Our goal is to continuously improve your Cinema Intelligence experience, by taking your feedback into account such as new features available that we hope you will find useful.
Overview of changes in this release:
1. Booking module:
2. Events module:
3. Scheduling module:
4. More Cinema Intelligence modules:
Booking
Ability to book film one week before release date
With this enhancement of the Booking module, you can now start playing a film one week before its release date.
When selecting the start date for the booked title, the default value is set to the release date of the film, but you can change that now to one week before the release date if you want to start scheduling it earlier.
Ability to book film at a day level
We also extended Booking to be able to define different constraints per day of the premiere week.
The booking can be defined differently per day, with multiple constraints. The same can be done for a copy of the film. The functionality is similar with the one from Scheduling module - Expand Movie List - Scheduling Constraints, where the constraints of the booking will be visible after Save.
Ability to book old films
Booking old films, films available in the Film Database module, is now possible.
This can be done by accessing the Film Database module, searching for the film that you want to book, opening the details of the respective film and under Release Information section you can find the Create booking button. These actions will open the New Booking page, the same view as when you define a booking for a new release.
After that you just need to select a start date for the film you are booking, scheduling constraints for it and you will see the title in the Scheduling module upon Save.
This feature will remove the need to book and schedule an old release in the Ticketing System. You can do it directly in Cinema Intelligence.
Ability to book films for more weeks
With this functionality you will be able to define distributor contracts/bookings for multiple weeks or for the whole lifecycle of a film, in order to fulfill the distributor requirements.
Before adding this feature, the bookings were available for 1 week, usually the first week of life of a film. Now you will be able to define the same or different distributor contracts for as many weeks as needed.
How to add bookings for multiple weeks:
In the add new booking page, after selecting the format, cinema/s and start date for the booked title, in the Scheduling constraints section the weeks to apply the booking for can be selected
By default, only the first week is selected, therefore your booking will be just for the first playing week of the film
To select multiple weeks, each week should be selected separately. In the display above you can see that the number of the week is displayed first (1, 2, 3…) and then the actual play-week dates. Selecting the 3rd week will not automatically save the 2nd week, every week needs to be selected individually.
After selecting the weeks for which to define bookings, the following display and division of weeks will appear (example with 3 weeks booking):
On top of each week-group you can see the week number and the calendar dates for that play-week
Different scheduling constraints can be defined per week, and also per day. The same applies to is Children, is VIP and Single Room; they can be defined differently per play-week.
NOTE: if you want to have the same scheduling constraints for all the weeks of the booking, the shortest way to achieve this is to define the 1st week and then select the number of weeks to apply it to. When adding more weeks to the booking, the settings made on the 1st week will be automatically transferred to the rest.
For the moment, in the bookings overview page of a film, we will only display the settings for the 1st week’s booking.
Events
New Calendar View of events
For a good overview of all the events scheduled for your cinemas, we have enhanced the Events module with a new viewing option, called Calendar View.
Navigating to this view is possible from the landing page of the Events module, by pressing the Calendar View button, displaying all the events in a certain month. The month displayed is always the current month, but it can be changed from the upper part of the page.
All events in a month are grouped based on the day they are scheduled on, containing in the overview also the state the event is in. The color codes for the states are kept: gray for past events, yellow for draft, red for pending and green for final. By clicking on one of the events, a detail pop-up window of the selected event will appear, with 2 options:
to edit the event, which will take to the page of the event and allow you to edit any of its details
to cancel and go back to the Calendar View
Ability to add attachments to events
Files of any type can now be added as an attachment to an event.
Only one attachment is possible per event, but you can always archive more files and attach the archive to the event.
This feature will help all members accessing the Events module share needed documents, like invoices or contracts.
Ability to add events on multiple locations at once
With this functionality you will be able to add an event to more locations at once.
Similar to the selection of cinemas and cinema groups from the Booking module, the selection in the Events module will allow you to add an event to a group of cinemas or to multiple cinemas at once.
Taking into that the auditoriums differ per cinema in terms of capacity and supported formats, when adding an event on multiple cinemas it is mandatory to select the format that the auditorium where the event takes place should support (example: 3D, IMAX) and to add the number of expected guests. After setting the event to Final state and saving, it will be automatically transferred to the Scheduling module, on all locations, to the room supporting the respective format and big enough for the number of guests.
Example:
Let’s assume we have an event called “Film Screening” in 2 locations, requiring a 3D-capable auditorium and with 150 guests.
For location 1 our event will be in room 3 which is 3D-capable and has a capacity of 180 seats.
For location 2 our event will be in room 1 which is 3D-capable and has 200 seats.
Scheduling
Notifications for schedules generation
With this feature you are able to do other operations while schedule is generated. You can change the view, navigate to another module, and be notified when generation has finished.
The notification symbol is placed in the bottom left corner, below the “Welcome” menu.
When there is no schedule generation running the symbol will have the sign of a bell; when the schedule has finished you will see a green check-mark.
Pressing the bell or green check will show you the message of the schedule and the time of the generation.
Drop percentage for children films
The drop percentage represents the percentage decrease in number of visitors or profit from the previous play week to the current scheduling play week.
The default value for drop percentage can now be set differently for normal and children films. This setting is per theatre, in the Constraints page -> Cinema Settings tab.
The default value for both types of movies is -30%. Setting a different default drop value for children films will apply the new value to all children films in Scheduling module on the respective theatre and adjust the forecasted numbers of visitors/profit accordingly.
The functionality of the Save and Save as default options were kept: saving will apply the change only for the current play-week; saving by default will change the default settings and keep them for the up-coming play-weeks also.
Ability to delete comments in Constraints View
In order to be able to remove older comments, that do not apply anymore, you can now delete comments from the Constraints page.
Every comment has an “x” in the right side that you can click to delete the respective comment. Deleting comments is not user-specific, i.e. any user can delete any comment, even though he/she is not the author.
Ability to link two formats of the same film
With this new functionality you will be able to automatically stop a format of a film that you don’t want to play anymore and to transfer the admissions to a different format/version of the same film.
The setting is available in the Expand Movie List, under Film Settings tab.
Let’s assume that you want to stop the 3D version of a film and continue playing the 2D one. The link is done by selecting from the Playing list the 3D version title and in the Film Settings tab, next to Link show to you have to select the 2D version from the drop-down.
These steps will automatically set the state of the 3D title to stopped (the title will appear in red) and it will no longer be scheduled automatically by the scheduling engine.
Also, the admissions and forecasted admissions for the 3D version will be transferred to the 2D one and they will be taken into account when scheduling the 2D.
After linking the two versions, a Correction factor appear, which is used to denote how similar the two linked versions are. By default, the value is 0%, which means that the two versions are 100% similar. If needed, you can of course adjust the value.
To un-link two versions, select the version stopped (3D in our example above), and select None in the drop-down menu of the Link show to option.
Notes:
The admissions/visitors of linked versions will not affect the historical data; the values for the 3D version will remain unchanged.
It is possible to link only one version to another (one to one), not multiple versions to one.
Linking two different films is not possible. The link can only be defined for different version/formats of the same film or between two different prints of the same film.
Intermission visible in Schedule View
A graphical representation of the intermission in Schedule was introduced, similar to all other graphical representations (pre-show time, feature or cleaning).
Check Constraints functionality update
The Check Constraints functionality was enhanced to also check if the distributor requirements are being followed for movies in their first week of playing (age = 1), in addition to the checks available previously: violations of No crowding for large rooms and Intermission overlapping.
Distributor contracts are visible in Scheduling module from two sources:
Ticketing systems (example: Dolphin)
Booking module
The Check Constraints functionality is available in the Schedule View Check Schedule tab.
After pressing the Check constraints button a list with Distributor requirements is loaded, containing all new releases with distributor contracts. When selecting a title from the list, a drop-down window appears with information about:
Distributor of the film
Start date
Minimum shows and minimum seats required by distributor contracts
Schedule details: actual shows and actual seats
For every new release (age = 1) with distributor contracts, the following are checked:
If film is playing or not. In case it is not playing at all, the title will be highlighted in red
If minimum number of shows is met in current checked schedule. The missing shows/timeslots will be highlighted in red for that certain film. The shows extra than what the distributor required will be highlighted in blue.
If minimum number of seats is met, then no characters will be marked with colour.
Reference day visible in Legend
The definition of reference days is now visible in the Legend.
New enhancement: display dropped shows after schedule generation
In order to help you in the programming sessions we have enhanced the Scheduling module with displaying dropped shows after automatic schedules generation. In this way you can easily see if a title is missing from current schedule and take the decision if it is needed or not.
Dropped shows can be:
Shows requested by distributor contracts that the scheduling engine could not schedule due to certain reasons, for example: lack of enough 3D rooms, not enough space between opening hours on the cinema;
Shows scheduled initially (in Phase 1 of scheduling engine), but dropped when assigning them exact start time (in Phase 2 of scheduling engine), due to reasons like: violation of constraints, unmanageable times.
A list with dropped shows is displayed after automatic schedule generation in a pop-up window.
A dropped show is displayed in the following way:
Film name | format | timeslot/exact start time | room
Scheduling engine extension: Single room
This functionality was built to ease the process of programming when a film is requested to have all of it’s shows in the same auditorium.
Distributor contracts or other limitations sometimes require to schedule all shows of a film in a single room. Which film to be schedules as “single room” is definable in the Booking module. When booking any film (new or old) you now have the check-box Single room.
The feature can be used as standalone (no time-slots or minimum seats required) and in this case any shows that the scheduling engine places in the schedule will to be in the same room.
If a film was booked with this option and it also has a pre-booked show or manually locked show in a certain room, the scheduling engine will scheduled the rest of it’s shows in the same room as the pre-booked or locked show. The shows that don't fit in the same room will be dropped.
Please keep in mind that this setting will be applied only for the current play-week/s when that title was booked, not being automatically transferred from one scheduling week to another.
Scheduling engine extension: Formats priority
Another extension of the scheduling engine was brought in order to avoid dropping a film of a better format because the capable room was occupied by another one of a different format.
New releases will be scheduled based on distributor contracts, this feature only applies to old releases (age greater than 1); both to old releases with and without override.
All possible formats have to be grouped in levels for this purpose. A film of a format outside all levels will not be scheduled automatically.
Example:
Level 1: IMAX
Level 2: 3D
Level 3: 2D
In this case, when scheduling old releases, the scheduling engine will start by first scheduling the films of IMAX format, then the 3D ones and the 2D films at the end.
The formats priority is definable in the Administration platform and it has to be defined for all existing formats. Please contact your designated Customer Success Team member for setting-up the correct order. Also, please keep in mind that this setting is done on cinema level, not circuit level, due to different supported formats per cinema.
Scheduling engine extension: new order of scheduling films with distributor contracts
Until now new films with override and distributor contracts were taken for scheduling in alphabetical order. To make this better, we are now scheduling them based on the number of requested timeslots/shows. In other words, the highest priority will be given to films/formats with the most requested timeslots by override or distributor contracts.
This applies only to new releases (age = 1), since old releases are now being scheduled based on formats priority.
Example:
Film 1: M, M1, M2, M3, A1, A2, A3, N All possible shows
Film 2: M3, A1, A2, A3, N 5 requested shows
Film 3: A1, A2 2 requested shows
When scheduling them the order above will be given; the scheduling engine will start with film 1 since it has the most requested shows and will end with scheduling film 3.
Other Cinema Intelligence modules
Ability to view full film name
Full film name is now visible on the List-View option of the Film Database, Booking and Forecasting modules.