This article is relevant for: FD Live Professional
It is very important to ask questions in Sentinel the right way. If they are not asked in the right way it might lead to no or wrong results. From the data we gathered we see the following recommendations:
Most important rule: Don't leave any room for interpretation.A question should always be as clear as possible. For example you would like to know all customers who bought tickets for events in Spring 2024 but afterwards didn't purchase any tickets to send them an email. Therefore you are asking Sentinel: "Give me a list of all customers who bought tickets in Spring 2024 but didn't buy a ticket afterwards." - Three problems:
- "Tickets" could mean more than one ticket but could be also understood as any amount of tickets (1,2,3,...)
- A ticket could mean just one ticket
- Spring is at a different time around the world and a clear timeframe can not be defined.
- Therefore it is better to ask for example: "Give me a list of all customers who bought one or more tickets between March and June 2024 but didn't buy one or more tickets afterwards."
Other examples:
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- ask for the exact name of the events or for the timeframe instead of asking for a festival as it might be that we get the single events transferred but not the information that they belong to a festival
- Don't ask for season, as every organisation has a different time frame when a season ends or starts
- Best to start with is: "Give me all customer..." "Give me all events..." "Give me all transactions..." depending on which category you choose
- Name the data point you are asking for as specific as possible.
Important aspects:
- For better results you can enter the name of the data point as they are named in Future Demands data base (e.g. venue, artist_name, ticket_type,...)
- Please check out the following article for naming the data points correctly: Usable data points for Sentinel
- Please check out the following article if you would like to ask for custom properties: Custom properties queries in Sentinel
- Check for the correct naming or value of this data point transferred to Future Demand (e.g. venue is Carnegie Hall, artist_name is Maria Callas, Work is Die Zauberflöte, composer is Mozart, ticket_type is regular,...).
- You can click on an event in Lookout and "edit event details" or you can use the filtering function to see the correct naming of an artist, composer,... if you don't know it.
- Or you can ask a simple question first to see which results and data points you get in the list and then formulate your question.
- If you would like to ask for customers who did or didn't receive discounted tickets, always ask for the exact categories (Further details you find in this article: Which ticket categories does Future Demand use).
For example: "Give me all clients which purchased more than 4 tickets with ticket type regular in 2024" means that you would like to have all clients which bought more than 4 tickets without discount and therefore would be maybe interested in a subscription ticket.
- For better results you can enter the name of the data point as they are named in Future Demands data base (e.g. venue, artist_name, ticket_type,...)
- Check for spelling mistakes as this might lead to wrong results