Working From Home

For those working from home and requiring access to Theatre Manager, you can put tools in place to provide access from outside the office. Working from home via remote access is different based on where the database is hosted in your organization.

Hosting Options:

  • Self-Hosted: your database and web services are on your own internal servers. You need to supply you own remote access tools.
  • Artsman Cloud Hosted: your database is hosted by Artsman. Much simpler remote access, since all people in your company are, in effect, using remote access, no matter where they are located.

Working from home: Venues hosting their own databases

If you are self-hosting your database, where the database serve is located in your office, we recommend using a VPN for secure access and an application such a Remote Desktop, LogMeIn, Go To My PC or TeamViewer. Applications such as these will allow you to access a computer within the office and work from that computers desktop. If you choose to implement a Terminal Server staff can work off the same machine using their own remote session.

Various ways of accessing the database remotely are outlined in Remote Access to Theatre Manager and refers to some considerations to maintain PCI compliance.

Comprehensive Links are provided in the page above, as well as some key technologies below for convenience.

 

Common remote access mechanisms

While there are many vendors of remote access software, the ones that we see used most often are:

  • Using a VPN and local copy of TM for full and secure network access - best used when internet connections are fast
  • Using Microsoft Remote Access (RDP) and Terminal Server for full managed access to TM - best used when internet is marginal/poor or you need to control internal network access
  • Using a remote access tool like TeamViewer, LogMeIn, or similar to simply access your own machine from a remote location. Best when no remote ticket printing is required.

Working from home: Venues using Artsman Cloud

Artsman clients currently using our Cloud Hosting service can connect to their database simply by installing Theatre Manager on their work station, selecting Cloud Hosting and entering their unique key and password. The link for installing Theatre Manager is the same as those provided in the initial email for connecting to Cloud Hosting.

The following three steps indicate how to install on your home computer:

  1. Download and run the latest 64 bit version of Theatre Manager for:
  2. Connect to Artsman Cloud Hosting:
    • follow the steps in the online help page
    • use your company cloud credentials -and-
    • log in using your standard Theatre Manager Employee password when you see the password screen
  3. (Optional) Install any recommended Windows or OSX updates available to your home machine so that you have the latest security patches and virus software definitions. However, stay with your current version. eg:
    • if you are using High Sierra on macOS, just update to latest High Sierra patch.
    • If you are at Mojave, update to latest Mojave patch.
    • Do not update to a more recent OS version like Mojave or Catalina or Windows 7.1 to Windows 8.1 or Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 at this time.
    • This helps ensure that your personal applications still work.
Throughout this period, we will ensure that your cloud services continue with same high level of service and provide support to you during our office hours while you work from home.