How to: Set Up Ticketing

From the Bookings Role Center you can access different setups by using the Administration menu in the Role Explorer navigation menu.

From the Activity Manager Role center menu you also have access to different setups.

The table below lists some of the setups that are mostly available in the Setup menu (under Administration).

Setup Description
No. Series Set up the number series to use for issuing a Ticket Barcode as reference in the admission entry.
Status Setup

On the relevant status settings, the Admission Handling must be set up to either Issue Admission or Cancel Admission. Normally at the Confirmation Status and the Cancel Status. This refers only to products which are booked as activities and need to be reserved upfront. You can also sell activity products which do not have limited available directly on the POS without making a booking. This results in printing a ticket (admission creation), if the label settings are in place on the activity product.
When issuing admission on activity products with limited availability (which thus require activity booking to be created), this setting will also issue admission entry per person. That is, if an activity entry has number of persons set to 2, then 2 admission entries are created, and each assigned a unique barcode for the purposes of access validation. The admission entries can be included in the email response (booking confirmation) for access control purposes.

Note: Canceling an admission deletes the admission entries if the entries have not been sent to access control at that point. Otherwise, the entries are set as Non valid access to be picked up by access control.
Label Types If you need to print paper tickets using script-based printers, you must create a Label template which dictates the layout (script). Normally, the script uses field value inserts from the Activity Admission table (each ticket is an entry in this table). See the script setup on the related label type. The syntax of the script is determined by the printer or printer driver being used to produce the output (ticket).
Label Printing This setup determines what printer is used to print the ticket or label based on the Business Central user login.
Here it is possible to specify Default for using normal Business Central printing and the printer is selected by the standardBusiness Central printer selection mechanism.
Preview shows the output on the screen.
The third option is LS Hardware Station and you can select the printer name from available Hardware Station settings.
Note: Label printing is only used if the Activity product is using labels to provide the output.
Business Central Report If you need to use a standard Business Central report to provide the actual ticket, you can create a report based on the Activity Admission table and assign it on the activity product as the admission output. Consult with your partner or LS Retail Consulting for more information about creating such a report.
Product You must create an Activity Product as the basis of the ticketing. This product can either be depending on availability (having resources defining availability) or it can be issued and tickets printed without having availability requirements.

To be issued as an admission, the product must have the following settings assigned:

  • Admission Output Type: Only if printed output is required.
  • Admission Label or Admission Report ID: Depending on the admission output type.
  • Admission No. Series: This must be defined to set the basis of the barcode for each ticket and admission issued.
  • Multiple Admission Qty: This can be set if the admission entry (ticket) should allow the holder to access multiple times. This requires validation and registration of access, either using the CHECKACCESS API or a POS command and/or the SEARCH page (see role center Search page) functionality to register and validate access.
POS and POS commands To sell a ticket on the POS, you use the SELLPRODUCT POS command as any other activity product. You can also use the CHANGETICKET POS command to change Quantity and Dates and Times on an existing journal line. The POS action TICKETPRINT must be in place to automatically print tickets which are being posted at the POS.
Note: Do not have this POS action activated, if there is no ticket printing required in the implementation. Otherwise, the action might slow down the finalizing of the sale and it is not necessary unless printing is needed.

Tip: You can use the CHECKACCESS POS command to enter the barcode reference and check if the ticket is valid.
API

The access control to validate both tickets and membership access is located in codeunit 10015822 "LSC Activity Web Services" (SOAP/HTML) and in codeunit 10015848 "LSC Activity WS" as Json response. Depending on the preference of communication option, these codeunits must be published as API in the Business Central environment. See Business Central help topics on implementing API codeunits.

The CheckAccess API has the following parameters:

  • SearchReference - This is either the ticket/admission barcode value or the membership number.
  • Location No. - The current location which the access control is validating for access.
  • Gate No. - Optional value, if the access control is specific to a selected gate.
  • RegisterAccessEntry - Specifies if the API should also register the call as admission (that is confirming the arrival of the client and the use of the ticket/membership). Set this parameter to false, if you are only looking up admission details.
  • CheckType - Specifies how the validation should be executed: 0 = towards both ticket (issued admission) and membership check, 1 = Only check towards ticket/admission, 2 = Only check towards membership access.
  • MessageString - This text is returned by the API and clarifies denial of access or shows details of valid access product.

Note: The membership Web service setting must be set to ON in the Membership setup, if you plan to use the CHECKACCESS web API.

There are two ways to sell tickets:

  1. By booking the activity product presenting the ticket as you would book any other activity product. If you need to send the tickets or barcodes to the client, you should use the confirmation emailing mechanism to "print" the tickets as attachment to the confirmation email. The report must be based on the Activity Reservation table and list all related Activity Admission entries that are linked to the reservation.
  2. Sell the related ticket (activity product) on the POS like any other activity product and issue the paper tickets via the label mechanism or Business Central report. Tickets can also be issued via method 1 using the email confirmation process.

Both methods issue an Admission entry record for each ticket sold and booked. Later, you can check and confirm the access using either the POS (with the CHECKACCESS command) or the CHECKACCESS web APIs. In the Bookings Manager role center, use the Issued Admission tile to see when ticket products are confirmed in BackOffice or via API or sold at the POS.