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: – [email protected]– [email protected]
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Question?