Your Logo Here DePaul Athletics Ticketing Presented By Rich Crothers & Igor Kanevskiy April 14th, 2005.

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DePaul Athletics Ticketing

Presented By Rich Crothers & Igor Kanevskiy April 14th, 2005

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About DePaul University• Established in 1898• Urban, Catholic, Vincentian• 23,500 students

– Approximately 75% commuter students• 4,500 faculty and staff• Sports

– Men’s and Women’s basketball and soccer– Women’s softball and volleyball

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DePaul’s IS division

• PeopleSoft shop– 120 people– Running Windows 2003 and Unix systems

• Blackboard School– Unix Transaction System– Blackboard Learning System

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DePaul University’s Athletic Ticketing Solution

• Session Objectives:– Why did we want a new athletic ticketing system?– Choice of solution – Solution design – Lessons learned

• Innovation– Build a working web-based ticketing solution within

existing system architecture

• Results of Design

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Why do we want a new athletic ticketing system?

• DePaul University recently instituted an athletics fee• Provide free or discounted event admission

• Handle expected increase in attendance with the move to the Big East Conference

• Automated system to address event registration and payment for extended benefits

• Ability to sign-up for an Athletics event at any of DePaul University venues: Wish Field, Athletic Center and Allstate Arena

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Solution Options

• Two possible solutions

– Buy TicketMaster’s Archtics solution – Build internal DePaul solution

• Solutions evaluated with Even Swaps methodology

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Even Swaps Analysis

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Decision

DePaul’s internal solution

• fit best with the Athletic Department functional and overall requirements

• High visibility to students

• Integrates into the “Student Experience”

• Exclusively DePaul branded

• Use the DePaul ID as the “Ticket”

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Results

• Solution has been live and largely successful for the athletics fall and winter seasons– 35+ Total events – Total attendees = 8904 with 1338 guests – Total parking passes sold = 1030– Total bus requests = 3348– Students and fans commented that the

system was “cool”, “easy” and “advanced”

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PeopleSoft Student

Administration System

BTSUE ID Card System

PeopleSoft CRM System

InformaticaDownload Campaign Information

PeopleSoft Portal

Download Event Setup and Signup Information

DePaul eCommerce Credit Card

System

Student Passedto eCommerce

to Pay forGuest/Parking

UploadAttendanceInformation

PeopleSoft Financials

System

Financial FilePassed to GL

Card Swipe Occurs& Student Count is

Decremented

Real TimeApproval or Denial

Passed Back

NOVA

Seek approvalfrom the bank

Lookup Student Validation

Email sent notifyingstudent of event

Read signup informationfrom Portal

Student signs up for the Event

Student swipes ID card at the event

Student

Real TimeApproval or Denial

Passed Back

LoadSignup Privilege/Account

Information

Sequoia Wireless Reader at the Events

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PeopleSoft / Blackboard Interface

PeopleSoft Student

Administration System

BTSUE ID Card System

LoadSignup Privilege/Account

Information

Card Swipe Occurs& Student Count is

Decremented

$

$ $

Student

InformaticaUpload

AttendanceInformation

Sequoia Wireless Reader at the

Events

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Sequoia Wireless Reader

• 10 readers • Project required

online use

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Solution Design

• Blackboard Transaction System Unix Edition – Count Privilege/Account

• 1 tick for student• 1 tick for guest (limit 1guest)

– Daily reset• AP-NP Bug with Daily Count reset

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Solution Design

• Peoplesoft interface with Blackboard Transaction System Unix Edition – PeopleSoft script (SQR) runs to import

patrons into BTSUE• PS Auto Schedule to update adds to the events• Automated Import Script on BTSUE• Run morning of the event• Updated every 30 minutes until event start time

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Solution Design

• Blackboard and Informatica– Script to run log recall for Sequoia readers

“to file”– Informatica pulls file from /tmp – Analyze Swipe used data vs. Sign Up

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Student Experience Flow

Student logs into the Portal

Chooses Event to Attend

Purchase Guest Pass, Discounted Parking Pass

or Bus Pick up

Billing Info and Confirmation

Receipt and/or Printable

Parking Pass

Attend Event with DePaul ID

Card

Payment required

No

Yes

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Solution Design

• PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal

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Event Reservation

• Check student eligibility– Athletics fee charged?

• Web service call to PeopleSoft Student Administration System

• Check availability– Seats still available?– Registration still open?

• Log beginning of session

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Reserve Tickets

• Tickets are reserved for three minutes– Update session with purchase options and

expiration time– Additional availability checks

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Collect Billing Information

• Payment– Credit card number

• Number verified by algorithm

– CVV2– Name and address

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Charge Credit Card

• Web service call to a DePaul eCommerce Service– .NET Web Service – Wrapper for a COM DLL– Synchronous call across the Internet

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Credit Card Vendor - Nova• Contact the vendor with required

information• Process response• Log the transaction to a separate database• Return code from Nova sent back to

reservation application• Reservation application determines whether

to continue, give user another chance, or to stop the purchase– Allow only three attempts

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Confirmation Screen

• Update session to reflect a purchase• Past attempts are marked as invalid• Parking Pass displayed if purchased

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Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

• 314,854 emails • 22 campaigns in 4 ½ months• Three types of communications

– Reminders to Students with Reservations– Student Attendee Drive– General Awareness of New Student Athletics

Tickets Benefit• A variety of offline marketing support drove

students to Athletics website

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Reporting

• Event and registration data moved to a data warehouse

• Analyzed and displayed with Informatica’s PowerAnalyzer

• Tool is entirely Web-Based

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Lessons Learned

• Scalability of solution • Quick, efficient processing of transactions• Linking multiple systems together requires a

bullet-proof design and superb coding• DePaul had 4 out of 35 event failures

• Two first test events and two first “live” events AP-NP bug in BTSUE (3 failures) PeopleSoft interface to BTSUE (1 failure)

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Conclusion

• Innovating Together in ‘05:– Built a working ticketing solution from scratch in 3

months with 7 people– Solution has been live for the athletics fall and

winter seasons, with our largest event comprising around 2,000 students

– Partnership with Blackboard and Sequoia

• Contact Info: – ikanevsk@depaul.edu– rcrother@depaul.edu

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Question?