My name is Robert Holt, and I work here at KCSM helping to promote local artists in our “Jazz Datebook”. This post is intended for people interested in the technicalities of our datebook, and how we did the transition from an old system to a new system, and what that means for you!
When I joined KCSM over 2 years ago, the datebook service offered was limited and had a high chance of duplicate events being entered. This caused difficulties in the approval process and wasn’t the service that we here at KCSM wanted to offer to our artists, promoters and venues.
On the older system, an event would be submitted online and the submitter would not any confirmation that their event had been approved or even received! Suggestions to revamp the jazz datebook were put into the pipeline to resolve these issues and add extra functionality to our submitters and more importantly give all visitors to the jazz datebook a much more rich experience.
The transition was a very interesting one. My co worker and extremely efficient web guru Chris helped to set up the new landing webpage and process for the new datebook. All that was left to do was to export an excel file, edit it and import it into the new database. I say ‘all that was left to do’. Well, the spreadsheet had over 500 rows…
Current Jazz Datebook
There were import difficulties at first, but once a majority of the file was imported, I was off to a running start. The next step was to tidy up the information, update address venue details and so on. The new database had many additional features compared to the old. One great feature in the new DB was the integration with Google maps. When a user wants to get directions to a venue, there is a Google maps link next to the address that will open up another tab and show detailed map information and the great thing about Google maps is that you can set up direction information.
Another great plus is that venue duplicates are eliminated. This is because the new database uses an intelligent calendaring system that will raise a red flag if there is another event already listed in the time slot for the venue. This saves a huge amount of administration time.
In conjunction with this, there are email alerts. The process is this; a visitor to the site will submit an event and immediately receive an email stating that their event has been submitted and that an administrator (my good self) will approve the event shortly. The event submitted lands in a queue where I check through the event and ensure that the venue information is correct, the picture is appropriate and other items are laid out in the proper fashion. Once this is approved, another email is generated and sent to the submitter to notify them that their event has been confirmed and it is now live on the website. Within the email, there is a link that the recipient can click on to delete the event that they listed. This is extremely efficient when submitters need to delete a cancelled event from our database at any time.
The best part of this new database is the value. A reduced annual cost along with an easier to use interface has sped up the administration process and allowed us to improve and expand our datebook services to allow for more events and venues as well as more time to directly help artists get listings out there! It’s also externally hosted which means that any technical issues on the main KCSM site occur, the datebook still runs.
There were some teething details along the way though. One of the biggest hurdles was the fact that our calendar database provider became so popular that they hit bandwidth capacity. This equated to latency issues and very high lag times. Basically submitters were experiencing very slow page load times. The calendar provider eventually installed new fiber-optic lines allowing for much more efficient data transfer to their clients and users. We were back on track again.
Along the way, as the calendar providers carry out version upgrades, we have to ensure that the same functionality still remains for our ever increasing users. The providers are happy to include modifications and suggestions to improve layout and functionality in upcoming releases.
With the database, users can search in many different ways. The search functionality is similar to Google. Users can search for specifically jazz venues, on certain dates, at certain times. They can even search by artist name.
There have, however been some software limitations. I.E. the response email is pretty generic and I am not too happy about that. Be assured, that will change in the near future. I wanted a type of ‘auto reply’ to the jazz-ites out there who email to jazzdatebook@kcsm.net enquiring about upcoming events and general enquiries, so I put the wheels in motion to have an automatic HTML rich auto reply email to respond to all who send emails in. This has been successful and on the back of that we are looking to add a newsletter as a bonus for people getting in contact. We want to provide our contacts with informative articles so they, just like us, can stay on the Jazz pulse. The auto reply email currently has a bunch of links to the KCSM website including the jazz datebook page.
Talking a little about customer service; my ethic on customer service is to simply see things through to the end. I would like to expand on what that means to me. I am a can do person. I like solving problems and always look for a solution. No matter how long it takes.
I can’t wait to work with all of you to help advertise and get people to your concerts. Check out part 2 to see how you can advertise on the datebook, and how we foresee the future of this wonderful service!