Preparing for the Update

Theatre Manager requires all three key components updated. This will be performed by the Arts Management support staff via existing remote access tools (Timbuktu, Logmein or RDC). Each venue needs to coordinate an upgrade slot with the support team. The following key activities are done as part of the upgrade:

• Postgres Database:
  • The postgres database must be upgraded to the latest released version (currently version 8.3.7). For sites that are at version 8.3 (any version), this takes about 5 minutes or less. For sites at version 8.2 (any version), the database needs to be backed up and restored (could take as much as a couple of hours).
  • Postgres can be upgraded at any time in advance of installing version 8 because it works with both version 7 and 8.
  • Venues wishing to attempt this themselves can follow these instructions.
• Apache Web Server
  • The apache web pages may need some conversion from version 7 to version 8. Most changes are minor (and required to support the new apache module). A venue will need to provide the web pages which the support team will compare to the current standard pages and return - ready to implement
  • The apache web server will be upgraded to version 2.2.11 (the latest shipping version)
  • This upgrade can be be installed at any time in advance of installing version 8 of Theatre Manager. These changes will work with both version 7 and 8
• Theatre Manager
  • Theatre Manager version 8 will need to be installed on each workstation.
  • The upgrade will convert the database
  • This upgrade is the last step in the upgrade process.

The venue will need to

• Coordinate a time with the support team regarding the upgrade and provide the existing web pages.
• If you have an onsite training session coming up, this will be when the upgrade occurs unless there is some feature that is absolutely necessary.

8.00 Changes & Enhancements

Version 8 consists of many hundreds of little changes through out Theatre Manager. Some are major and are listed below. Most were under the hood tweaks for performance and added convenience in a number of areas. They are too numerous to mention them all, so this document focuses on the key ones.

Performance

Some code in Theatre Manager has been moved from the application into the server using more stored procedures. That generally improves performance of applications and this is true in Theatre Manager. We did this in a number of areas to try to take out seconds, or even milliseconds of time and improve response. The table below shows some sample improvements that we have experienced on our test suite of machines. Venues that are currently using version 8 have told us that it seems faster, so, anecdotally, the improvement is noticeable.

The improvement that each venue achieves is dependant entirely on the postgres server machine and is affected by things like: memory, striping of hard drives and speed (number of CPU's). Sample performance improvements are listed below (note that they are not cumulative, just indicative of areas where we focused on performance):

General Interface Changes

There were changes to the general behavior of Theatre Manager in response to requests we had from people. Many of these are subtle such as:

• When you close and window and re-open that same window, Theatre Manager remembers its size, its position, the search field that was used and the position of all sub windows and list columns within that window. For example, if you change the columns on the ticket sell window as well as re-adjust the height of various lists, the next time the sell window is opened, it will open to the same place, with all lists in the same position as before. You do not have to save the position.
• The saving of window placement is per user (each user has their own preferences) and per monitor (if a user goes from one machine to another and the monitors are different sizes, then Theatre Manager will save a preference for each monitor size)
• If a person has multiple monitors, windows can be placed on the secondary monitors and will open on the secondary screen.
• If a user removes or turns of a secondary monitor, Theatre Manager will bring the open window back on screen.
• Window placement is saved between sessions so that if you logoff and then start Theatre Manager later, windows will open in the same place.
• Toolbar buttons now work in all cases. A key bug was fixed where clicking the button on the toolbar did not always cause the button to be pressed.
• Active and Inactive flags have been added to a number of tables (theatre maps, promotions, events, ticket faces, donations, gift certificates, accounts, mail lists, etc). Lists now exclude inactive items by default (although you can search for them). Venues can pare down the size of visible lists as desired.
• The 'print' icon on all list windows will now display at least two options: a built in report, or the ability to print the list exactly as viewed. This way, if you customize any list, you can print it as viewed and get a report.
• More legends have been placed on lists to explain colours or icons in the lists as an assist (see screen shot below - at bottom)
• All lists are now alternate striped on each line in accordance with the Leopard interface guidelines. This is for clarity in viewing across a list. An example is shown below. (OS-X only - It is not currently available in XP or Vista due to interface guidelines for Microsoft).

Patron Window

There were a few minor changes to the patron window to add some functions requested by users.

On the patron window where the email addresses and phone numbers are displayed, you can now:

• add a primary fax number in addition to a primary phone number
• add a primary web site
• click on the link for the email address which will open your email client - ready to send an email to the patron

There is an optional field for each patron that we called an 'external search field'. If enabled, you can specify a key that can be used to find the patron. Suggested uses for this field might be a student/faculty number or a number that relates a Theatre Manager patron to an external system.

There is a new feature on the address list and patron card detail window that allows you to:

• copy the address to the clipboard
• display a map of the address in a browser, or
• show the weather forecast at the users address if they are out of town

The ticket and order window now has a legend on it indicating if the order contains reservation only tickets, as well as if you owe money to the patron or the patron owes money to you. Ticket window now displays order notes.

From the ticket window, you can now select some of the tickets and then 'print a map' showing a picture of the seats where the patron is sitting.

Company Preferences

There are a number of minor changes on this window:

• You can completely prevent reservation only orders from being taken by turning on a new preference
• There are preference for purging logs and data specific to:
  • Completed shopping carts (default is to keep those for 1000 days)
  • purging anonymous shopping cart logs (default is to keep for 180 days)
  • purging other web startup logs and miscellaneous information like calculation errors (default is to keep for 60 days)
• Before event sales has a preference to set the default 'why did patron buy'. This allows 'why did patron buy' to be mandatory for all sales, yet provide a suitable default for walk up sales. This should improve the value of this field
• Web Sales now supports a default mail fee and works in conjunction with the new web pages. Setting this fee in default data automatically makes the optional mailing fee appear on the web pages. Removing it and it is removed from the web site. It means that you can change mail fees at will without web page changes.
• The web listener can gather and store the apache statistics (see end of document) in the database. The default is to sample them each hour so that you have 24 snapshots on each day of what the load on the web site is - and look back over time.
• You can implement multiple web listeners through a DMZ to an apache server to support complete PCI compliance at your venue.
• The titles for 'regular' and 'season' tickets are now customizable throughout Theatre Manager. The special meaning of these ticket types have remained the same - but the names can now be changed.
• A feature added in version 7 for mandatory zip codes now has defaults for regular sales, before event sales and pay what you can sales mode. These were implemented so that you can still use quick cash under all sales modes for a faster sale.

Accounting

• A minor, but significant change has been made for the recording of donations allocated to a 'reserved' bank account.
  • Previously, Theatre Manager created a G/L entry to take the money out of the bank account right away. Now the system creates a GL entry to create a 'payable' clearing account - meaning that all funds are accumulated into a separate account that you will need to clear periodically
  • Donations that are changed to/from a reserved account had to be manually tracked before. Theatre Manager now creates a G/L entry to tell accounting to move the current value of payments against that donation (to date) to/from the restricted back account.
• Entering account numbers no longer crashes a PC
• Entering account numbers and backspacing no longer skips every second digit of the account number

Credit Cards

• You can no longer enter a new credit card for a patron that already exists for that patron.
• Old Credit cards can be 'shredded' on the patron window based on settings in system preferences (i.e. there is a minimum retention period so that recent cards are kept and old ones can be rendered un-readable).
• Shredding a card like 4500 1234 4567 9012 means that it will not longer be stored in the database in encrypted (non-readable) format. Instead, it will be stored with only the first and last 4 digits of the card (the rest are removed). Such credit cards will be marked as 'inactive' and will not show up in lists. They cannot be edited either. Taking the same card number as part of a payment will re-activate a shredded card because the patron used it again.
• There is a feature to mark credit cards as 'permanent'. These cards will not be shredded
• From the 'System Preferences' window, you can shred a mass of old credit cards - ones that are no longer being used. We suggest a retention period of 1 year to handle ongoing year to year transactions. Use a retention period of 90 days at a minimum to handle charge back situations. This means that most of your cards in the system will be rendered useless. However:
  • You can still find a patron by a shredded card because TM will look for only first 4 and last 4 digits of the card.
  • Any card used for post dated payments that have not yet been paid cannot be shredded
  • Any card used for season auto-renewals cannot be shredded because the patron gave explicit permission to use the card
  • Any card marked as permanent will not be shredded
  • Any card that is taken today and not yet deposited cannot be shredded.
• There is a feature to indicate that cards are to be shredded right away and not retained in Theatre Manager. This feature means that card information is stored temporarily(encrypted format) and completely shredded when the deposit occurs. This is essentially 'schedule C' compliance as far as TM is concerned. We do not recommend this mode (we prefer at least 90 days before shredding), but it can be used if desired. If cards are to be shredded daily, the following occurs:
  • post dated payments can only be 'checks'. Credit cards are no longer permitted
  • Subscription auto-renewals cannot be entered any more because cards cannot be stored
  • Credit cards marked as permanent are shredded anyway.
  • Credit cards are shredded after each successful credit card settlement
  • Credit cards are marked inactive after their use
  • Any reports with credit cards on them are marked as *** *** *** #### regardless of user level. Nobody can see the full card information because it isn't there anymore.

End of Day

• A new setting was added to Company Preferences (End of Day tab) to allow you to set the preferences for the 3 end of day deposit reports you would like to have. These preferences are used on the End of Day window so that daily reports can be consistent.
• Anything relating to version 6 transition to version 7 has been removed
• Patron orders can be edited or rebuild from the A/R tab
• You can now got to the patron record directly from the A/R tab in order to address A/R issues. When the patron window closes, the outstanding A/R will be recalculated.
• A fix was made to the end of day posting to address the odd occasion when Theatre Manager said a transaction was open after posting to the G/L in the end of day.
• The End of Day wizard does a stricter job of calculating the 'difference' when windows are opened and closed to assist the EOD process
• End of Day will purge shopping cart information based on settings in system preferences
• End of Day posting process is about 2 to 3 times faster (depending on hardware).

Employees

• During the upgrade, each 'normal' users access to credit card information will be restricted to be more in line with the general PABP recommendations. This is a one time setting and you can go back and reset any credit card access permissions you want.
• Changing a user from master user access to normal access automatically removes all credit card view access. This is to provide the tightest security settings against credit card access. Settings may be changed afterwards to grant more access than the minimal PABP settings.
• There are additional settings to control access to
  • the new web features
  • all credit card information
  • the various subscription components like manage favorite seats, creating packages, and selling packages
  • access to the various payment tabs on the payment window such as post dated and the contractual tabs.
• Cash drawer support has been added for PC's to automatically open electronic drawers that support the appropriate signal to a com port. This is reset to <none> on upgrade.

Season Subscriptions

• The subscription sales process has had a minor, but significant revision. When selling a subscription after a subscription performance is over (e.g. show 1 is done), Theatre Manager assumes that you are renewing a 'short season' and will calculate the price of the subscription renewal (or new subscription) based on the price of the remaining shows in the package. You no longer have to remove an event from the package to do renewals.
• Renewal notices have had two significant changes:
  • When printing a renewal notice after a subscription performance is over (e.g. show 1 is done and only shows 2 to 5 are left), Theatre Manager will ignore that first event and print a renewal notice with the cost calculated for the remaining events. This is to support the process of creating new subscriptions after a 'try 1-buy the rest' process
  • During the printing of the renewal notices, if Theatre Manager cannot get access all performances in the series, it will now mark the subscription in error. This is to prevent erroneous notices from ever being created if one of the events in the package is missing a series code like 1-FRI or OPENING.

Donations

• A G/L tab was added to the donation campaign setup so that you can view all postings to that donation campaign
• The giving level setup has been broken into 3 tabs. This now shows the level, the benefits, and a more complete detail of the statistics of donations against that giving level (totals, averages, soft credits, gifts, pledges, etc).
• To repeat information from accounting, a minor, but significant change has been made for the recording of donations allocated to a 'reserved' bank account.
  • Previously, Theatre Manager created a G/L entry to take the money out of the bank account right away. Now the system creates a GL entry to create a 'payable' clearing account - meaning that all funds are accumulated into a separate account that you will need to clear periodically
  • Donations that are changed to/from a reserved account had to be manually tracked before. Theatre Manager now creates a G/L entry to tell accounting to move the current value of payments against that donation (to date) to/from the restricted back account.
• A transaction tab has been added to the donation window so that you can see all accounting entries relating to the specific donation
• The payment process for a donation has been altered to better allocate payments to orders that include donations, tickets, gift certificates, and/or order fees. This allocation will deal with situations where money was refunded on donations and donation receipts deleted in a nicer way
• You can easily delete donations that have receipts, but where the receipt is not printed. YOu no longer have to go delete the receipt, then the payment, then the donation.

Gift Certificates/Passes

• A G/L tab was added to the gift certificate setup to make it easier for reconciliation
• A transaction tab was added to the gift certificate entry window that contains a complete accounting history on that gift certificate/pass

Mail List

• A zip code count report was added to the mail list window.
• Search for text fields that 'end with' now works.

Merchant Accounts/Authorization

• This same feature is automatically performed on start up of Theatre Manager so that users are notified when the database is approaching proper size.

Reports

• Invoices now have a logo on them
• Entering search criteria now displays 'long' names for comparison operations. Theatre Manager used to display '=' or '<>' or '>='. It now displays the operator in words like 'equals', 'not equals', or 'greater than or equal to'. Enough users indicated that the mathematical operators caused them to stop and think - so we changed it to plain english.
• A new feature has been added to reports to toggle the report display between a 'page preview' and the current report format. The default is set in employee preferences - and is set to the new 'page preview' mode for all users. Existing all existing features like print to PDF, copy highlighted report text still work. The subtle differences between modes are:
  • current format
    • text displays approximately 2/3 size and is fixed in size
    • scrolling also scrolls the titles and the entire report
    • pagination is shown as a fine line
  • page preview (now the default view).
    • a paper background is displayed behind the report so that you get a visual sense of how the report prints
    • a complete page is always shown in the onscreen report
    • the titles on a page preview remain static - so as you scroll through the report, the titles stay at one place on the screen
    • resizing the window - resizes the report area.
    • any indenting of reports (subscription notices for example) are reflected more truly in this mode.
• The filters for field names and values in lists are now at the top of the criteria entry window instead of at the bottom.
• All search fields have been categorized as 'Essential', 'Frequently Used', and 'All Criteria'. There are fewer fields in the 'essential' category, typically fields like lookup fields. This should limit the search fields to a much smaller subset for users new to Theatre Manager - to make reporting and mail list building for novices easier. This setting can be set as a default on Employee Preferences on a per user basis. An example of essential fields is below

• The ability to enter a custom report title has returned for each report
• The A/R allocation reports now place all receivables at the end of the report.
• On the toolbar is a button called 'Run Similar Reports'. This now shows a wider range of reports that can be picked. After running you main report, you can change the format easily.
• Column widths on dynamic reports are more liberal. each column takes as much width at is required for the total at the bottom of the report for that column. If you have more fields on a report, it may cause columns to go onto a second page in order to preserve the column widths.
• Merging of form letters has been removed from the report window. We found that the easy way to explain a form letter merge/email blast is to edit the letter and click the merge button. That seemed a much more intuitive approach to users during training and so we made it the only way it could occur.
• The record count reports have been restored so that you can count and subtotal by many fields
• The record count reports also allow you to do distance metrics from any zip or postal code for most types of data in the system in a customizable way. The example below shows the total ticket sales for one performance (that was the criteria chosen). The sales are broken into quantity and total sales by state, by distance from the venue. This can be done for donations and an number of other records - to get an idea of drawing area or how far people will travel for certain types of shows.

• There is an new report called 'Ticket Purchase Times' in the 'Box Office Statistics' category. This can be used to display when people are buying tickets during the day. The report supports displaying ticket quantities, total number of transactions, amounts for a range of hours during the day. You can only place 40 columns on a report, so showing price and ticket quantity could be done for an 18 hour period in any day (because there is before the selected time and after the selected time columns). An example is below.

Coupon Codes

Theatre now supports redemption of coupon codes on the web. There are three pre-conditions to accepting them:

• Each coupon code that should be accepted on the web needs to be flagged to be accepted on the web
• There is a setting in 'Company Preferences' on the 'Web Options' tab called 'Accept Active Coupons'. That must be turned on to enable coupon codes on the web. Turning it off is a quick way of disabling acceptance of coupons on the web instantly
• Some web page changes will need to be made (part of the version 8 upgrade process)

Web Sales

There is a new apache server version 2.2.11 that will be installed. There are some slight revisions that must be made to your existing web pages to support the new apache module. Your existing version 7 web pages will be converted by the support team unless you have made massive modifications to them (most venues have not).

Key changes to the web component:

• A new 'health & statistics' module has been created for the apache server. It provides some key monitoring statistics so that you can tell how long patrons are waiting (now, and historically), as well as the status of each online listener. The statistics are displayed in a web page and have two basic areas.
  • The upper area of the web page shows the number of active listeners and the current status of each listener. In the example below, there are:
    • 6 listeners in total
    • the listener at 172.16.22.248 is busy servicing a request at the current time
    • all 5 other listeners are available to accept a request

  • The second part of the web page display shows statistics about the performance of apache and each of the listeners. It shows statistics such as:
    • Current requests
      • The current number of waiting requests and wait time. These are requests that still have to be serviced and are waiting for an available listener. If these numbers start to rise dramatically, it means people are waiting NOW, and an extra listener should be brought online to handle a peak load.
    • Total request
      • Total requests are the number of people that have requested at least one page from any web listener
      • Total no wait are the number of requests that were handed off directly to a web listener because at least one was available.
    • Averages relate to the size of the queues and wait time.
      • If people need to wait, but the average wait time is very low, then it means people are still being serviced in a reasonable time.
      • Average listener time is the average time that a request took from the time it was given to the listener until the listener handed back the finished page
    • Maximums show the heaviest load.
      • Max requests is the maximum number of patrons to hit the Apache server simultaneously. It is ok for this number to be higher than the number of listeners, as long as the average wait time is low. In that case, it generally means a one-time spike.
      • Max Queue size is the maximum number of people that had to wait.
      • Max Listener time is the longest a listener took to respond. This can be skewed by startup time when TM needs to start caching pages.
    • Totals
      • Wait pages are the number of times that all listeners were busy for longer than 25 seconds (typically) and the user was handed off to the waiting room page. IF this number starts to rise during a busy on sale, you should start one more listener
      • Closed pages is the number of times that the listeners were all shut down (none active at all) and people tried to hit your web site. These people would be told that the web sales was closed.
      • Total Error pages handles cases when an unexpected error occurs and and the user is given the 'error' page specified in the apache setup.

• Clearing the cache on one listener will cause all other listeners to synchronize and reload their cache. You no longer need to do it at all listeners. There is also a way to reset the cache from the Company Preferences window on the 'Web Listener' tab.
• The checkout process has been revised to address the odd seat left on hold status.
• There is a message at the bottom of each web listener (in the typical message area) that gets updated approximately every 5 minutes. It indicates the current run time on the listeners, the amount of bytes moved, and the number of connections. This is only 3 bits of data that can be found in more detail on the 'Usage' tab and is for quick reference.
• Also at the bottom of each listener is a setting for the level of log that you want displayed on the web listener. Regardless of this setting, all log entries are stored in the database.
• There are a number of additional items for web sales. Because of this, the web sales listener has been separated into a separate sub menu. The options are:
  • Web Sales Listener - moved from the main 'Patron Sales' menu and starts the web listener as before
  • Shopping Carts - moved from the main 'Patron Sales' menu into here and shows the shopping carts as before.
  • Pending Emails - is a new feature to view all email blasts that are sitting in error status.
    • this shows the reason why the email did not go (bad email address, missing email address, server down, etc)
    • you can then edit the patron record to correct the issue and the email will be reset.
  • Scanning Monitor - the web listeners handle the checkin/checkout process for wireless scanning. Because of that, we added a new feature here that lists the tickets that are being scanned for that day and who (or which device by IP address) is scanning them. This gives you:
    • an opportunity to see the performance of each wireless device
    • watch the actual house fill up based on scanned tickets (the window refreshes itself every 30 seconds or so) and anticipate when to start the show based on traffic flow
    • it also displays the status of the house based on tethered scanners.
  • View Web Statistics - this is a new feature that shows the hourly snapshot of the performance statistics on the web. It also allows you to open up the performance web page (described above) in your local browser if you have permission to access the statistics from your IP address (based on settings in the listener)
  • View Listener Log - the web logs (on each web listener) are now written to the database as well as to the local hard drive. This is how you can view logs from all listeners in a coherent order easily.

Shopping Carts

• The web listener logs are now saved inside the database (in addition to optionally saving as a text file on each listener). This means:
  • you can view the combined logs from many listeners in one location within theatre manager.
  • You can easily see how a particular patron was handed off amongst web listeners.
  • You can view the same logs on a shopping cart basis.
• When a patron calls up with an open shopping cart, you can see where they have been and help them out on the phone
• If a shopping cart is still open, an a patron calls up to talk to the box office, you can complete the shopping cart for the patron if you wish and take the payment over the phone.
• On the shopping cart, you can see any correspondence sent to the patron relating to that shopping experience. This means you can view (and resend) the confirmation email exactly as the patron would have seen it.

Application Preferences

• Preference settings unique to each machine have been moved from the tmdb.txt file and this file no longer exists. The preferences are now stored in the standard preferences location and varies depending on operating system. The upgrade will move and rename them automatically. The new location of the preferences are below. 'MyUser' represents the user you are logged in as so this means that each user of Theatre Manager on a machine will have their own preferences:

Preparing for the Update

Theatre Manager will:

• Upgrade the database with new database fields to track course sales and each class.

The venue will need to

• verify any of the optional steps.

8.04 Changes & Enhancements

Version 8 consists of many hundreds of little changes through out Theatre Manager. Version 8.04 contains further improvements to this version upon request of venues.

Company Preferences

• You can now provide a name or purpose for each one of the hold codes that will display on the map and during the hold process

Default Data

• Added an option to set the rollover preference for performances to be end of year

Ticket Sales Process

• Fixed issue where the tax calculation on ticket fees was updating the patron total purchases and balance due incorrectly. This affected only the field on the patron window and did not affect end of day. Upgrading to version 8.02.04 will recalculate outstanding patron balances automatically to correct the issue.
• Added a maximum and minimum base price to the sales promotion record. If the base price is outside that range, then the sales promotion is disallowed for that price. This means you can now set up a case where 2 for 1 is available, but only if the price is > $15.00 (for example).
• Enabled the check for maximum uses of a sales promotion per performance. It also checks for people who have that sales promotion in their shopping cart and prevents usage of the sales promotion if it happens to have reached its maximum use count.
• Theatre Map tool tips now show the meaning of the hold codes if defined in Company Preferences'
• Fixed an issue so that the outstanding balance warning for a patron works again.
• Fixed an issue where selling tickets with a price that is 'half a cent' might cause the total sales for a performance to calculate incorrectly due to rounding. The upgrade will correct and verify any performances with half a cent as part of the price (e.g. something like $18.945 would cause an extra cent to be retained in the event total). Note: this did not affect any actual ticket sales or end of day issues.
• Corrected the count of holds for reserved seating events. Inadvertently, they were being set to zero as the tickets were released. The upgrade will correct all hold counts for reserved seating.
• Added the ability to search by event sales method(e.g. course or reserved)
• Added the ability to search for the event by the new event type field.

Event And Dates

• Added a customizable popup flag for each performance
• Added a new sales method called 'course'. When selected, you can elect to create each 'date' of the course (to track attendance at each class), or just set it up as a start date to track sales.
  • At this time, any event set up as course might be sold on the internet using the general admission pages (in the future, separate pages will be added).
  • Coming soon for this sales method is the ability to add report cards
• Addition of volunteers/staff to each performance has been streamlined and made a little more intuitive when dragging from the volunteer capabilities to the volunteer area on the play & dates window. You can drag
  • to each performance one at a time
  • to a selected list of performance to assign the person to those performances
  • TM will as what you are intending to do.
• Editing and removal of volunteer activities has been made a little more obvious with buttons and context menu support.
• Context menus have been updated to make more sense in all the windows.
• Creation of a reserved seating event is much much faster.
• Mass refund of tickets for a performance can now authorize credit cards and cause the actual refund to go through.
• When new price codes are added to venue, editing the event window will add the price code as it always has. However, a new 'safety value' has been added. If the event is on sale for the internet, then the price code will be disabled so that it is not possible to sell zero priced tickets on the internet inadvertently.

Patron

• For convenience, the patron and volunteer windows now show the calculated age of the patron if a birth date is entered. It also does the same for the other date fields on that window.
• Revert to saved when entering phone numbers and additional addresses for a patron now draws the screen properly.
• When adding a new patron to the household, Theatre Manager now positions on that new patron by default, ready to take a ticket sale. IT no longer remains on the previously selected patron.
• Find duplicate patrons on the patron list window now provides the option to look at a number of the address fields in addition to the patron fields.
• The recent patron list has been optimized for performance. It now displays the icons for primary patron as well.

Gift Certificates/Passes

• Added an account in the setup so that you can defer future fiscal year passes into a different liability account than current or prior year gift certificates/passes. This is much like donations can be set up to be deferred.
• An option was added to completely prevent a future dated pass from being redeemed in the current year
• Trying to redeem and pass that is deferred into a future year will result in a warning if it could be sold - indicating that the pass was meant for the future year.
• Any pass for the next fiscal year that is deferred will be rolled over into current year and G/L entries created automatically - just like donations.
• Notes placed on each pass/gift certificate can now be printed on an invoice

Donations

• Tax receipts are now printed to the screen so that you can preview them for correct data on them. They are no longer forced to go directly to the printer.

Merchant Setup

• In version 8, we added an edit to check to see if the first authorization of the batch was for a refund. Some banks/service providers do not like those. Since this check was mandatory, a couple of sites asked us to make it optional. You can now turn off this option if you wish in the merchant setup
• There are 3 new mandatory fields in the merchant setup. These are for the name, number and email address of the technical contact at the merchant service provider. This is to save your staff time as this information is now displayed on any message associated with a decline or hold card where the appropriate action is to call the service provider.

Reports

• The order transaction balance report will now find orders where fees and transactions are out of sync.
• entering a time on a search using a date/time field will no longer over-ride the time and set it to 11:59:59 pm on the search to field
• Record count report has been updated to force selection of a summary field that is required for the report to do its job.
• Mask credit card detail on all reports - even for master users. It is no longer necessary to have all that data in printed form
• The record count by postal/zip code on a mail list window is now based on the list of people in the mail list to reflect accurate totals, less those people peeled off the label report.
• Added a report that print the attendance worksheet for a course.
• There is a new option when printing an invoice to also print the notes that are associated with a GC/PASS. This means if you use this kind of item for ancillary items like room rental or other misc items, you can see an extra description of the item.
• Added search criteria 'is all of' for belongs to mail list, volunteer position or events. It allows searching for people who happen to be in all of the lists simultaneously and without a lot of other criteria.

Miscellaneous

• Updated the database connection code to do a better job of reconnecting should the network disappear or the machines go to sleep.
• Changed the icon on the 'payment' tab in the patron record if a post dated payment has already been authorized, but not yet deposited.
• Tax Rate entry now defaults the earned tax account to the deferred tax account on the same tab when entering new tax rates.
• Maximizing the word processor window no longer takes up the entire window. It resizes top and bottom, and always leaves space for the palette window.
• The coupon redemption transaction now includes the patron and household data so that they appear on the transaction detail.
• Ticket faces will no longer compile/print if the I_PAY_METHOD_RESULT field is used.
• Duplication of giving levels now clears the pledge/actual totals on the new giving level.
• A change was made to consolidate the opening of windows into a common approach. It means that you can no longer open the same employee preference or patron window by coming at things from a different direction within Theatre Manager.
• Dropping data from any lookup onto the appropriate field now shows the proper menu bar state after the drop. The toolbar on the window will activate the revert/delete/save icons.

Version 8.08.04 of Theatre Manager was released today with links to the new online help system.

We've been wanting to use new web based technology for a long time and we have setup a drupal web site at http://www.theatremanagerhelp.com so that you may view the theatre manager help at any time and print off small booklets of web pages from the web site - or review the help as you need it.

Clicking on the '?' in Theatre Manager (V8.08.04 or later) will take you to the main help page. We plan on updating links for context sensitive help on an ongoing basis.

All the help pages originally came from version 6 and many of them have been converted to reflect screen shots from version 8. You may encounter some pages that are out of date. Please forgive us for those as we update them. Our goal is to make this a one stop resource for most help and update the pages as you ask us questions. Look to the pages to change in minor ways each day.

Version 8.08.04 also:

• Updates a stored procedure for finding best available seats
• Prevents changing from reserved seating to general admission if tickets are sold

We recommend this update be installed at all venues currently using version 8 immediately.

Version 8.09 contains ongoing minor enhancements to address small issues reported by customers. The changes in this version are:

• Implemented the 'Check for Update' capability in 'About Theatre Manager' for version 8 as well as downloading the update file. Version 7 and 8 now check separate version update databases.
• Fix to a stored procedure that was not calculating a balance field correctly and as a result, the patron was displaying on list windows as if they owed money (in red). If you encountered this problem and a patron shows incorrectly, then rebuild any order to correct the data and it should not occur again.
• Fixed an issue if a user typed the wrong email address on the web and tried to log in. TM indicated that the password was incorrect, but if they tried to change the email to be correct, the web would revert it back to the incorrect initial entry
• Added the order balance as one of the available fields for the word processing module
• If a patron abandoned a shopping cart and it contained a general admission ticket, it was possible for the internet hold count for general admission tickets to be decremented twice (and even go negative). This occurs when there are multiple listeners and/or the cart clean up process was run simultaneously from two computers at the same time.
• Fixed wireless ticket scanning where it was incorrectly reporting that all licenses were used.
• Fixed bug that prevented the print tickets button being available after booking a season subscription on the ticket sell window.
• The marketing tab on the event window now resizes properly so that text can be entered in the internal and external sales notes on the PC
• The temporary permissions granted to a user through the operator over-ride feature are now updated properly so that a user, once given the permission for that one instance, now gets to use that permission until the window closes. This only affected a couple of windows such as providing the ability to sell a comp for that specific order at that specific time. The user would be asked many times to permit the operation and now are asked only once for that order. Once the user closes the order window, then permission must be allowed a second time by the supervisor as before.

We recommend this update be installed at all venues currently using version 8.

Upgrade Time

The time required to upgrade varies on the number of transactions, orders, payment and e-mail blast records. If the database contains many of those, the upgrade might take an hour or more from version 8.09.

Optional Web Page Changes

If you want to implement the 'presales' coupon feature, you can make one change to the TMtickets.html web page that streamlines the process for presales codes. Please download the latest copy of the TMtickets page and compare your TMtickets.html with the new one. There is a bit of code that needs added to the page that starts with

<field>pick(F_PRESALES_ALLOWED,'<!-- comment: based on setting in company preferences')</field>

and ends with

<field>pick(F_PRESALES_ALLOWED,'-->')</field>

Key Changes in Version 8.13.00

The following changes have been made to Theatre Manager since version 8.09

No-Configuration Remote Support

We have built a product right into Theatre Manager for remote support called 'TeamViewer'. From our testing, is zero configuration and secure - and it is right on the Theatre Manager menu bar. If you are talking to support and want to show them what you are seeing, you can invite our support staff to view your screen while you are on the phone. This can be used from any computer within your organization. If you elect to use this feature, you have to provide your randomly generated access code for to the support team, otherwise they cannot connect to your machine. We are very excited about including this support tool right into Theatre Manager.

We will be using this feature for remote training and support in the future, so we urge all users to upgrade

Date Sensitive Alternate Addresss

Future address changes - you can now specify that address and phone information may change at any time in the future. This can be a one-time change, or address flipping between summer and winter addresses, or any number of address changes throughout the year.

This feature includes:

1. The ability to schedule the removal of a phone, fax, email, website or address
2. The ability to schedule setting the primary phone, fax, email, website or address as a one-time occurance
3. The ability to schedule setting the primary phone, fax, email, website or address as a recurring item on a given day every year
4. New menu item under Patron Sales to show all the upcoming changes and allow a user to browse past changes
5. New toolbar and context menu item on the patron list to see changes for a specific patron
6. New icon in the patron list to indicate when a patron has an upcoming phone, fax, email or website change
7. New toolbar item on the contact card to view a patron's upcoming changes
8. New "operations" buttons on the contact card to allow scheduling of changes.  Address operations button also incorporates a previous buttons function for showing a map, the weather and copying it to the clipboard.
9. New description on the address tabs in the contact card to show when a given address is set to be primary or removed.

Course Management

You can now set up courses with multiple class days (such as summer camps) and track attendance at each day of the session. There is an attendance report and a report card feature to accompany this new capability.

Presales via Online Coupons

Coupon codes now support the notion of 'Presales', or early access to tickets for events to select groups of individuals - where those same performances are not available to the general public. It is implemented through coupons - and if the coupon code is entered, then more events will appear in the list that a patron can select from. A further enhancement to coupon codes is that you can now email blast a mail list - and only allow people on the mail list to have early access, or use a discounted coupon. This prevents patrons from handing coupon codes around or posting them on the internet.

Pass and GC Redemption

Passes now allow you to specify the number of tickets to redeem from any one pass. This allows you to:

• use less admissions from the pass than the number of ticket bought - if that is what the patron wishes.
• redemption portions of multiple play passes on the payment screen for any one order.
• Allow anybody in the Household to use a Pass - You can now specify on a pass/gift certificate if the item can be redeemed:
  • only by the purchaser,
  • by anybody in the household,
  • by any other patron.

  This new feature supports GC's or Passes that can be used by a corporation or family such as scholarships, or event passes that may be assigned to one person and used by another.

• Gift certificate name gets truncated in the detail window - The gift certificate internal name now supports up to 50 character descriptions and no longer truncates at 30 characters.
• Allow delete of a Renewed Membership (like version 6) - Changed behavior of deleting memberships to be like TM Version 6.  Deleting a membership will now restore the previously renewed membership back to active status.

Employee Managment has Changed

Employee's and Patrons are now merged - this is a significant (but subtle) change. In the past, the employee record was separate from the patron record and if employees bought tickets, you would need to enter them as a patron as well. Now, you set up a employee in the patron record. Then you assign the patron 'employee' permissions. You will see, on the patron list, a little 'star' beside those people who are current employees. Existing employees in the database will have a new record created for them in the patron file, so you will have to merge the employee and the patron together that have the same name.

Enabling at least one MasterUser Account at Login - We added some features to prevent the master user from dissappearing from the database. These include:

• Fixed an issue where a master user may not be re-created if there is no mater user in the database.
• A master user can no longer remove master user status from themselves. Another master user must do that. This prevents removing of all master users on the database - because there must be at least one
• If you forget your password, you can now have Theatre Manager e-mail it to you by selecting your user-id and clicking the email icon at the bottom of the employee list
• Employee set up in Data tab - Streamlined the behavior of the top level check-boxes in the data tab of the employee detail window.  The top level check-boxes will now only affect the check-boxes in the same column. 

Volunteer Management

• Volunteer Report Allowing A Summary of Hours Worked - Created new report "Volunteer Hours Summary", which allows a quick view of the hours a volunteer has worked as well as an assortment of marketing and volunteer fields.
• Volunteer Awards Detail Report - Created new report "Volunteer Award Detail" which shows the awards and activities that a volunteer has worked in more detail.
• Add Personnel button on the Mail List window - Added the ability to open the volunteer detail window and the patron contact card window from the mail list 'Whos In' tab. This action can be initiated using context menus. You need to see the list of people in the 'Whos In' and right click on a patron to see the additional options.
• Time of class needs transferred to personel detail wen assigning volunteer - Added ability to optionally set the duration of associated volunteer activities, when the duration of the event they belong to is changed.

Donations

• Allow Soft Credits for Internet Donations - In the original design of the donation subsystem, it was presumed that people who gave on the internet would have done so on their own free will. Based on a recent request for a change, it make sense that they could have been prompted to do so and thus a soft credit might need to be created for that donation.
• Soft credits can now be entered for internet donations, gifts with tickets, and regular donations.
• Add Donations to Mail List Telemarketing Report - Added donation history to the Mail List Telemarketing report (rMailListTelemarket).  It is displayed only if the user has view access to the security item, "Donation information for any Donor record"
• Added 'Do Not Solicit by Email' - Added a field to the donor tab on the patron window for 'do not solicit by email' in addition to the existing 'do not solicit by phone' and 'do not solicit by mail'.
• Corrected Fiscal  & Program Year validation for Donations - Fixed issue where the fiscal and program year validation was being based off the current data rather than the donation date.  This affected looking at donations 10+ years old.
• Donation totals on patron record do not place past donations properly - Resolve issue where past donations would be totaled in the future donations category when displayed on the patron window.

Ticket Sales Processes

• Change Control House in Subscription Package (if no performances) - Allow user to change the performance for a subscription as many times as desired if there are no seats in the package.
• Add 'Reservation Only' indicator to Order Detail Report
• Added an indicator to the Order Detail - by Patron (Ticket, Membership, Donation, Fee & Payment) report for Order Reservation status to match up with other Order Detail reports.
• Add Order Notes to Batch Ticket Print Window - Added order notes to the batch ticket print window to allow a user to view any special notes about the order that merit some extra action. This data is on the ticket preview list window where after all tickets to be printed in the batch have been found. A good way to use this feature is to run the batch ticket print and then sort by this column on the pre-print ticket list.
• Entering a Payment on A/R window Update Balance - You can now enter a payment to any order on the accounting->Receivables->AR listing window and the list  of orders will get updated as the payment is entered.

  This also works on the end of day wizard copy of the receivables list and adjusts the various calculations to show balancing status

• Add 'Payment' to the List of Options from the 'Ticket' Button - On the patron widow, if you click on the ticket tab to sell tickets (the normal action), we have added the capability to take a payment when a ticket is selected, rather than having to go to the order window.
• Add Order Lookup to Payment Transfer Window - Added an order lookup button on the patron payment transfer window to make it easier to find the order to transfer the payment to.
• Transferring a Payment Ensures Patron Balance is Correct - Resolved an issue where the displayed balance of an order may be incorrect after transferring a payment.
• Net QTY Calculated Incorrectly for Daily Sales Summary on Fees - Fixed issue where the quantity in the daily sales summary would not be correct.
  • During the upgrade, Theatre Manager will clear and recalculate all the daily sales summary data except for those events that were archived in version 6 and the transactions removed.
  • If there are version 7/8 events that have been archived and have incorrect counts in the quantity column in the daily sales, users may wish to restore them to non-archived status prior to the upgrade.
• Patron Credit on Patron List Shows As Red Instead of Blue - Fixed issue where a patron credit would show up as red on the patron list rather than blue
• Columns can disappear on the order window's promotions list in ticket sales - Fixed issue where lists could occasionally have columns disappear.  This was initially located in the ticket selling window for the percent discount column.
• Suppress Patron Balance on Title Bar - If a user does not have permission to see donations, the total on the title bar no longer reflects anything that pertains to the donation balance - and just shows any ticket balance.

Web Sales

• Resolve Stats issue because of Apache Time-Zone - Apache module 1.4.4 fixes an issue where Theatre Manager cannot collect statistics if the web listener is in a different time zone than the apache server and it is not set for the proper offset from GMT. If you have a Mac Apache server, please refer to this link to see update instructions.
• Online Coupon Code Doesn't exclude Price Code - Fixed issue where a coupon code would not respect the valid price codes on a promotion.
• Web Listener NULL parameter in best seats -- SQL Error - Resolve issue where web listeners produce a SQL error when retrieving best seats due to an unknown client ID.
• Formal Name now updates correctly for web updates - The formal name and greeting name are now updated when a user changes their profile on the web using the same rules as the box office.

Reporting Subsytem

• End Time Criteria Calculates Correctly - When entering criteria that do date/time from and date/time to, the final time on the date to now calculates to be 23:59.
• Fix Export Criteria from Saved Criteria - Restoring saved criteria for an export no longer duplicates the field names on the export tab.
• Sort options for Event Price Code Report - Resolve issue in the Play Price Codes report that would incorrectly group events with the same title together on the same page.
• Queued and Saved Report options dont save under the Group tab of Employee Setup - Resolved issue where the Queued & Saved Reports security check boxes would not save.
• Batch printing of passes produces no printed passes - Fixed issue where batch printing of passes printed no passes.
• New Seat Assigned in Mail List Criteria - Fixed issue where the subscription status 'New-Seat Assigned' may show up as 'Value Missing' in mail list and report criteria.
• Report Criteria Address, Sort, Titles tabs are not Saving/Restoring Correctly - Resolve issue where saved sort criteria was not always being re-applied to a report.
• Ticket Held Seat Report Prints Sold Seats Too - Resolved issue where the Ticket Held Seat Detail report might show sold seats as well as hold seats.

Form Letters

• Fix fill color in a Text Box on Form Letters - Resolved issue where the background color a text box would always be set to gray regardless of what colour was set in the window
• Print unprinted letters has some icon status issues and will mark emails done unintentionally - Fixed an issue in the print unprinted letter process where selecting both an email and a letter at the same time could cause the item to get marked done inadvertently.

  The print process now only considers printable documents and the email process now only considers those that are marked as email.

Events and Performances

• Fix Issue Changing from General Admission to Reserved Seating Performance - Fix issue changing from general admission performance, then if user sells seats and refunds seats so that none are sold... then if user changes the sales method to reserved seating, TM will now grab the graphic map seats so that there are the right holds and the right seats sold string.
• Amount column in the Sales tab calculates incorrectly - Resolve issue where the Amount column in the Sales tab of the Plays window was calculated incorrectly.

Accounting Related

• Incorrect G/L account being used for transfer of Deferred to Earned on Taxes - Fixed issue where the transfer of deferred to earned income for taxes was being transferred from deferred back to the deferred account, rather than to the earned account.
• Prevent the A/R account to be used as the Account # for Gift-in-Kind - Every area in Theatre Manager that accepts account numbers now checks for any one of the special account numbers such as the A/R account, the bank account, etc.

  If one of those are encountered, TM will warn the user.  If it is the A/R account, TM will display a dialog that warns the user about potential end of day balancing issues if they are not careful with that they are doing.

• Add 'Active' Flag to tax rates - The tas rate table now has an active flag so that old tax rates can be hidden when entering new events, gift certificates, etc.

Patron Management

• Add company to the Patron Relationship List - Added company to the relationship window list to make it easier to see relationships that might be only with organizations.
• Changing the Country during Insert of a New Patron did not Reformat the Phone - If the country is changed on the insert of a new patron, the phone number is now re-edited and reformatted to suit the new country before the insert of the record is completed.  This provides visual feedback to the user prior to insert.
• Area Code now Mandatory - With the onset of 10 digit dialing in most areas of North America, the capability to allow the area code to be optional has been removed. All phone numbers are now 10 digits.
• Entering international addresses does a zip code lookup and should not - International addresses continue to do a zip code lookup but the sort order in the lookup has been removed to make sure the SQL lookup is faster.  There should no longer be a lag.

Miscellaneous Changes

• Save Window Sort Order - The last sort used on lists is now saved in the window preferences.  Whatever sort is used when the list closed is what will be used again when the list opens.
• Save window views when window closed - when ever a windows is closed that allow multiple views, the state of the window is now saved so that it can be reopened in the same position and layout. These are windows such as the patron window which can show just the list or just the patron information and the order window which can show a calendar instead of a list for purchasing tickets.
• Remove 'do you want to save' when clicking the close box on insert - We streamlined the insert new record process by removing some dialog boxes.
• Changing List Preferences Messes up Order Selling Window - All lists on the select a seat window in the sell process now support their columns being changed and will save those positions for each users convenience.
• When clicking the close box theatre manager will try and save and close the window, if it can't save then it will keep the window open and display an error.
• When clicking the Cancel button(previously called Delete) the window will close immediately
• A new button "Cancel" has been added when inserting a new record, it takes the place of the "Delete" button on the toolbar.  After a record is saved the "Delete" button is re-added and the "Cancel" button is removed.
• Custom Field Names only Updated on First Save - Fixed issue where clicking Save on the Company Preferences window would create the new company descriptions, but clicking it a second time would not make the changes take effect.
• Duplicating Course Level entry becomes "Payment Methods" - Resolved issue where duplicating a code table from a code table detail window would result in an incorrect title for the window.
• Fix Access to Enable/Disable Promotions - The ability to globally enable and disable sales promotions from the sales promotion window was using the incorrect permission to check for capability - it now uses the right one.

Things a venue may need to do:

• Read all prior release notes back to the version you upgraded from and follow any instructions for each version under the subject 'Things a venue may need to do:
• Find existing employees in the patron list and merge them with any pre-existing patron records. (Any employee record was created as a patron record)
• Update the web pages as per the beginning of the release note

Upgrade Time

The time required to upgrade varies on the number of patrons in the database with email addresses. If the database contains many of those, the upgrade might take half hour from version 8.13.

This is a walk around install.

Key Changes in Version 8.15.00

The following changes have been made to Theatre Manager since version 8.13

Things a venue may need to do:

• Obtain the latest version of the backupTM script and revise it using the instructions so that last backup date can be tracked and written back to the database.
• Any web listener set up to auto log in will need to be set up again. The encryption methodology was changed to support unicode database setup. You many need to clear the password settings located in the Theatre Manager preference file. You will need to:
  • Find the line with 'WebServerUserId' and remove that line
  • Find the line with 'WebServerPassword' and remove that line
  • Sign into Theatre Manager as the Master User
  • Go to Setup->Users and Access->Employee List
  • Find the web listener user ID and edit the 'Box Office' tab.
  • Click the 'Set Auto-Login' button to set up the auto login process again with the current password re-encrypted
  • Repeat the above steps on each machine that is to act as a dedicated web listener
• Multi language web pages will be supported in the future. If you want to support more languages, duplicate the 'WebPages' folder and add a two character ISO language code and then translate the second set of code.
  
  e.g. You would have a web page folder called 'WebPagesFR' and one called 'WebPages' in order to support two languages. Translate all pages in 'WebPagesFR' as appropriate.
  
  Note: only the web pages are translated. You will need to make sure that content within theatre manager is in a 'universal' language style such as naming the events so that it appears suitable on any web page in any language
• Implement the important changes for the pending HST consolidation in Ontario and BC if it pertains to you.
• Revise web pages if you wish to support the additional features. If you do not implement 'limited profile patrons', you will likely not have to change any pages.

Optional Web Page Changes

If you want to implement the 'limited profile patron' feature, you will need to download and compare some web page files. Please download the web page updates and compare your web pages with the template files in this mini archive.

The new files are below and should just be moved into the appropriate place in the htdocs folder:

• tmScripts/hideshowdiv.html
• TMtemplates/rowPatronEmailLImit.html
• TMtemplates/TmLoginForm.html
• TMtemplates/tmMailListQuickAddInsert.html
• tmMailListQuickAdd.html
• tmMailListUnverifiedEmail.html
• tmMailListVerify.html
• tmPatronLimitedPRofile.html

• tmerror.txt
• tmGifs/stylepages.css
• tmPatronUpdate.html
• tmScripts/pleasewaitformessagefunction.html
• tmTemplates/pleasewaitmessage.html
• TMtickets.html
• tmFutureTicketsPrint.html
• tmOldCartDetailsPrint.html

Tax Changes

There is a key revision to enable tax calculation on a per performance basis in the Event window

• With the pending PST/GST implementation in Ontario and British Columbia, we have been advised that events sold before the implementation date may have different tax rates on each performance.
• The tax rate may depend on when the actual performance occurs and when tickets are sold.
• For this reason, each performance can now have a different tax rate.
• This feature can also be used if some items in the performance list needs to have a different tax rate. For example, childrens' performances may not be taxable, or certain inventory items might have a different tax rate. You can set the tax rate on the event, then edit a performance to change its particular tax rate.
• Please obtain advice from Revenue Canada on the pending changes pertinent to your situation

Limited Profile Patrons, Web Sales, Email Subscriptions and Auctions

A significant new feature has been added to Theatre Manager called 'limited profile patron'. We heard that some venues may not always want capture name and address information on every patron during a web sale. This feature allows you to accept a web sale and specify which data is mandatory before allowing the patron check out. It can range from as little as name/email to the same full requirements as the box office.

If implemented, this feature is designed to allow a patron to buy tickets, provide only sufficient information to get them their tickets, and checkout. If they buy again, they would need to provide the same information. For example: if all tickets are print at home or held till willcall, you only need patron name. If you still want to mail tickets, you will need to make address mandatory.

If the 'limited profile patrons' feature is enabled in System Preferences, the following will apply:

• Patron still has the option of logging in to an existing account to see prior purchases.
• A new patron will always be created if they choose the quick checkout process and provide their name, email, address, etc. again
• A check is always made using the email address. If it already exists, this 'new' patron will be added to the existing household. If the email does not exist, a brand new household will be created.
• A patron who checks out as a 'limited profile patron' has no login credentials. Ordinarily, this means they cannot log in and see past purchase history. However, if they visit the web site and ask for their password to be emailed, they can log in and purchase again. If they log in, they will be required to complete the patron information that thy did not complete the first time. If they never log in and simply buy again, they will have to provide their name each time they checkout.

• At the box office, 'limited profile patrons' are indicated on the patron list using a new icon. If you edit the patron card for one of those patrons at the box office, you will then have to complete the missing information before the data can be saved.
• You will need to implement a feature to find and merge 'limited profile patrons' on an ongoing basis if you allow the feature.

Limited Profile Patrons also allows quick sign up to any number of mail lists by providing only name and email info without signing in.

• This feature can be implemented as a simple form and sent to the web listener from anywhere. Please refer to the samples in the web page tmMailListQuickAddInsert.html - you need to set up a form to tell TM which emails to subscribe the user to.
• If the patron was not logged in when they subscribed to a mail list, they will receive an email asking them to confirm their subscription to the mail list
• If they do not confirm their subscription to the mail list(s), they will automatically be removed from the mail list after a specified number of hours (default 24) in Company Preferences. This occurs during the end of day process when other web information is purged.
• If the email address exists, the patron in the database will be added to the mail list. If the email address does not exist, a new 'limited profile patron' will be created.

There is a convenient quick-add feature that simply creates a patron by swiping their credit card. We think this might be used during the admittance process for Auctions. The process works as follows:

• You start by setting the Patron List window to search by credit card.
• If you swipe a credit card, it will find the patron based on their previous card number.
• If the card number does not exist in the database, then TM gives you an option to quick add the patron attending the auction.
• Patrons added in this will be a 'limited profile patron' that has the name on the card along with their credit card on file stored in the database.
• If there are bid packets, you can give the patron the patron number that was created during the swipe process.

Backup Reminders

A field was added to the database to track the date and time that last backup that was done. A message will be displayed to the user whenever backups are deemed not to have run recently based on a setting in System Preferences that can range from 1 day to 7 days.

The backup script must be updated with a couple of commands to use this feature as it simply tells the database after the backup is completed.

Payment Processing and Credit Cards

• You can now specify the number of elapsed days before receiving a warning from Theatre Manager that you have not settled your credit card batch. It was previously 3 days and can now be specified in Merchant Setup
• Post dated payments can no longer be created for a date in the past. After all... they are post dated.
• Adding support (currently test only) for Paymentech Orbital credit card authorization. This requires a merchant account be set up for Paymentech. The authorization option will only handle 'card-not-present' with address verification and CVV2. It will not support swiped credit cards and is intended for venues that sell large numbers of tickets simultaneously (eg a concert in a large venue with lots web sales capability). We are making you aware of this upcoming capability because it may allow you to adopt schedule 'C' compliance by shredding cards in Theatre Manager and letting Paymentech handle that portion of PCI compliance at their venue. Also note that the feature is still in test mode as of version 8.15.01 and not available for general use.

Web Listeners & Web Sales

• Revised the web listener interface so that when somebody logs in on the web site, any prior entries in the web listener log on the screen will change from 'Anonymous Browser' to the patron's name. This will only affect the display on the listener that handles the login request (normally the primary listener)
• Viewing any detail entry on the web listener log now re-reads the log from disk to get the current patron information and log data. This was done to provide more information to the user.
• Cosmetic change to the listener log to convert local IPv6 address to 127.0.0.1
• If a patron manages their own profile on the web, their formal and greeting names are now updated automatically subject to the same rules at the box office.
• Fixed an issue with the &search filter for limiting the events that are seen on the event list

Other Feature Enhancements and Bug Fixes

• Fixed a display issue that might arise on the insert patron window if that was the first time they opened the patron window after logging into Theatre Manager. TM will now always display without the bottom area showing the ticket list.
• When setting up timed release holds for a patron, the settings for the default the hold expiry date now uses a custom setting from the employee preferences. The minimum is still one day.
• Donation receipt date can now be backdated up to 3 months relative to the payment date for those that batch donations quarterly. The previous rule was within a month because we recommend entering donations as they occur and not saving them up.
• On the payment window, the button now changes from 'Accept Payment' to 'Create Refund' depending on the value of the payment, not the order.
• The payment window on PC's now handle credit card swipes properly. They only need swiped once to send the correct information to the credit card provider
• Calendar filters have been simplified for venues without Facility Management. You can now see ALL events, tasks, and volunteer activities just like version 7.
• Calendar filters have been clarified for venues with Facility Management so that you can now see events in specified venues, task for specified people, and schedule items in a room to handle room booking, as well as many other features that are new to the facility management module.
• Altered the way that Ping finds the outside ip address of your router by sending a message to our demo listener and getting the IP address back. It previously used Whatsmyip.org who recently made it impossible for a web page to read the IP address.
• The ticket detail window now shows the IP address and scan date/time of the scanner that checked the patron into the venue
• Company Preferences now shows date last deposit, date last posting and the last order number that was posted for audit and tracking purposes
• Queued and saved report access settings are now saved in the employee setup
• When increasing the size of a venue, Theatre Manager now allows you to deal with reseating the venue first - then adding the reserved seat names when that is done.
• Fixed a specific issue where tickets with the price code description field on the ticket face (PC_DESCRIPTION) might take a number of seconds for each one to print. This is no longer the case.
• Fix issue where order notes would not show on the shopping cart detail window.
• Fixed issue where users may not have access to the tickets tab on the patron window. This would occur of 'patron' edit access was removed from the employee
• Fixed issue where, in certain situations, saved report criteria would not load correctly. This would result in reports that display strange formatting and missing data.
• Resolved issue where restoring saved criteria on the export window would result in duplicate export fields.
• Fixed a bug on printing a PDF of a report on windows that was introduced in version 8.14 during a number of Unicode changes.

Upgrade Time

The time required to upgrade depends on the number of volunteer history records. If the database contains many of those, the upgrade might take 5 minutes from version 8.15.

Key Changes in Version 8.16.00

The following changes have been made to Theatre Manager since version 8.15

Volunteer Management

• Fixed the filter in the Volunteer tab in the event window so that 'Show Volunteers working entire event' works when the checkbox is toggled on and off.
• Added 'Volunteer' as a context menu item on the event window so that a user can go and see all the volunteer information for a particular volunteer in the event list.
• Fixed a situation where Volunteer hours were aggregating under the wrong year if the accounting setup was 'Store Years at End'. Any existing Volunteer History data will be advanced by one year so that the totals are correct.
• Added ability to add recognized activities, without having to save first, on the Volunteer award detail window
• Removed menu item "Remove all activities with 0 recognized hours" from the minus button on the recognized activities list, when there are no activities with 0 recognized hours on the Volunteer award detail window.
• Resolved issue that may prevent the deletion of a recognized activity from the list of activities on the Volunteer award detail window
• There are some new settings in code tables for volunteer/staff activities. You can now specify the number of hours you want the volunteer to arrive before a performance or stay after the performance and that will be added to the total hours for recognition - on a per activity basis. Alternatively if the volunteer activity is associated with an entire event, a default number of hours can be assigned for working an entire run. These fields default to zero on the upgrade so that there is no difference from any prior verision.

Year End Rollover and posting

• You can no longer change the fiscal year manually on the company preferences screen if there are G/L entries that can still be posted. You are advised to post and then rollover the year end.
• You can no longer roll over the year end until all G/L entries from a prior year are posted
• You can no longer roll over the year end until all sales transactions have bee run though the end of day process.
• Year end process now requires acknowledgement that all prior calendar year donations have been entered before continuing
• Effectively, these changes now mandate stopping sales and completing and posting the end of day. It also reflects the process venues should have been following and the system now enforces it.

Web Sales

• TM now increments the number of pages accessed by a patron to include pages that are accessed while the patron was browsing anonymously. This means that if a patron accesses 5 pages anonymously and signs in, you will know about the prior 5 pages accessed as part of the total browser statistics.
• When auto starting Theatre Manager as a web listener, you will no longer get a message if backups have not been run recently.
• Fix an issue where patrons might have put a long password into Theatre Manager in a much earlier version than is currently allowed.

Facility Management

• You can now attach multiple file references to any one task. This may be useful if there is more than one file associated with a grant application or a facility rental.
• Fixed an issue in the Version 8.10 upgrade that caused links to documents on the tasks window to be lost. These will require reentered, or imported from a backup
• Numerous changes behind the scenes to reflect feedback from the alpha test participants

Sales Process

• Added some default ticket face coding samples for pricing. You can now select ticket fee1, 2 or 3, or final price without taxes, or final price without fees from a popup menu when building ticket faces
• All menu options in the context menu on the ticket review tab in the sales process are now enabled. The 'change ticket price' and the 'refund' ticket options were disabled since version 7.36.42.
• Added a new feature to require permission on renewing a membership/pass if it is beyond the expiry date and permitted lapse time. This should prevent people randomly renewing memberships to the organization that are many years old.

Upgrade Time

The time required to upgrade depends on the number of payment records. If the database contains many of those, the upgrade might take 5 minutes from version 8.16.

Key Changes in Version 8.17.00

The following changes have been made to Theatre Manager since version 8.16

Misc Changes

• Corrected a problem where the primary address was not always read correctly in a number of situations. This affected putting the address on the form letter where there were multiple addresses in multiple outlets.
• Default the postal code on the order to be based on the current address for the patron, and not the first postal code on any address in the household. This means that the default postal/zip on an order can change if patrons have recurring address changes.
• Added all error messages for Paymentech Orbital to help diagnose connection errors for credit card authorization
• Accessing list of shopping carts from the Patron sales menu now ensures that it opens the same window as if it were opened from the toolbar. Only one cart window can be opened.
• Added 'Name on Card' to the payment list on the patron window.
• Reset the web sales purchase password for any email created when employees were migrated from the employee record to the patron record. There was not employee email password, so it was creating random characters for those in version 8.16
• Added support for an 'annual' donation receipt option.
• More infrastructure support for Paymentech Orbital
• If you need to change the merchant software provider in a merchant account after a payment was created using that provider, then you must inactivate the merchant account and create a new merchant account. This is required because the error codes on payments are unique to the merchant provider and are retained for historical reasons
• Enhanced the interface on the change database window so that you can now search for databases again on the same server if none were found. The 'connect' button changes it text and meaning depending on circumstances. This should make it simpler for the situation where a user gets the message 'cannot find database' and the server was turned off. Once the serve is back on, the user just need click the search button.
• Fixed a minor issue where editing the primary phone number for a patron might cause it to be marked as non-primary'

Things a venue may need to do:

• Read all prior release notes back to the version you upgraded from and follow any instructions for each version under the subject 'Things a venue may need to do:

Upgrade Time

The time required to upgrade depends on the number of volunteer history records. If the database contains many of those, the upgrade might take 5 minutes or more from version 8.17.

Key Changes in Version 8.20.01

The following changes have been made to Theatre Manager since version 8.17

Credit Card Authorization

• Added edits checks to require CVV2 to be entered if it is mandatory for the credit card type. During the upgrade, the 'require CVV2 on credit cards' will be set as required.
• Added support for Paymentech Orbital as a credit acrd authorization mechanism. Orbital is an internet based authorization mechanism that will be distributed is special versions of Theatre Manager on an need-to-have basis. It effectively allows simultaneous authorizations and will be perfect for large venues with huge onsale of tickets. This features is pending approval from Paymentech.
• Co-incident with implementation of Orbital, the country table in Setup->System Tables->Code Tables will be updated. There are now 276 countries and major islands in Theatre Manager. The ISO country code is now implemented - which means that Theatre Manager can now support authorizations in approximately 156 different currencies through the Orbital Gateway
• The merchant window now shows a tab that indicates which employees are connected to the credit card software. Changing to Paymentech Orbital will require a new merchant account record in Theatre Manager to preserve history. This tab allows you to drag and drop employees between the old merchant and the new merchant account to reassign them quickly.

Patron

• Allow deletion of a patron if they are only connected to mail lists and do not have any other data associated with them.
• Fixed an issue with the 'mail-to-patron' flag not being set correctly on the web shopping cart
• Added a field for each patron to track the 'Equity' number - for artist management. This field is available in the personnel history window. The name of this field can be customized in Company Preferences so it can be used for other purposes - effectively becoming a text field for volunteer management.
• Added a customizable date field in the volunteer/marketing record. This augments all the searchable flags and popups for personnel management in the personnel window. The name of this field can be customized in company preferences.
• Added icons to the context menus on the patron window under the order and payment tabs to match the buttons on the respective windows. Changed the icon for payment receipts for clarity.

Ticket Sales Process - "Gifting" Tickets

• Implemented a new feature to allow you to 'gift' a ticket from one patron to another.
• This means that Patron A can buy tickets, classes, etc in their name, and then you can indicate that Patron B is the intended recipient of one of those tickets or classes.
• Tickets will print in Patron B's name and reports will show that Patron B is attending.
• Tickets can be found either under Patron A or Patron B in the patron detail window

Employee

• Fixed an issue on employee record where the holds an employee could sell was getting reset under certain circumstances for normal users
• Fixed an important problem where an employee without a primary address would cause the standard cash/check payments types to code tables to be recreated.
• Prevent the master user in an outlet version from setting the employee's merchant account to one for another outlet

Season Subscriptions

• Auto-renewing subscriptions will now process the entire list of subscriptions instead of just the first on

Facility Management

• Added a hierarchy of task colours so that items that appear on the calendar can be customized.
• The display of attendee's and meetings has been clarified
• Improved the performance of displaying a calendar
• Each calendar entry can now have a custom colour
• Added a new menu item for 'pending notifications'. This will allow you to see any upcoming task alarms

Event Setup

• Fixed a small issue with the creation of a series of performances where the setting was to create the performances as 1,2,3 ...
• On the Event window, for the performance and pricing tabs - they now respect the security settings set for the employee
• Allow delete of performances if there are only 'audit' transactions recorded against that performance. If there are any sales transactions, the performance still may not be deleted.
• The meaning of the 'active', 'inactive' and 'closed' checkboxes on the event list window has been clarified and should work a little more like people expect. The 'active' and 'inactive' checkboxes are no longer mutually exclusive. If you check them both, you get all events - that are not closed. If you add the 'closed' checkbox, you get all events.
• Fix a bug searching for events that span two or more years - it will no longer freeze the search. For example, if you created an event that had a performance in 2008 and one in 2010 - searching for it on the ticket sales window or on the event window no longer freezes Theatre Manager

Donations

• Donation receipts no longer print the country of origin on them. i.e. those for Canadian addresses do not print Canada, etc.
• Annual donation receipts have been re-implemented in this version.

Form Letters

• Optimized reading the initial list of patrons which are to be merged with Form Letters. For large numbers of patrons, the performance increase is significant.
• Improved the responsiveness of the interface when toggling between send letters/send emails as well as when customizing a letter. For large email blasts, editing one letter and the update of the icons on the screen is significantly faster.
• Optimized merging of some types of fields in each letter to the email blast to improve performance - in some cases it is twice as fast.
• The window to select a form letter to add to a patron now has the 'active' and 'inactive' criteria on it so that you can find only active letters

Volunteer/Artist Management

• An area for 'default duties' has been added to the code tables under the volunteer/artist/personnel positions. If there is something entered here, these will be added to the activity history when it is created. For example, if there is a position called 'Box Office Help', and the default duties are 'sell tickets and balance end of shift', then the duties will be added to each history record as it is created - so you can alter it rather than type it.

Reports

• Fixed copy/paste compatibility on the event and series report
• The invoice parameter window now activates the 'comment' for the mail label properly as well as showing tooltips. This was broken in version 8.17

Mail Lists

• Prevent a mail list from gaining access to data in another outlet as part of the mail list building process. Certain criteria, done in combination, could identify a patron using data that belonged to another outlet and add it to your mail list. This has been prevented in all cases. Note: this could only affect users of the outlet version.
• Fixed issue loading up the 'mail list' lookup table to associate a mail list with an evert if there happened to be more than 255 active mail lists
• Building a multi-step mail list now shows each step you are working on in the progress bar as the data is found for the mail list
• Using the 'Test' button on criteria now shows the number of distinct patrons that will be found as well as the number of records that will be searched to find the distinct patrons
• The 'address compliance' button on mail labels now eliminates almost all punctuation as per postal regulations and standards

Misc Changes

• Update all display fields when the names of fields in system preferences and default data are updated
• Improve the performance of 'year-end-rollover' by up to 5 times. The year end rollover now only needs one pass of the marketing table instead of up to 6 to clear out certain fields after the update routines were optimized.
• Added an 'external' account number to the chart of accounts that is 100 characters. This will be incorprorated into the export process so that TM can feed large financial systems like Banner or PeopleSoft where the account numbers can be character ... and long.
• Cut or Paste menu options in a detail window now highlight the revert and save icons
• Fixed an issue with the best seat stored procedure when it was looking for items in a season subscription on the internet and there were no events in the season package.
• The 'email support' option in theatre manager now emails directly to the case management system. You will need to specify your own email address (if you do not have a primary email address in your patron record) in order to get a reply.
• Setting time release holds associated with a patron allow entering the date directly as well as tooltips on the field. This was broken in version 8.17
• In the gift certificate detail window (redemption tab), double clicking on the patron who redeemed the gift certificate now takes you to the patron, not the household

Things a venue may need to do:

• Read all prior release notes back to the version you upgraded from and follow any instructions for each version under the subject 'Things a venue may need to do:
• Edit the personnel activity code tables to add in some default volunteer duties, arrival time before the performance and time to stay after the performance. If entered, it will assist in assigning the volunteer to a performance and accurate accumulation of hours
• If you are using Theatre Manager for artist management, then you may wish to enter the equity number on the patron 'volunteer/personnel' record
• There are two optional web page changes that may need to be made. These are notifications as part of the sale process. The receipts were showing the incorrect authorization number on them, so you may want to compare the two pages in your web pages to the ones in the download file. The pages to change are:
  • TMcheckoutInvoiceEmail.html
  • TMcheckoutConfirmation.html

Upgrade Time

The time required to upgrade depends on the number of ticket and shopping cart records. If the database contains many of those, the upgrade might take 20 minutes or more from version 8.20.

This is a walk around install

Key Changes in Version 8.21.01

The following changes have been made to Theatre Manager since version 8.20

Patron

There is a significant new feature in the patron window (and the ticket review tab in the sales process) that allows you to purchase the ticket normally and then 'Gift' or 'Assign' the ticket to another patron who may be in the household, or, it could be anybody in the database.

The purpose of this feature is to enhance many aspects of the sales process. It means you could purchase season tickets under one patron and assign them to each of the other families that are coming. It could also be used for classes where the parent buys and the child get assigned the tickets, rather than buying under the child's name.

The interface for this feature is done and you can use it now - all you need do is right click on the ticket to assign it (or remove the gift). In subsequent releases, the reporting, ticket printing and web capabilities will be enhanced to support the feature. This also means that selling courses online will allow a parent to purchase and assign the class to children so that the class roster is perfect.

Other Changes:

• Correct the dialogs that open asking if you want to turn off the do-not-solicit flags. The actual message now appears

Ticket Sales

• Corrected an issue where adding a new subscription to an order in an outlet version might allow you to select a package belonging to another outlet.
• The ticket detail window that is opened after double clicking on a ticket now shows the order ticket comment under the order tab
• Fix issue where auto-renewing subscriptions would only do the first patron in the list

Misc Changes

• Fix error for sites using plugins - the error message will now be returned properly
• Fix for building mail lists across outlets where if the mail list build criteria had a search group based on tickets followed by a search group based on patrons. The SQL error that was generated has been fixed.
• Selecting 'address compliant' mail labels on the mail list window now removes all punctuation. Only characters 0-9, A-Z, '&', '(' and ')' will remain. All others are removed for postal purposes.
• Added spell check to the pass/gift certificate creation window
• Fix several form letter issues and improve performance of the merge interface significantly for large email blasts.
• Fix search for an event that spans three years putting the list window into an infinite loop

Things a venue may need to do:

• Read all prior release notes back to the version you upgraded from and follow any instructions for each version under the subject 'Things a venue may need to do:
• To see the ticket 'Gifted to' column on the patron window, the ticket review and the event attendance window, you may need to right click and restore column defaults on the windows. This needs to be done on a per user basis

Upgrade Time

The upgrade time from version 8.21 is very short.

This is a walk around install

Key Changes in Version 8.22.00

The following changes have been made to Theatre Manager since version 8.21

Paymentech Orbital

This version of TM is approved by Paymentech to support their Orbital credit card platform. Orbital is a web based authorization process where TM sends special commands to a special web page based on merchant authentication. Connection to the web page can only be done with secure communication. It also provides a web interface for seeing your credit cards in your batch.

This is a fairly significant option that some venues may like to implement, but there are pro's and con's to using the gateway. The highlights of using this credit card gateway are:

• It does 'card not present' authorization only. That means it can accept address verification and/or CVV2. It does not support sending the track II information from a credit card swipe.
  • If most of your sales are internet or phone orders, this will not affect you
  • If you have a lot of walk up, you can mitigate credit card fees through address verification and entering the CVV2 number
• It does massively parallel authorizations. We think this might be a good reason to consider this credit card gateway as an option if you have heavy OnSales dates.
• The card information is sent offsite and stored at the processor. It means you can implement PCI merchant Schedule C compliance a bit easier.

GL Entry Export

We have added the core capability for XML export to BANNER (used at a number of Universities) in addition to flat file export. If this is of interest to you, you will need to discuss this with the development team to see if it can apply to you..

Misc Changes

• TM now remembers changes to the various lists on manage season subscription seats window without having to close the window. There was a condition where clicking on each subscripition series would reset the other list's columns unless you'd closed the window.
• Improved the alarm notification and dismissal process in the Facilities Management Module. It is now a bit more passive. In addition, any of the system messages like 'backups not run' now appear in a 'message list' so that startup is faster because there are fewer dialogs that need confirmation.
• A number areas where data can be exported from TM now remembers the last folder you were in and offers to save any new files/pdf's in that folder
• Fixed the search duplicates option to look for duplicate patrons in the database. Tm was identifying all people that were duplicates - and it was identifying some that were not necessarily duplicates based on the fields selected. A second pass of the list was added to remove any 'false-postitive' identification of potential duplicates.
• Calendar is now getting set up properly to display events if you don't have the facility management module.

Things a venue may need to do:

• Read all prior release notes back to the version you upgraded from and follow any instructions for each version under the subject 'Things a venue may need to do:
• Verify the external account number if you are transferring GL entries from Theatre Manager to your accounting system via the export function.

Upgrade Time

The upgrade time from version 8.22 varies depending on the number of patrons in the database - it may take a little time.

There are MANDATORY web page changes that must be made before upgrading. If you do not do this, your web sales will not run until the web pages are updated as per the instructions at the bottom of this page

This is a walk around install

Key Changes in Version 8.23.03

The following changes have been made to Theatre Manager since version 8.22

Multi-Language Web Page Capability

A few venues have asked for the capability of allowing patrons to buy using various languages and this version provides that capability. There are some things that each venue must do in this upgrade to web pages, regardless if they wish this feature or not. Specifically:

• You must make a copy of your 'WebPages' folder and call it 'WebPagesEN'
• You must read the 'what a venue has to to' section and put all web page changes in place BEFORE upgrading.
• If you wish to implement other languages, you can simply duplicate the WebPagesEN folder (and rename it to WebPagesFR, for example) and make any language translations that you wish in the web pages and error messages.
• And then you can indicate to the web listener which languages you wish to support by editing default data

Selling Courses Online

Events that are set up as courses may now be sold online. This has introduced a small change to the sales process for courses online that some venues may find useful. These are:

• There is a new default registration page that pulls information from different parts of Theatre Manager and shows the course marketing notes. This allows for some possible future customization regarding the selling process and capturing of additional information. For now, it is used purely to display more information on the course.
• The quantity of attendees in a course registration is 1 (instead of the standard default of 2 for other ticket sales)
• When the item is in the shopping cart and after a patron has logged in, TM will prompt the patron for the name of the person in the household who will be attending the course prior to checkout. This means that you can only buy a course for a member of the household at this time.

Events

• There is an additional default web setting on the 'performance detail-Web Tab' where you can now 'suggest' the default number of tickets to buy for an event. For most types of sales, this defaults to 2 tickets. For courses, this defaults to 1 attendee. It can be changed for any performance.
• Only show reserved seating performances on the map window on play record.
• Adding patrons to an event to create a volunteer record now checks the patron availability and advises if the volunteer will be away.

Patrons

• On the web, the 'account' button will now show all members of the household to the left of the web page. The patron can update and manage the names and addresses of other household members - much like managing travelling companions on an airline reservation web site. At this time, only existing household members can be changed. A future release will allow adding new household members.
• Fixed a rare condition in the patron merge process where it could give an RQL error if there is a performance with no event record. This could only occur under rare circumstances on a converted version 6 database.

Facility Management

• For meetings that involve your patrons and other staff members, you can now send meeting invitations. These will send standard '.ics' meeting requests that iCal and Outlook will recognize.
• People receiving meeting invitations can accept and reject the meetings.
• For iCal, those meeting messages are sent to a special email (set up in default data) that acts as a broker for meeting requests. You can use a menu option to have Theatre Manager to check that email address to retrieve meeting invitations that have been responded to.
  • In subsequent versions on TM, this will be a task handled by the web listener.
  • Getting Outlook to respond to meeting requests will be in a subsequent version of TM (outlook is more finicky)
• If people change their meeting status, additional notifications will appear for the creator of the meeting
• Fixed some spacing issues on the calendar display window
• Notification list window no longer forces you to acknowledge meeting invitations and other upcoming events before dismissing the window. You still must acknowledge/read system messages from the startup process.
• Added sending of attachments to email files for purpose of meeting invitations. It is only available for this purpose at this time.
• Added passive alarm notification as an option. You can now indicate that alarms are only to go into the notification list and users can read at their leisure.

The Sales Process

• There was an issue with voiding a refund if the authorization was one of the first three transactions. Now, voiding a refund will always be allowed, regardless if it is for the first, second or third payment after beginning sales for the day.
• Fixed a bug that allowed you to sell a ticket to a hold you did not have access to. You can no longer do this.
• When 'Force Dup' is used for a credit card authorization, TM now tracks the credit card in the audit transaction log as an 'AT' transaction. This means you can search the audit log if you are out of balance. (There are more end of day analysis tools planned for this in the future).
• Fix an issue booking a ticket in a section where there are no active price codes. TM now prevents the sale if it cannot find any available price code.
• The error message on a delete of a payment is now more descriptive - to assist the end user determining what to do
• Fixed the text of an error message that incorrectly displayed the number of subscription packages that will be renewed incorrectly
• When assigning a volunteer/staff member to an event or on the calendar, it now checks the volunteer time availability and advises if patron should be assigned to the event.
• Prevent a crash entering a matching gift where the user types the patron number of a company that does not match gifts
• Refunds no longer require the CVV2/CID number to be entered as it is not required. That means you can require employees enter CID/CVV2, but it will not affect the capability of providing refunds.
• Self Assigned control numbers can now be swiped from commercial style gift cards that are encoded in the mag stripe with %Bxxxxxxxx^......

Other Web Changes

• Fixed a possible loop situation that causes a listener to appear hung
• No longer place messages in the order notes. Those re found in the web listener logs in more detail.

PCI Compliance

The PCI certification is an evolving process, changing and getting stronger as the years roll on. We have made some changes here that you may need to be aware of.

• Theatre Manager is PABP 1.4 certified and our certification expires december 2010. The replacement to PABP process is called PA DSS and we have started the PA DSS 1.2 certification process well in advance of this deadline. We expect that we will be certified at the end of the summer
• On a PC, you may want to upgrade apache to version 2.2.15.
• On both OSX and PC, there are some changes that can be made to the httpd and httpd-ssl files to tighten the security in response to new PCI compliance scans

Accounting Changes

• Only Posted GL entries can be exported as a control against preventing people exporting and then changing them.
• Exported GL entries can no longer be un-posted which means they cannot be changed. Instead, reversing entries need to be made. These make for a stronger audit trail.
• Changing the internal account number will reformat the external account number
• Updated the export of GL entries to Banner to reflect revised XML requirements
• Added a new icon and colour to any not-yet-deposited payment that was authorized using the Force Duplicate option. This should highlight payments that might cause possible out of balance situations in end of day
• Allow the user to edit a not-yet-deposited payment and put a new credit card number or expiry date on a payment
• The accounting tab in the tax rate window now shows any postings to those tax accounts

Miscellaneous Changes

• Merchant accounts now have two 'allow to use' options. One of them is for the box office and the other is for the web. This allows you to have multiple merchant accounts and use specific ones for web sales and others for the box office.
• Adjust some defaults when duplicating merchant accounts depending on the software type. Specifically, duplicating an orbital account will reset the next transaction number and the ping server options
• Fix to prediction of the area code for a phone number.
• Fix some spelling errors on tooltips and help
• Prevent creation of duplicate email addresses that could occur under very rare conditions
• All patron emails are reviewed and any with some special characters like % or single/double quote will have their email password re-randomized. This addresses a situation where a % followed by a digit cannot be sent to the listener as a password because it is a special web combination of characters. People who had such a combination in their web passwords could not log in to the web listener.
• Fixed a slow startup situation. Theatre Manager checks for the internet being available so that credit cards can be authorized, email address domains can be verified and to check for upgrades. Arts Management's static ip was changed by our ISP after 10 years... and this affected everybody.
• Fixed a possible crash on Mac OSX if the database connection was interrupted and TM needed to reconnect to the database. There was an issue deep in the Postgres reconnection code that has been addressed that now allows reconnection to be attempted without a crash.
• Improved progress display on the upgrade process so that it does not look like TM is hung while inserting a new field into a table with a lot of rows.
• Fixed an issue with the 'Verify Subscription Holds' process. The list of performances was not displaying properly
• Enhanced the update process so that a venue can pick the version they want to download and for Mac and PC. This means that you can log into any version of TM and grab the current Mac or PC version, regardless of platform.
• Changed the startup process so that if a version of TM is out of date or is missing some components, TM will prompt the user and download the current version that they should be running rather than simply say the components are out of date. This should reduce need for phone support.
• Credit card payment types must now be one of a recognized set. You can no longer have MC (master card) and MC1 (for a second master card) in the same merchant. They must be unique to each merchant account

Specific Unicode version changes

This version of Theatre Manager is in limited release at this current time - and will become the default version of Theatre Manager in a month or so

• Now supports email SMTP server authentication using MD5/Cram
• Minor changes for Paymentech Orbital authorizations
• The Web Listener will now search for an available port starting at the default port (eg starting at 5111) until it finds one that is not in use. This is to support running multiple listeners on a single machine and/or multiple copies of TM in terminal services

Things a venue may need to do

• Read all prior release notes back to the version you upgraded from and follow any instructions for each version under the subject 'Things a venue may need to do'
• If you have multiple merchant accounts (for outlet version, or if you have converted from one software type to another), you will need to go into each merchant account you have and enable/disable them from use at the box office, or on the internet as appropriate.
• Please refer to Recommended Apache config changes for PCI to see if any of the patches apply to your venue
• Compare the new standard web pages and make the required changes as per below in the htdocs folder

Changes to Web Pages

Make a copy of the WebPages folder and name it WebPagesEN. Do this and make ALL changes below in the WebPagesEN folder before upgrading Theatre Manager to version 8.23.00. Please download the web page updates and compare the web pages in the WebPagesEN folder with with the template files in this mini archive. If you have not made any changes from prior versions, you may need to get the full set of standard web pages and compare them.

Note: on PC Apache servers, please find all files called '.ds_store' and delete those for PCI compliance.

Files in the main WebPagesEN directory
TMattendance.html	replace entire file
TMcart.html	include dropDownMenuFunction at top of page and add an ID to the FORM tag
TMcheckout.html	include dropDownMenuFunction at top of page and add an ID to the FORM tag. Change code for F_HTML_MERCHANT_LIST (compaer old page to new)
TMlogin.html	compare old page to new - turn 'autocomplete=off' on password fields
TMloginSelectPatron.html	compare old page to new - turn 'autocomplete=off' on password fields
TMpasswordChange.html	compare old page to new - turn 'autocomplete=off' on password fields
TMpasswordResetChange.html	compare old page to new - turn 'autocomplete=off' on password fields
TMpatronNew.html	compare old page to new
TMpatronUpdate.html	compare old page to new
tmError.txt	additional error message number 10153
tmFee Directory
tmOrderFee.html	compare old page to new
tmOrderFeeDefault.html	compare old page to new
tmGifs
langxx.gif	add all files starting with lang to your tmGif folder
tmMaps
TMticketsSection_MapDefaultc.html	new file used for description of courses
tmScripts
dropDownMenuFunction.html	new file used for change of course attendee and chnaging of merchant on checkout
tmTemplates
rowPatronEmail.html	compare old page to new. Variable called F_HTML_ALLOW_PASSWORD_CHANGE
rowPatronEmailLimitedProfile.html	compare old page to new
setMERCHANT_LIST.html	replace page
tmnavButtons.html	(optional) add the code for <!--#include virtual="tmTemplates/tmnavLanguages.html" --> inside the form if you want to do multi language
tmLoginForm.html	replace file
setCCMONTH_LIST.html	new file
setCCMONTH_LISTempty.html	new file
setHOUSEHOLD_PATRON_LIST.html	new file
setHOUSEHOLD_PATRON_LISTempty.html	new file
setHOUSEHOLD_PATRON_SELECTION_LIST.html	new file
setHOUSEHOLD_PATRON_SELECTION_LISTempty.html	new file
tmnavLanguages.html	new file - update for the languages you want to support
rowCartCourse.html	new file
rowCartCourseNewGroup.html	new file
rowCheckoutCourse.html	new file
rowFutureTicketCourse.html	new file
rowFutureTicketPrintCourse.html	new file
rowOldCartCourse.html	new file
rowOldCartPrintCourse.html	new file
constantALLEVENTS.txt	new file - edit if using multi language
constantALLVENUES.txt	new file - edit if using multi language
constantALLYEARS.txt	new file - edit if using multi language
constantMONTHS.txt	new file - edit if using multi language
constantYESNO.txt	new file - edit if using multi language
constantNEWPATRON.txt	new file - edit if using multi language

Upgrade Time

The upgrade time from version 8.23 should be relatively short.

There are 3 MANDATORY web page changes that must be done when upgrading. If you do not do this, new patrons may not be able to add themselves on the web

If you are at 8.23.00, this should self deploy, otherwise it is walk around.

Key Changes in Version 8.24.00

The following changes have been made to Theatre Manager since version 8.23

Miscellaneous Changes

• Fix on the startup routines to allow venues running postgres 8.3.10 to run theatre manager. TM was complaining that postgres 8.3.10 was too old - even though it was just released.
• The subscribe to mail list feature has been replaced with a link to take you to our RSS feed so that you can sign up via your browser. The RSS feed replaces the notification feature for new versions.
• Changed icons in the menu 'Patron Sales'->'Subscriptions' to be consistent with toolbar.
• Updated the web interface to allow patrons to add new household members to an existing patron via the web
• Fixed a bug that prevented new patrons from adding themselves online that was introduced in 8.23.02
• You can no longer print post dated payments on donation receipts
• Only show reports in the EOD wizard that a user has access to by other means in other parts of TM.
• Fix to allow Mac OSX users who are using the network log in feature to be able to connect to a database. This affects only one venue.
• Workflow notifications now link the notification to the employee's 'letters' tab so that they can go back and view them later if they delete the emails.
• Workflow notifications can now use the patron full address on them instead of having to put in each address line an the city/state province
• Workflow notifications will now retrieve the marketing record information when sending out a notification. This means you can set up a notification for something like a current donation - and include statistics like total donated in the past 7 years, or what you wish.
• Fix to allow web sales to search for tickets by date/year/venue /event again. This was broken in 8.23.00
• Fix issue where user pre-enters the authorization code for a credit card (known as a post-auth) in theatre manager. The advisory message now displays properly
• Checks can now be used in post dated payments again
• Allow people with appropriate permissions to help do other people's till balance
• Fix a problem when subscriptions are booked or renewed online, they could not be edited afterwards in the season package detail.

Specific Unicode version changes

This version of Theatre Manager is in limited release at this current time - and will become the default version of Theatre Manager in a month or so

• Email blast now sends things out correctly
• The popup list to select fields for a form letter now works in the unicode version
• Notifications now tracks the data sent in the letters list properly.
• Theatre Manager help and email links now open properly on windows platform. Some changes to the calls to windows were required. Opening 'Mail' or links in OSX always worked.

Things a venue may need to do

• Read all prior release notes back to the version you upgraded from and follow any instructions for each version under the subject 'Things a venue may need to do'
• Compare the new standard web pages and make the required changes as per below in the htdocs folder

Changes to Web Pages

Make a copy of the WebPages folder and name it WebPagesEN. Do this and make ALL changes below in the WebPagesEN folder before upgrading Theatre Manager to version 8.24.00. Please download the web page updates and compare the web pages in the WebPagesEN folder with with the template files in this mini archive. If you have not made any changes from prior versions, you may need to get the full set of standard web pages and compare them.

Note: on PC Apache servers, please find all files called '.ds_store' and delete those for PCI compliance.

Files in the main WebPagesEN directory
TMpatronUpdate.html	compare old page to new
tmError.txt	additional error message number 10154
tmTemplates
rowPatronEmail.html	compare old page to new. Fixes a mistake that prevented new patrons adding themselves in version 8.23.02 or later.