso 3 by expanding on the options introduced by the Roles and Permissions Basic add-on.

Troubleshooting

The plugin will not activate. Can you help?
Are you running a current version of Event Espresso 3? Is the Roles and Permissions Basic add-on installed and activated?

Some options mentioned here are not appearing. Can you help?
This add-on requires the Roles and Permissions add-on to be installed and activated. It cannot run alone. Please ensure that both add-ons are up to date.

Missing Admin Bar or blocked Admin access when also using Woocommerce?
Woocommerce blocks users without the edit_posts cabailbility from seeing the admin bar or accessing the admin.
The following code snippet can resolve this:

function ee_do_not_prevent_admin_access_with_woocommerce() {
return false;
}
add_action( 'admin_init', 'ee_allow_master_admin_admin_access_with_woocommerce');
function ee_allow_master_admin_admin_access_with_woocommerce() {
if ( current_user_can( 'espresso_event_admin' ) ) {
add_filter( 'woocommerce_prevent_admin_access', 'ee_do_not_prevent_admin_access_with_woocommerce' );
add_filter( 'woocommerce_disable_admin_bar', 'ee_do_not_prevent_admin_access_with_woocommerce' );
}
}

Customizations

• None at this time — check back soon!

The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on for Event Espresso allows admins you to create manage and customize the WordPress user roles and give them different permissions with different capabilities so your staff can help you manage your events or the events that other people create.

View quick links for this add-on –> 

Installation

This add-on is a plugin for WordPress and can be installed through your WP dashboard (WP-admin).

Download the latest version of the Roles and Permissions Basic add-on for Event Espresso 3 from your Event Espresso account.

Then login to your WordPress dashboard (WP-admin) and go to Plugins. Next, click on Add New –> Upload and browse to the plugin on your computer. Then select the zip file and begin the upload process. Wait for the plugin to upload and then click on Activate.

Setup and Configuration

Login to your WP dashboard and go to Users –> Add New. Then create a new user and assign them a role of ‘Espresso Master Admin.’

Set up the User Roles

Go to the Event Espresso –> User Roles screen and edit the Administrator role. This role should have all the capabilities checked.

Then edit the Espresso Master Admin role. This role should at the very least have the following capabilities active:

• espresso_event_admin
• espresso_event_manager
• espresso_group_admin

Other capabilities such as unfiltered_html, upload_files might be useful if they will be creating event content.

Then assign this new user role the permissions, or access to Event Espresso features, that this role should have. As an example, if the events that the event admin will be publishing will offer discount codes, set the ‘Discounts Page’ permission to be available for the event admin. Be sure to save when finished.

Usage

The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on is helpful for creating users that have access to certain parts of Event Espresso within your WordPress dashboard. You can assign users certain permissions as shown in the screenshot above.

Troubleshooting

The plugin will not activate. Can you help?
Are you running a current version of Event Espresso 3?
Missing Admin Bar or blocked Admin access when also using Woocommerce?
Woocommerce blocks users without the edit_posts cabailbility from seeing the admin bar or accessing the admin.
The following code snippet can resolve this:

function ee_do_not_prevent_admin_access_with_woocommerce() {
return false;
}
add_action( 'admin_init', 'ee_allow_master_admin_admin_access_with_woocommerce');
function ee_allow_master_admin_admin_access_with_woocommerce() {
if ( current_user_can( 'espresso_event_admin' ) ) {
add_filter( 'woocommerce_prevent_admin_access', 'ee_do_not_prevent_admin_access_with_woocommerce' );
add_filter( 'woocommerce_disable_admin_bar', 'ee_do_not_prevent_admin_access_with_woocommerce' );
}
}

Customizations

• None at this time — check back soon!