Automatic assignment by guest order

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Automatic assignment by guest order

If you have set Auto assign seats to in the order shown in the Guests pane in the the Auto assign tab of the prefs_16Preferences window, then PerfectTablePlan will try to automatically assign guests to seats according to their current order in the unknown_adult_16Guests pane and the order of the tables. This can be useful for seating guests by precedence or rank at formal events.

automatic seat assignment by guest order

For example:

seat by precedence

Guest assignment order

The guests are assigned in the order they are currently shown in the unknown_adult_16Guests pane, top to bottom.

To sort guests by a single column, click on the column header in the unknown_adult_16Guests pane.

To sort guests by multiple levels in the unknown_adult_16Guests pane, click on the sort_16 button at the top of the unknown_adult_16Guests pane to show the sort_16Multi-Level Sort window.

Generally text values are sorted alphabetically and numerical values are sorted numerically. But you can also arrange non-alphabetic sorting by guest title or suffix.

Advanced and Professional editions only

Ordering by custom fields

You can use custom fields to store the precedence of each guest.

Use a custom field of type currency if you wish to use a numeric scale. You can use decimal points. E.g. if a guest has a rank of '7.0' you could give their spouse a rank of '7.1'.

Use a custom field of type selection if you have a limited number of classifications you want to rank by. You can colour-code these classes in the floor plan.

Use a custom field of type text if to wish to store seniority. You should use a YYYY-MM-DD date format so that the dates are sorted in date order when sorted alphabetically. E.g. 2018-01-07 for 7th January 2018.

You can sort the unknown_adult_16Guests pane by multiple custom fields if there is more than one criteria. For example, you might want to sort by a numeric precedence value and then by seniority date.

seating order of precedence ranking

Table assignment order

The order in which guests are assigned to tables/row is set in the Auto assign tab of the prefs_16Preferences window. Typically you will want to set in the order shown in the Schematic pane to fill tables in the order shown in the schematic_16Schematic pane. You can change this order.

The order in which seats are filled depends on whether Seat numbers is set to clockwise or anti-clockwise for each table/row.

Other

You can run File>wand_16Auto Assign Seats as often as you like. However there is no random element and the result will always be the same for a given guest order, guest locking/RSVP properties and table order.

Note Guests who have been lock_16 locked by you or have the wrong RSVP status (depending on the Allow seat assignment with RSVP settings in the prefs_16Preferences window) will not be (re)assigned by automatic assignment.

See also:

videoAssign guests to seats (video with audio, 13:01 minutes)

Assign seating by order of precedence