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Auto-seat

Auto-seat fills your tables by party in seconds, follows your accepted rules, and shows you the result before anything changes. Apply it, or cancel.

GalaOwner · Admin · Manager
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Auto-seat seats your guests for you, one party at a time, following the rules you've accepted. You see its result laid over your tables before anything is saved, and you choose whether to keep it.

Before you start

  • Add your tables. Auto-seat can't run with none.
  • Accept the seating rules you want it to follow. Suggestions you haven't reviewed don't count. See Seating requests and rules.
  • Lock any table you've finished by hand: auto-seat leaves locked tables alone.

Run it

  1. 1
    In the seating editor's top bar, click Auto-seat.
  2. 2
    Pick who to seat. The first choice seats only the unseated guests, and everyone already at a table stays there. Re-seat everyone moves everyone except locked tables, bought tables and parties with a table rule.
  3. 3
    Click Preview. New seats show in blue, and the right-hand panel shows the Auto-seat preview.
  4. 4
    Read the report (below).
  5. 5
    Click Apply to save it, or Cancel to leave your seating as it was. A toast says how many guests were seated.

Undo in the top bar puts everyone back after you apply.

How it decides

  1. 1
    It keeps each party together, and joins parties with an accepted sit-together rule.
  2. 2
    It pins what can't move: locked tables, tables a sponsor or bundle bought, and parties with a table rule.
  3. 3
    It places the largest parties first, sponsors by level with the highest level at the lowest table numbers, in a zone named Front first if you have one. It never breaks a keep-apart rule.
  4. 4
    It moves and swaps parties to keep more sit-together rules, and evens out tables so none is left mostly empty when that can be avoided.

Run it twice on the same seating and you get the same result.

Read the report

The preview panel shows how many guests are Seated, how many Rules kept, how many tables are thinly filled, and how many Guests moved. Under What auto-seat couldn't do, it lists every problem in plain words, such as a party larger than any table, which it splits across tables, or a party that fit nowhere, which stays unseated. When everything worked it says Every guest fits and every rule holds.

Good to know

  • A bought table only takes its own party, and anyone you've joined to it with a rule.
  • Auto-seat never changes a table's seats. Add tables or seats if it reports guests it couldn't place.
  • Nothing is saved until you click Apply.
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Updated Oct 25, 2026

Related

Seating requests and rulesAsk guests at checkout who they'd like to sit with, turn their answers into rules, and accept the ones you agree with. Auto-seat follows accepted rules only.Who sits togetherOvante groups guests into parties: everyone on one order sits together, unless a bundle bought a whole table, in which case that table's seats are the party.Seat your guestsIn the full-screen seating editor, drag a party or a guest onto a table, or click them and then the table. Every move saves at once, and Undo takes it back.Sponsor tablesA sponsorship level with Reserved table, or a bundle that reserves a table, gets its own table on the seating chart for each purchase, named for the sponsor's listing.
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