Selling out is a beautiful thing

The PEO Labs series brings you information or advice on items that are geared towards users who can take high-level concepts or sample code and run with them. Please note that many of the things discussed are not supported. That doesn't mean that an item is a warranty-voider; it just means that the Support Analysts can't walk you through it or troubleshoot it if it breaks.

In Patron Edge Online 3.3.3, we started work on a feature that will allow you to continue to display sold out events on your website rather than having them get removed. This is a great feature in a couple of ways. First, the marketing folks will love it because patrons who visit your site can see how popular your events are and won't wait until last minute to make a purchase. A press release that says your last ballet performance sold out on the first day of sale is a great boost to your reputation. From a customer service perspective, it's also a win because people who visit your website can see that the event they want is already sold out instead of calling the box office to see if it has gone on sale or if there are still tickets available.

The reason this is a PEO Labs post is because the feature requires the help of a DBA to implement so it isn't something that a support analyst will take you through. But with a tech person and 15 minutes of free time and you can get this up and running. Here's how:

Set up Patron Edge

1. Go to Administration, User Setup, User Groups
2. Edit the Internet user group and set Update Events Active Data Table to Yes. If you don't see this option, just use the Design toolbar to turn on the field.

Create the SQL job

In Enterprise Manager or SQL Management Studio, create a SQL job to run against the PE database with the following command: exec CalcEventsActiveDataView. This is the part where you want the tech person involved. Set it to run on a schedule as frequent as your PE/PEO sync runs. By default a partial sync runs every hour, but you may want to set this more or less frequently; your mileage may vary on how long a sync takes.

Add the sales point to Patron Edge Online

1. Go to Administration, System Setup, Sales Points
2. Create a new entry that uses the number of the Internet sales point. The description can be anything you want; I would set it to the same description as you have in PE for clarity's sake.

Configure Site Settings

Here is where all of the business logic comes in. Your tech person can do the configuration, but the box office manager and marketing manager need to make some business decisions. 

Set Display sold out events to 1 (leave at 0 to remove the event from the site altogether when it is sold out).
Set Display sold out shows to 1 (leave at 0 to remove the show altogether when all of its events are sold out).
Set an expression for Sold-out behavior, using one of these examples:

And with that, I bid you good weekend. Now take this stuff, run with it, and come back to leave comments about how it's working for you.