SignalR and Ticketing

An app is only as good as how it feels to use. To test this I recently helped out at a new years event in Las Vegas working the front line at the door. What I found has led to the release of our 1.35 update of GoMobile Events.

At the New Years event by Epyk Entertainment (and like many night life events in Las Vegas) there were long lines to get in the door. This is where your door procedures and staff training really come into play to process each ticket holder as fast as possible. This event had everything from pre-paid ticket holders using paper tickets, using their smart phone, buying tickets cash and charge, hand stamps for ID verification, wristbands for reentry.

With only a couple of people working the ticketing portion of the process it demonstrated what parts of the process could be improved from a technical aspect and process aspect.

The Small Things Count

The first thing found was that (especially on Android phones) using the web application portion can be slow. Load time between pages was the issue and this led to people waiting a few extra seconds here and there. 

The number of checked in people on each device differed. This was of course until you hit the sync button but it would have been useful to know at all times the exact count.

Whilst cash sales were done at the event there were some that wanted to purchase via card. This meant that once purchased, the ticket scanners required a sync before the purchased ticket could be scanned.

Whilst each of these issues were relatively minor they were there and so they were fixed in the latest update.

SignalR to the Rescue

These issues all relate to a problem that occurs with all web applications: your web page is not up to date until you refresh it. This is where SignalR technology comes in. What if it updated whenever anything it was showing was out of date? Well, it would mean that the check in counts on each page would be up to date on every device, that any newly purchased tickets would be shown on every device and that any page you were looking at, you knew had the latest information on it.

Lets See it in action!

The video below shows two devices showing GoMobile Events side by side. 

Device 1

User checks in 4 people then adds a ticket order

Device 2

Automatically on this device we see our check in count go up, our cash sales go up and our tickets sold go up

When is this feature available?

Its available right now for the web site and for the Android app. We're in the approval process for the Apple App store at the moment and you can expect an update for that in the next couple of days.