Musikal Chairs v1.01 is Released!

[Lyrek Admin]

We're pleased to announce the release of the new version of Musikal Chairs. All clients with Musikal Chairs active on their leases (and those currently using the six-month free demo) will notice a host of new features in this version (v1.01). Many of the new features came to us as requests from clients and partners. As always, thank you for your feedback, dedication and enthusiasm for Lyrek and Musikal Chairs. If you'd like to request other features, you can do so, here in the Lyrek Community Forum.

Below is a summary of the new features in Musikal Chairs v1.01

1. Multi-Seat Attendees
Lyrek Musikal Chairs users may now seat an unlimited number of attendees in the same seat. While this seems a little counter-intuitive, industry practices show that multi-seating front rows of important events and fashion shows is helpful for ensuring the row is not only full, but welcoming to designers and attendees (who may've not gotten a front row seat in the past). Naturally, the front-of-house team would have to manage situations of double- or multi-seating on-site, however Musikal Chairs now helps with this industry standard of operations. In order for multi-seating to be enabled on your account, you'll need to submit a support ticket to request it. Multi-seating is a system-wide, not event-wide, function.

With multi-seating turned on, users will notice previously unavailable seats (seats with attendees) are now available to be seated. If more than one attendee is in any seat, a ghosted watermark of the attendee occupancy shows up in the background of the seat. To remove multiple contacts from a seat, a user must remove the last added one first. If a user wishes to add the first, or previous contact, he/she must remove the last, or later contact first, then remove the previous, then re-add the later one.

2. Printing Attendee Names and Companies on Venues and Sections
In the first release of Musikal Chairs, users could only see attendee names, companies and titles if seats were enlarged to 200% their natural size. As Musikal Chairs prints all venues and sections as PDFs, clients noted that they could merely zoom in to digital copies to read names, companies and titles on PDFs created where seats were less than 200% their natural size. As a result, our clients have requested that all venue and section PDFs show attendee names, companies and (optionally) titles. As a result of the multi-seating function, above, where space for visible printing of multiple attendees in the same seat were limited (specifically in vertically-rotated sections and linear rows). To resolve this issue, spacing between attendees and the attendee titles were removed, and attendee names were made bold (with company names roman and in parentheses).

3. Seat by RSVP Status
In the first release of Musikal Chairs, users could only differentiate between invitees' RSVP status by storing a different color along side each invitee with different statuses. Version 1.01 allows for users to set their preference when they add the venue to the event (Event Create/Edit page). There are now three options:
a. Yes (Attendees)
b. Yes/Unconfirmed (Invitees/Attendees)
c. All (Invitees/Attendees) - this was the only option in the first release

Note that if you change this preference after having already seated invitees (from the Event Edit page), all invitees that do not match the RSVP status you've specified will be unseated and return to the list of standers. These contacts will still retain their Section, Row and Seat in traditional Lyrek Seating for your guidance. An alert is shown if a user wishes to modify the RSVP Status option, to notify them of the issue, and he/she has to click "Yes" in order to change this preference.

4. Save Reminder
Musikal Chars now reminds users to save their progress after every five (5) minutes that it has not been saved.

5. Bugfixes
A number of bugs from the first release have been resolved.

6. Attendees renamed Standers
Clients have asked that the list of attendees/invitees on the right be renamed to "Standers" since it doesn't accurately depict the RSVP status of the list. This has been updated.

7. Seating Zoom
In the first version of Musikal Chairs, users had two zoom levels: Zoom to Fit, Zoom 1:1. There is now a third zoom level available from seating mode where users may read the invitee name, company and title as well as the seat number (which is the only thing visible from the Zoom 1:1 view). This new zoom level works with the multi-seating option (above) to list all attendees in the seat.

8. Modify In-use Venues
Previously, users couldn't modify a venue after it had been used in seating or even applied to an event. The reason for this functionality was that modifying configurations (removing sections, rows or seats, for instance) would inadvertently unseat anyone seated in those sections, rows or seats for all events of which the venue was assigned.

Clients had expressed that they'd be more hindered by the inability to change venues up to the day of the event than by invitees getting unseated. As a result, this restriction was lifted and the logic was rewritten to enable users to perform this modification with the caveat that they could potentially unseat people. An alert is shown if a user wishes to modify an in-use venue, to notify them of the issue, and he/she has to click "Yes" in order to perform these updates.

9. Work with Selected Sections
Musikal Chairs makes it so hovering over the section will bring that section to the foreground so you can work with it. Unfortunately, when building and editing complicated venues, sometimes sections overlap. This made it frustrating to modify a section or row, as sections in the background were sometimes difficult to modify. Musikal Chairs v1.01 now has "Selected Section" functionality. When you want to work specifically with one section, just click on the background and this section rises to the foreground and stays there while you're working with it. If you want to deselect the section when you're done, simply click on another section background or click anywhere on the venue to release that section from its selected state and return it to normal.

The first time a user clicks on a section background to make it selected, Musikal Chairs presents an alert to let you know that the section is active and how to deselect it. Now, overlapping sections are easy to modify!

Thanks again for all your feedback! We hope you enjoy the new release.