Cinema Intelligence’s goal is to empower you with tools to improve efficiency and generate more revenue. We take pride in our ability to deliver unique features that aren’t found in any other product, and we continue to deliver new ways for you to make better and more informed decisions about your business. Cinema Intelligence is always listening to our customers to better understand their needs, and just like every previous update, this one was designed with your feedback in mind. We hope that you find these new updates useful and as always, let us know if you have any questions.

1. Scheduling module

2. Booking Module

3. Forecasting module

4. Events Module

Notification for schedules generation enhancement: display the dropped shows

The notifications area we've presented to you in the previous version was enhanced with the missing (dropped) shows the same way they are displayed in the generation report when the scheduling is done. Other information like the timeslot and the room of the missing show is displayed in the same window. "Show more" button expands the item.

Scheduling engine extension: time slot priority

This feature is meant to optimize the schedule for movies that have distributor contracts and overrides. So how it works: if the distributor requested 6 shows for a movie, we can tell Cinema Intelligence the scheduling priority so the best time slots will be scheduled first.

For example, if the shows M,M1,M2,M3,A1,A2,N were requested, based on your input, they will be scheduled in the desired order of the timeslots: A2,A1,M3,M2,M1,N,M.

The time-slots priority setting is circuit level and configurable by the CI Customer Support Team, please get in touch with us and we'll set them up for you.

Pre-schedule checks

We're convinced this new functionality will you save lots of time by giving you the chance to fix any issue that might occur in the schedule even before generating it. To achieve that, the system prompts you with a set of tests that we do for you when you hit the generate button.

For new movies we check the status and booking constraints: if some of them are stopped, the fix button will start them and if they don't have booking constraints on at least 1 time-slot, the fix button will open the override settings window for that movie. This check will apply only to the first print of every new releases. You can still have multiple prints but the first one needs to be set.

The conflict between the booking constraints and the last show time is another check that we do at this stage: if a time-slot from the booking constraint is not included in the opening hours you will be notified and given the possibility to extend the last show time on that day to be equal to the closing time of the cinema. However, if the closing time of the cinema is equal to the last show time, this fix will not be activated. On the same note you will be notified if the booking constraints conflict with the opening or closing time in which case you can extend the opening/closing time on that day to include the selected time-slot.

For the pre-booked shows the system will check if they are between the opening and closing time and let you adjust the intervals if necessary. You'll also know if two movies are in the same time-slot and if any shows are overlapping.

On the Ticketing System and Cinema Intelligence integration we check if we receive data at the import by looking at the admissions on the reference day. If we don't receive any admissions/profit on the reference day for which you pressed Generate Schedule we provide the warning message "import failed". For example, if there are shows that played last week but they have 0 admissions on A2 we assume that the import from the ticketing system failed. To fix this please try a manual import and contact your Support Agent. As you know, we always get the data for the previous day, for example on Friday we import data for Thursday.

If we receive no shows on the reference day you will be warned by the message "There is no data on the reference day". In this case, the fix button will redirect you to the Movie Expand List so you can add distributor contracts. Therefore, this message warns you about not having any shows on the reference day and the one above is letting you know that there are shows but no admissions on A2.

Post-scheduler check

This new functionality will help you evaluate your schedules by checking for inconsistencies right after it was generated so we can point you in the right direction for getting the most out of it.

First we identify what a good schedule is, mark any strong deviation from it and recommend fixes for them.

1. Identified problem: the number of shows in the current generated schedule is significantly lower than the average number of shows for the selected day in the past year.

Recommended solution: disable the constraint "Minimum audience". If "Minimum audience" is enabled, configured to a large number of admissions can reduce the number of shows. The fix button will disable the constraint altogether.

2. Identified problem: Gaps in the schedule bigger than one hour and locked shows are present in the auditorium. We call gaps the time interval between the end of the cleaning time of a show and the start of the trailer time of the next one.

Recommended solution: unlock the shows that are forcing the system to leave big gaps. The fix button will do that.

3. For new movies some distributor contracts might not be fulfilled. In this case a message with all missing requirements will be displayed.

Create bulk bookings

Bulk booking is an added feature of the booking module and will save you heaps of time. Here's how to use it:

1. select bulk booking from the formats tab

2. a table with all the formats available for that movie will be displayed, please select the format. Once a format is selected, it cannot be selected again for another bulk booking

3. select a group of cinemas or multiple cinemas

4. if you want to use a predefined booking policy please select it

5. add time-slots and min seats if you haven't selected a predefined policy

6. save booking

The booking will be created for all selected formats and it's available for the old movies too. The intermission will be applied to all versions of the movie.

The bulk booking menu will display, as in the regular booking menu, other sections like release information, available formats, forecasting, booked events and intermission. Please keep in mind that if you create another booking after the bulk booking was made, only the remaining theatres and formats will be available.

The following features are not supported with bulk booking:

1. Exact day or exact time

2. The scheduling constraints table

4. Start date

5. Bulk booking cannot be used for editing, only creating bookings on new releases

Policy mapping from ticketing system to booking

Following the same track of saving your time when booking we've introduced the booking policies. It's useful if you have patterns in your bookings so you can apply a policy to multiple instances. The booking policies are imported automatically from the ticketing system.

Policies can be managed internally in Cinema Intelligence by Support Agents, so please let us know how to define them.

When creating a booking you can select one of the existing policies from the drop-down as seen in the image below for every playing week, at the day level. If a certain policy is selected, the minimum seats, time slots, "is children" checkbox, "is VIP" checkbox and room will be set accordingly.

A few things to keep in mind when using the booking policies:

1. The movies that already have policies against them will be automatically created in the scheduling module

2. You can add extra details to an existing scheduling policy from the booking module

3. You can edit the policy from the booking module, the changes will not be altered at the import from the ticketing system, they will only apply to the movie you are currently booking

4. At the import, movies with different print numbers will be created in the booking module

5. A booking created through a policy can be edited

6. You can use the policies even when bulk booking

Comments box

We've added a new comments box on the forecasting module so you can write down your thoughts on forecasted films, similar movies you or your colleagues have in mind for forecastings, planned actions, etc...

It is on the forecasting page of each movie, at the bottom, it's resizable and it has the same design as the comments box from the booking module which you are familiar with. The comments that you've added here will be captured by the "take shapshot" functionality. To save a new comment just click outside the box and it will be automatically saved, to edit it just click on it.

Edit Scale Factor value from the keyboard

We know that using the slider to set the desired value for the Scale Factor might be a little unconfortable sometimes so we added an input box where you can set the value from the keyboard. They are synchronized, so everytime you change one of them, the other one will change accordingly.

Any number bigger than 5 will be automatically adjusted to 5 which is the maximum value accepted by the system. If you need fractions, one decimal is accepted although if you enter two decimals, they wil be rounded up. Deleting the data from the input box will default to the last saved value.

Delete event from the scheduler

An event created in Events Module is transferred to the Scheduler module only if its status is "final". On older versions of Cinema Intelligence, deleting an event from the Events Module would not delete it from the Scheduler

On this version we added a few actions to the deletion of an event:

1. If you change the initial theatre the event was created on, the event will be deleted from the Scheduler of said theatre and imported to the new location.

2. If you delete an event from the Events Module it will be deleted from the Scheduler as well regardless of its status.

3. If the status of an event is changed from Final to Draft, the event will be deleted from the Scheduler.

4. When changing the status of an event from Final to Pending, the event will be deleted from the Scheduler.

5. Deleting the event from the Scheduler will not delete the event from the Events module.