What systems and hardware are required to implement Web Sales?

• Automatic Credit Card Authorization module - either PCCharge or Orbital Gateway
• Web Sales module - included sample HTML web templates to be installed on the Apache web server
• a dedicated computer running the Apache web server software
• a 'Demilitarized Zone-DMZ' component of your 'Local Area network-LAN'
• a dedicated computer known as the Web Listener to process requests from the Apache web server
• an additional Theatre Manager User License for the Web Listener
• a static IP address and a sub-domain address in the format of tickets.yourvenuename.com
• ADSL or cable modem equivalent speed is good enough

What technology does the Web Sales Module run on?

This particular demo is set up as follows:

• The computer running the Theatre Manager web listener is a Dell Optiplex SX260 with 512 megs of memory, 2.4 Mhz processor and 40 gig harddrive space. We picked it because it is very small and we can take it to trade shows and it looks good in a box office. You can get cheaper ones that do more
• Running Win 2000 pro server and you will be connecting to a windows IIS web server that comes with Win 2000 Pro server
• There is one copy of Theatre Manager (version 6.11.02) running the background to listen to whomever connects and update the database in real time
• You will be coming in through a Cable modem line (fast download, 760K approx upload). This is about the same as an ADSL line.

Note: We did all of our server testing on two machines. They were fast as well. The limiting factor is mainly the speed of the internet connection. Anyway, what did we use that services 5 people buying tickets at the same time with no problems?

• a Dell 400 Mhz with 300 megs of ram and win 2000 pro
• an Apple Powerbook 667 Mhz running under classic OS mode

How does the interface work with the web?

The web listener that acts as a mini web server. It is interfaced to the web by opening a port in your firewall that points specifically to the computer/port hosting a copy of Theatre Manager turned on as a web listener.

What are the requirements for the Web Sales Module?

You will need to have at least:

• the credit card draft capture module and an available workstation licence
• an ADSL or cable modem connection to your office a static IP address at your disposal to point the web sales to a router/firewall to prevent the bad stuff getting in
• a computer to run the Internet sales component on a site security certificate to ensure website encryption (we can help you buy one). This gives you secure credit card transactions between the user and your site
• (optionally) a web site and domain name in the outside world to hold the majority of gifs and your current web content. Most of you with web sites have this already
• and some knowledge of how to put together web pages and do a bit of HTML/javascript programming (again, we can help here - but it isn't support - the rates for website integration are the same as our standard rates)

Do I need a separate computer to run the Web Sales Module?

The Web Sales module runs on a workstation just like any other copy of Theatre Manager. While the web sales listener is running on this workstation, this workstation can not be used for other daily activities.

What are the prices for the required software and services?

• new user licence: $495
• site certificate: The price will depend on if you would like 40-bit SSL encryption or 128-bit SSL encryption
• modules: this will depend on if you have the Enterprise edition of Theatre Manager with all modules or not. If you have it then all the HTML pages we've built is supplied (comes with the support agreement)
• integration: if you would like us to integrate TM Web Sales to your web site, we can help at the day rate of $450/day. If assitance is not required, after receiving the HTML pages you are on your own. We estimate at the moment that integration will take 2 days. You will just need to maintain the web pages afterwards which will be mostly content

How do I get the Internet version?

If you have the Enterprise edition of Theatre Manager with all modules, you will get the Internet code and documentation as part of our normal upgrades (your customer number will start with TVAMCxxxxx). However, the HTML code needs to be integrated with your web site to make it work. Either you can do it, or you can have us help you, or, if you wish, you can ship us your web site and we'll integrate it and give the web site back to you (note: this kind of thing is not support, and is not part of your support agreement).

I don't have the Enterprise edition, what do I need to do?

If you don't have the Enterprise edition and all modules, then you'll need to upgrade Theatre Manager. Call (403) 536-1214 to determine what will be needed based on your current licence.

Why do I need to upgrade to the Enterprise Edition in order to get the Web Sales module?

Theatre Manager's Internet Web Sales module helps your venue to sell your products (such as tickets, passes, gift certificates, donations) over the Internet and interact in real time with the Theatre Manager database. Although it is a separate module of Theatre Manager, it requires all of the tools and functionality incorporated into the Enterprise Edition necessary for the Web Sales module to work. These could include the Credit Card Authorization Module, Multi-user Access and support for all items that can be sold on the Internet (such as tickets, passes, gift certificates, donations).

What about security?

This is a big step for most of you and security is a concern. However, the whole design of the Web Module plus some standard Internet security items deal with the issues. The following addresses security:

• Site certificate - This forces 128 bit encryption of all traffic between the users web browser and your site. Each time you go to a web site that says it is secure, this is what they are using. You will have the same high level of trust with this as you would with other sites that are secure. This is the KEY element of the trust of a web site
• Firewall/Router - This stops the bad guys from getting in to your network. It would need to be programmed so that there is only one specific 'hole' in it that goes to Theatre Manager. For those technical people who play with routers, you can look like a particular port on the outside that does complete re-direction on the inside so nobody knows where the traffic is really going once it is in your network
• Theatre Manager Web Listener - We designed this to act like a web browser. It only responds to very specific commands to talk to the database (you can see the effect on the demo). You cannot do any more than that and the user cannot put anything onto your hard drive
• Web server computer - Using a second computer to host a web server (as in our example above) that is running IIS or apache and is behind the firewall and is properly set up means you can protect yourself. These servers are what most of the Internet is using when you surf
• Credit card server - This is completely behind the firewall and should be running on a different machine. Since it is behind the server and firewall (and especially if it is on a different machine that the web server), you can get to it and all authorizations are secure

What about security of getting credit cards numbers over the Internet?

The security of credit card sales over the Internet is provided through your IIS server (the web server component that comes with Windows 2000 PRO or similar server technology). This requires a site security certificate from Arts Management Systems, Verisign or some other provider. This certificate turns on the 'lock' on the patrons browser - meaning they have secure, encrypted communication with your venue.

When they use that, the encrypted credit card gets passed from their browser through the firewall and into Theatre Manager. Theatre Manager authorizes it using PCAuthorize - all behind your firewall. It is not our credit card software that gives security - it is the secure site certificate that authenticates that your venue is really your venue. Getting a site security certificate means sending off proof of incorporation/DUNS number to Verisign or one such similar vendor.

The responsibility of securing is really divided as follows:

• The web server does it between the browser and your venue
• Theatre Manager hides it in the database
• The credit card software is behind your firewall and handles the phone linkage to the bank

Do we need to set up another credit card authorization process for the Internet sales?

The Web Sales module will do automatic credit card authorization within Theatre Manager itself. When you perform your End-of-Day Wizard, you will see all the credit card transactions processed from the Internet. All credit card authorizations are processed behind your firewall on your router. This results in the secure transaction processing just like you are doing today.

Does the Web Module need to be on the same network as Theatre Manager workstations in order to get seating and availability information and register patron information?

Yes. What happens is you would start up Theatre Manager on a machine inside his firewall that acts as a web server for Theatre Manager. Your network technician will need to open up a port into your firewall for a specific port number to allow Internet traffic to come in. We use port 5111, but it can be set to any port that you have available. Plus you can set up the firewall to only allow traffic from the ISP (interconnection) to come through, blocking everyone else (i.e. the bad guys).

How does the Web Sales module communicate with a SSL servers, credit card processing, and then back to the Theatre Manager database?

The idea is that the end user goes to your web site and hits the web server at the ISP on the Internet. This serves up most pages and gifs. One of those pages is a 'buy tickets' page. That page gets redirected through the firewall and asks Theatre Manager to authenticate the patron and handle the sale. When the user checks out his shopping cart, the message goes back in the firewall and Theatre Manager authorizes the credit card using PC authorize - inside the firewall. Thus, all other Theatre Manager processes like End-of-Day Wizard functions as if the sale was made over the phone.

The SSL site certificate happens at the apache server. The apache server could use a PERL script to redirect some web requests to the Theatre Manager's web sales listener and, in effect, becomes completely transparent to the user that most traffic is handled by the site at interconnection while the database input/output is handled inside the firewall.

What does 5 users per second really mean?

In the Internet world, there is a big difference between number of simultaneous users and number of effective users. When we mention 5 simultaneous users per second in our testing, it means 5 people clicking on a link on their browser at the same time as fast as they can to determine response time. On the Internet, there is 'time latency' - meaning that once you see the list of shows you might want, you might think for a few seconds to make a decision before continuing. In other words, you might click to get a page and then wait between 2 and 20 seconds making a decision till you click the next step in the process. Suppose, on average, that a new link is clicked every 10 seconds by every person to create a ticket sale. This means 5 users x 10 seconds per decision = 50 effective users at the same time (without breaking a sweat on an older, slower machine). It wouldn't take to long to sell a 500 seat house.

How many patrons can purchase online at one time?

As many as you want. Each patron gets little slices of time. The number that can be supported simultaneously varies with what you have. Things that increase the number of simultaneous users are:

• faster machine
• larger Internet pipeline (e.g. 2 ADSL lines are faster than one)
• splitting normal website stuff from TM Web Sales (if you have a website already, you are set up for this)
• setting up multiple web listeners (NOTE: One web listener is able to handle more than one order at a time)
• or all the above

Can the graphic be set up so that visitors can actually see what their seat numbers represent?

The graphic is a gif of your choice, so you can do anything you want, including getting rid of the graphic, or having many of them, or if you like, adding streaming video or quicktime VR and show the look of the stage from their vantage point. All of these are actually outside Theatre Manager - they are just standard web page elements available to your web designer.

Is 'best available' the only option for visitors when purchasing tickets?

We understand that some venues would like to be able to let the customer pick the seats. We will likely add that in a future version (i.e. probably by summertime).

We did not in this version because we spent a lot of philosophical soul searching and round table discussions with box offic managers. Many started out with the above as a desire. Then we pointed out that customers would, in all likelihood, leave single seats or others that were hard to sell - resulting in a potential revenue loss, depending on how sold out things become.

The result of the discussions was that it was best if we created a routine that suggested seats, never leaving singles available because that was what they were doing by 'eyeball' in the box office. In other words, one of the functions of the box office manager is to give best seats to the customer that result in maximum profit for the theatre and there was a lot of intangibles that go into managing the house dressing.

So that was the rationale for what we did for the first version. Yet we are aware of the desire and will accommodate it.

The visitor has no idea looking at the seating map how close the show is to being sold out, etc.

It is only a picture and we put it there to show those people who are implementing the web module that they can have pictures of whatever they want on the page. It could be a photo from the event, small graphic showing sections of the theatre so that people can relate 'section A' to roughly where they are sitting.

We can envisage a future version where we dynamically generate the gif and only show the customer where they might sit. As for showing how sold out the house is, we thought that to be private to the theatre - in other words you may be selling tickets for others and you don't want renters or whatever snooping around to see what is is up with their event.

Also, you many have a lot of holds in place for a reason, and it may be aggravating for a customer who get the closest available on Monday which is row H. On Tuesday, you release a bunch of group tickets and not the best available is 4 rows closer. So the customer might be in again getting more and he finds out that something happened and he can get closer. We thought this would generate a customer service call/complaint to your box office that you would prefer to avoid.

It's one of the reasons the box office suggests best seats and a lot of dialog occurs between the customer/box office in a manual sale to give the customer comfort. Oftentimes, you never show them the actual map, you just point out on a picture where the best was.

We tried to take these long standing box office customs and procedures into account and simulate them.

Now, on each web interaction with the customer, you have access to all the variables in Theatre Manager. You can do things like add a variable to the page that says 'Only 25 seats left - hurry and buy now' or whatever suits the situation for an event.

Is there a way Internet sales can be tracked and reported on?

Generally, our thoughts are you don't care. Why?

• the payments go through end of day just like anything else
• the tickets get printed using the end of day or batch print process - just like anything else
• Tickets have certain promotions so the reports tell you that
• You can create a promotion 'type' called internet if you want (e.g. like group tickets, education, etc.). This is in default data. If you do that, you can also assign GL codes so that all internet ticket sales get sent to the GL codes specified in each event - just like group or education or subscription, etc.
• the donations get put into the donors account - just like entering at box office

The web sales are just like another person, only they can't take cash so they have no till balance.

How does the email confirmation receipt/invoice work? And can I edit it?

When a patron has submited their order, an email will be sent to them confirming their order was processed and received. The email is found within the WebPages directory called TMcheckoutInvoiceEmail.html.

You are free to edit this page as you would a normal web page to suit your style so that the email looks the way you want it to. If you so wish you may place images on the email or links to pages on your web site that you would like the patron to visit. You are only limited by your creativity and/or expertise in web design.

For a sample of what an invoice could look like please click here

What happens during the End-of-Day Wizard balancing?

The end of day practices are no different from what you do today - you run the End-of-Day Wizard. While you are 'settling the deposit batch', you can have Theatre Manager freeze credit card authorizations. So, if you do it at end of day or first thing in the morning, you will probably minimize any potential disruption on the patron buying on the Internet.

During the deposit process, the patron will get a web page indicating that the authorizing of credit cards is 'temporarily unavailable' due to maintenance, backups or what ever you want it to say. The patron is also advised that their shopping cart has not been lost and will resume exactly where they left off - when they continue.

We expect you'd have perhaps a couple of 5 minute +/- outages in a day and infrequently used times.

What happens during backups?

During backups, Theatre Manger will 'shut down' temporarily while the backups run. We suggest to run the backups at 2:00AM or 3:00AM in the morning - and set it up so that your backup program does a disk-to-disk copy for the Theatre Manager database only. That probably takes no more than 5 minutes. Theatre Manager then starts itself back up. Refer to the settings in Default Data to set the backup starting time and length of time.

During the backup process, the patron will get a web page indicating that the system is 'temporarily unavailable' due to maintenance, backups or what ever you want it to say. The patron is also advised that their shopping cart has not been lost and will resume exactly where they left off - when they continue.

We expect you'd have perhaps a couple of 5 minute +/- outages in a day and infrequently used times.

Why do I have to sign a contract to get the sample HTML web pages?

The internet module differs significantly from all other modules in one respect - it includes source code for HTML web pages which you can customize and brand your web site in your own way. Yes, there will be help pages to document what might happen - all this as part of the current support and maintenance agreement. That's how we work - the enhancements are free and a sample web site is free.

However, incorporating our sample HTML web pages into yours, or your current web pages into our templates is custom programming and development. Each and every site is different and there is no way around that. In the past, each of our customers has hired a local web developer to build their web sites. We think they'll probably hire that same person to integrate the sample web pages we provide.

So, if we give you the sample HTML web pages and your web developer does all the integration - no problem - no effort - no cost from Arts Management. If he needs a pointer or two, we want all our clients to acknowledge that when we help you, we have become involved in your custom web site development.

Our experience so far is that one site said they wanted to do it themselves and two asked us to help. When they asked us to help, it took 3-5 days of time (mind you it was a beta process, so we expected it to take a bit longer as we were learning, so 3 days wasn't bad). In the other case where a very experienced web developer wanted to do it themselves, it took him 80+ hours to revise an existing web site and involved us for the same 5 days debugging what he had done and setting things up - more time to help somebody than simply do it. Yes, we are giving away the software for web development, but we can't give away that much time - the web setup is almost a full blown installation in its own right.

Our prices are low and our support is generous - in your previous experience with us, you know that and your staff realize that as well. We hope you understand that we can't let custom development occur free of charge for all of our clients. Web sales is implementation of a brand new module and not support of an existing module.

Does Arts Management charge a per-ticket fee for every ticket sold through the Web Sales module?

There are none. There are no per ticket or per transaction fees levied by Arts Management for the use of the Internet Web Sales Module. None. Most other internet ticketing vendors require you allocate tickets to them that they sell on your behalf and charge the patron a fee, sometimes as much as $4.50 USD a ticket. They also hold the money for Internet ticket sales until a reconciliation occurs. There are no such hidden costs or cash flow issues using Theatre Manager's Web Sales Module.

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