Key features and improvements since version 7:
Version 8.00Version 8 is a significant upgrade with over 50 new features. Many changes relate to 'under the hood' performance along with enhancements to various parts of Theatre Manager based on feedback from users. From the users perspective, version 8 looks and functions the same as version 7. There are additional buttons in various places to extend functionality. Users familiar with version 7 should not need training on version 8. Version 8 will be installed by the Arts Man Support team using remote access. It is free to all venues who have a current active support agreement. Upgrades will occur during normal support hours on dark days. For those on after hours support, evening upgrade time slots may be arranged. April 2009 |
Key changes:
There are mandatory web change for this version and a new Apache Loadable module must be installed. For this version, it will be done by Arts Management Support team. |
Before upgrade |
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After Upgrade |
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Optional Steps |
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Time Required |
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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.
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):
Window or function | After | Improvement |
email blasts | Does one ping at the start of the process (and each time there is an interruption longer than a minute). We also adjusted memory management | about 3 times faster on small batches. Much faster on large batches of emails. The standard test suite now allows 4000-5000 emails to be sent per hour from the merge process |
record inserts | revised the methodology of generating new keys | 10-15% improvement inserting new records in all aspects of Theatre Manager |
Open Sales window | Optimized the reading of records | window opens about 10% faster |
selling individual tickets | There is a minor change to selling one ticket by clicking on it and then clicking on another | small, not generally appreciable |
selling block of tickets | when selecting multiple tickets and booking at one time, the process goes much faster. | selling between 10 and 80 tickets at one time - speed improvement was as much as 3 times faster. Example selling 83 tickets took 30 seconds. It now takes less than 10 seconds. |
Selling any ticket | server contention and record locking has been optimized | any number of users may now sell large blocks of tickets simultaneously without any record locking happening. We have noticed that each ticket workstation in a large venue now receives the same response time from the server (on average) |
End of Day Posting | Some work that used to be done during end of day to post to daily statistics is now done during the ticket sale | even though the ticket sale is 3 times faster, this change also improved end of day posting by a factor of 2 to 2.5 times. Posting 280 transactions is about 2 time faster. |
Refunding tickets | refunding tickets and creation of transactions is now about 1.5 times faster | |
Entering donations | the allocation of payments and creation of transactions was optimized | entering a new donation is about 2 times faster. |
Finding Patrons and other records | The actual performance of finding records has not changed. We optimized this display of the records on the work stations. | displaying a moderate number of patron, orders, shopping carts and such is as much as 10 times faster. Retrieving them from the database takes the same amount of time - the display is much faster because work is now done on the server. |
Postgres optimizations | a number of indexes were removed from fields that are heavily updated to take advantage of a feature in postgres version 8.3 | In general, this optimization results in about a 30% improvement in record I/O a the server on a properly tuned system. |
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:
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:
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:
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.
There are a number of minor changes on this window:
Theatre now supports redemption of coupon codes on the web. There are three pre-conditions to accepting them:
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:
Operating system | Generic Location | Typical Path name |
OS-X | HOME | ~/Library/Preferences/TheatreManager/TheatreManager.plist note: ~ refers to each users preferences, or /User/MyUser/Library/Preferences/TheatreManager |
Win 2000 and XP | USERPROFILE | C:\Documents and Settings\MyUser\Application Data\TheatreManager\TheatreManager.txt |
Vista | LOCALAPPDATA | C:\Users\MyUser\AppData\Local\TheatreManager\TheatreManager.txt |
Version 8.04This version is a maintenance release for most venues with little changed here and there to improve the user experience. It added one main new feature for tracking attendance in each class for a course and printing attendance lists. May 26, 2009 |
Key changes:
There are no mandatory web change for this version. |
Before upgrade |
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After Upgrade |
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Optional Steps |
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Time Required |
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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.
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.
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>
The following changes have been made to Theatre Manager since version 8.09
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
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:
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.
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.
Passes now allow you to specify the number of tickets to redeem from any one pass. This allows you to:
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.
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:
This also works on the end of day wizard copy of the receivables list and adjusts the various calculations to show balancing status
The print process now only considers printable documents and the email process now only considers those that are marked as email.
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.
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.
The following changes have been made to Theatre Manager since version 8.13
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:
There is a key revision to enable tax calculation on a per performance basis in the Event window
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:
Limited Profile Patrons also allows quick sign up to any number of mail lists by providing only name and email info without signing in.
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:
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.
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.
The following changes have been made to Theatre Manager since version 8.15
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.
The following changes have been made to Theatre Manager since version 8.16
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.
The following changes have been made to Theatre Manager since version 8.17
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
The following changes have been made to Theatre Manager since version 8.20
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:
The upgrade time from version 8.21 is very short.
This is a walk around install
The following changes have been made to Theatre Manager since version 8.21
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:
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..
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
The following changes have been made to Theatre Manager since version 8.22
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:
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:
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.
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
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 |
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.
The following changes have been made to Theatre Manager since version 8.23
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
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. |