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Version 9.05

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Upgrade Time

The upgrade time from version 9.0x might be 15-40 minutes (only an estimate) for an average site, it could be longer if you have lots of historical data and transactions. This is a WALKAROUND install

Key Changes in Version 9.05

  1. Theatre Manager is now officially PCI DSS 1.2 compliant. The final PCI 1.2 compliance requirements signed off by the PCI council. They required one small change to TM to change for credit card encryption from 3DES/1key to AES256 at the Council's request.
  2. Facility Management has been enhanced to support printing estimates and final bills based on the resources and personnel involved in the projects. The interface has been cleaned up in response to user feedback.
  3. A number of web enhancements have been added. Implementing one of them may require comparing the web pages and one will require editing.

Almost everything else in this version is primarily a minor usability enhancement release and a collection of minor bug fixes. It is recommended for all venues using version 9. The following changes have been made to Theatre Manager since version 9.04

Point Release Version History

Point releases are minor version fixes and small enhancements to any particular version.

  • 9.05.06 - Dec 18, 2010
  • 9.05.08 - Dec 24, 2010
  • 9.05.09 - Jan 9, 2011
  • 9.05.10 - Jan 22, 2011
  • 9.05.11 - Jan 25, 2011
  • 9.05.12 - Jan 26, 2011
  • 9.05.14 - Feb 2, 2011
  • 9.05.15 - Feb 7, 2011 (Walkaround Install)
  • 9.05.17 - Feb 9, 2011
  • 9.05.18 - Feb 26, 2011
  • 9.05.19 - Mar 10, 2011 (Walkaround Install)

Facility Management

  • Revised the look of the task window to make it easier to enter data into the window
  • Implemented private calendar items. When set, only the owner and and 'delegates' to the owner can see the calendar item. All others see the time blocked out on the calendar with the word 'private' on it.
  • Changed the flow of how the gantt chart is opened to be consisted with other windows. Now, opening the project list and editing a project takes you to the project header window. You must explicitly open the gantt charge from either the project list and/or detail window.
  • Implemented a standard for calendar types so that when a user picks the calendar types, Theatre Manager will now know which fields that the venue desires to be mandatory. These calendar types are set up in code tables.
  • Reworked all the calendar interface to make it more consistent and standardize positions, colours, etc
  • Added resources. You can now assign resources to a task (eg projector, coffee, stage, etc) and bill for their usage. Cost and prices default from the resource setup - and can be changed for each project that you assign them to. Discounting of resources is also possible.
  • Implemented the ability to create an 'estimate' invoice for a task. When its time to bill to a patron, you can now print the actual invoice with the resources and personnel used on the project
  • Simplified the interface for creating calendar filters and make it more obvious what each option does
  • Eliminated some crashes on the calendar after rewriting how the window displays itself
  • Calendar Preferences on the upper right of the calendar window now allow you to set the number of hours to view on calendars. The default is 15 hours but it can be set to 24 hours for situations like move in scheduling and round the clock operations (9.05.08)
  • Disable deleting of personnel financial transactions after they have been created under the condition of deleting the personnel from the task. Once billed, reversal transactions must be created so that the order remains in balance (9.05.08)
  • Posting of resources and personnel to the GL has been temporarily disabled in version 9.05.08. It will return soon, subject to some more testing
  • revise 'Accept meeting' message on task window and other messages that are displayed for clarity (9.05.08)
  • Fix a possible crash if the user dragged an item on the gantt chart earlier than its predecessor. (9.05.15)
  • Fix an SQL error obtaining the notifications if the language preference was set to something other than English. (9.05.15)

Events

  • The process of editing class dates and venues was revised to be more standard with other parts of Theatre Manager and correct some visual display issues at the same time.
  • Dramatically improved finding the people who attended an event in the attendance tab. This same performance improvement was added into a number of reports that also show event attendance.
  • The first and last performance dates on the event list now update to show first and last course dates if the event is for a course (9.05.08)
  • Some edits were added so that only reserved seating performances can be set as a control house event (9.05.08)
  • Courses can no longer be set so that they can be sold at other outlets (9.05.08)

Donations

  • Fixed an issue for calculating the number of pledge reminders remaining and moved it into the stored procedures for greater accuracy.
  • Relaxed rules so that donations taken with ticket sale can also be marked as direct gift or hard pledge (9.05.10)

Volunteer/Personnel

  • Fixed an issue to allow entry of date ranges when the volunteer history record is not connected to an event or performance (9.05.10)
  • Corrected the subtotalling on the volunteer hour summary report to aggregate by patron (9.05.14)

Sales Process

  • Fixed a rare issue where an attempt to authorize a card against orbital (that failed) -and then - the payment method was changed to cash or check would cause the payment that was entered to be 'invisible' to the till balance and also prevent it form being deleted prior to end of day.
  • Prevent returning tickets to events that are archived
  • Prevent ticket exchanges for events that are archived
  • Fix an issue in outlet sales where the ticket was originally sold by another outlet and refunded by the original outlet. The G/L now reflects the finances of how the ticket was returned properly.
  • Fixed an issue where merging a patron that has purchased and is attending a course into another patron would result in additional attendance record being created. This only could occur if merging the person with a course to another person, not vice versa (9.05.08)
  • Address an issue where the CC server ID (TROUT ID) was getting cleared when it should not have been (9.05.10)
  • Re-enable printing of invoice footer for all invoices. It was restricted to situations where there was only tickets in the order by mistake (9.05.12)

Web Sales

  • You can now require patrons to click on a checkbox during check-out of their shopping cart where they explicitly acknowledge your terms an conditions of sale. This checkbox is set in the shopping cart detail window so that you know that the patron acknowledged the conditions (in case you turn the feature on/off/on/off for any reason).
  • The Web Listener now tests for certain system power mode settings on OSX. it will not start unless Airport is disabled and power management prevents sleep of the system. We have found situation where, if not done, OSX would hibernate temporarily affecting web sales performance. Windows web listeners are not affected.
  • Fixed an issue with the apache module where we discovered it would only support up to 15 listeners (all platforms). The OSX module been altered to support up to 100 listeners. The Windows and Linux modules currently remain at 15 listener maximum
  • Allow StartTLS ftp connectivity to the FTP server for additional security when sending pictures from Theatre Manager to your internal FTP site - when these pictures are used for eblasts.
  • Fixed a couple of issues for sending back unicode characters to web pages. Accented character were resulting in the length of the page being under-reported to the apache server
  • Changed the meaning of the exporteventlist function when sent to the apache server. It is now reserved for artsman use only - for an exciting future product that will be available to all. Instead, created a function called exportevents that replaces the above. Anybody using it for a drupal extract will need to fix the web pages as per the instructions below and the external link is now similar to

    http://tickets.myserver.org/TheatreManager/1/exportevents

  • Fixed an issue with selling $value gift certificates online
  • Search for an patrons with email addresses, yet have blank passwords and provide them with a random initial password so they can log in.
  • Added a feature to the shopping cart window where double clicking on a ticket in the cart will show all transactions for that ticket number. This can be used to show the original sale and any subsequent ownership changes to a reserved seat (9.05.08)
  • The web listener should now reload code tables, sales promotions, events, etc immediately after a change (9.05.10) to be more responsive to user changes.
  • Fixed a display issue on the web pages when printing ticket or future tickets on the web. TM will now read the performance notes along with other note/text fields from the performance, event, and theatre map records so that they contain information. If you do not use performance notes, you will not have encountered this issue. (9.05.11)
  • Fix an issue where the email notification from a change of the patron account could show up as 'dear web listener' where the venue has notifications in place for web sales. (9.05.18)

Form Letters

  • Added a list on the 'Form Letters->Tasks' menu to allow you to find out who received a letter or eblast and/or look at the current status of a series of letters.
  • Fixed an issue that prevented calculated/custom fields from working. You can now combine other fields to create your own. You can also make 'conditional' paragraphs - for example print paragraph 'A' if donations are over $100 else print paragraph 'B'
  • Fix an issue where users using internal IP addresses to send pictures to the FTP site would see that same internal address on the email being sent out. This is fixed so that you can still use internal IP to talk to the FTP site, but the email blast process will link pictures to the external ip address 'tickets. xxx .org'
  • Fix a merge issue where donation pledge reminder fields were printing on one-at-a-time letters but not when batch merged (9.05.18).

Patrons

  • Fixed a small problem in a stored procedure that caused and SQL error when checking if all mandatory name information was supplied. This would only occur if the setting for required data was changed from 'name and or company' or 'name' to any other setting. (9.05.12)
  • Small enhancement to quick find process when searching by order. if that finds a patron, then the patron will be added to the recent patron list. (9.05.12)

Misc

  • When changing databases, if the Postgres server has been Bonjour enabled, you can blank out the IP address under Mac OSX and Theatre Manager should be able to find the server automatically for you.
  • Change bonjour lookup to return IP v4 addresses instead of IPv6 for easier understandability (9.05.08)
  • Some initial work on multi language on menus and toolbars. The framework is in place and needs to be expanded.
  • Some performance improvements in testing and activating buttons on long lists
  • Changed the '?' help button on dialogs to be a lot more obvious. It now says 'Explain?' and should take you to a web page that is explicit to the actual message.
  • Show the real name of the user that last edited the record instead of the user initials
  • Fixed column export order in the export routines so that only visible fields get exported
  • Implement a new feature in Postgres 9 that allows setting of the application name so that it is visible in PG Admin. This feature is used to show which employees are just using Theatre Manager, or which ones are in critical areas like 'Year End Rollover', 'End of Day', or 'Web Listener'. (9.05.08)
  • Fixed issue with class attendance report so that it displays attendance properly for multi-page reports 9.05.08)
  • Fix issue entering a sales promotion for a coupon. It was broken in 9.05.06 and is now fixed (9.05.08)
  • Asking for the export file for exporting was broken in 9.05.06. It is now fixed (9.05.08)
  • Exporting the file after selecting the location for it is actually now fixed (9.05.09)
  • Entering a G/L line for a G/L entry was broken in 9.05.06 and is now fixed (9.05.09)
  • Created a version of TM that will run on mac PPC/G5 on OSX (9.05.09)
  • Save the current columns of a list each time the column is moved or resized (9.05.10)
  • Changed context menu to address main toolbar preferences from any subwindow (9.05.10)
  • Fix the transaction count comparison in the order-transaction comparison report (9.05.10)
  • Address a situation where it was possible to add an email address to a patron that already was in the database and in use by another user (9.05.11)
  • Fix a very likely cause of random crashing on both Mac and PC . The issue lies within the database connectivity dll's requiring a walk around install. (9.05.15)
  • Address an edit number error when the user was changing the data on the company preferences while other users were actively printing tickets. (9.05.17)
  • Fix a very likely cause of random crashing on both Mac and PC . The issue lies within the database connectivity dll's requiring a walk around install. (9.05.18)
  • Fix a possible crash when opening some windows where the spell checker was active. (9.05.19)
  • Fix an issue where a GL entry could not be unposted at some specific times in the fiscal year, depending on when the fiscal year end was and whether the venue was tracking fiscal year end at start of year or end of year. (9.05.19)

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'. Please note that the web pages changes in this version are minor grammatical changes or of minimal impact and do not need to be implemented unless you wish to take advantage of the two new features described in the release notes (require reading terms and conditions - and a new future feature we know people will like, especially if implementing new ADA regulations).
  • If you are using OSX for web listeners, then you will need to make sure that airport is powered down and other power saving features are turned off. The web listeners will no longer start if airport is on (PCI compliance and significant performance reasons.)
  • There are two new PCI advisories that require a small change to the httpd.conf file and a restart of apache. If your scans are failing, please install them.
  • We have made available apache 2.2.17 in our standard installers. The Apache OSX installer also contains module version 1.4.5 which increases the number of possible listeners from 15 to 100 (or you can download it separately if you are not upgrading Apache). The Windows Apache Installer is also upgraded but the module version remains at 1.2.9.
  • Compare the standard web pages for the web pages changes listed below and make appropriate changes.
  • If you are exporting the event list to drupal, make sure to change the web pages below and also change the function that gets the events to

    http://tickets.myserver.org/TheatreManager/1/exportevents

    • Changes to Web Pages

      Please download the web page updates and compare the web pages.

      Files in the each outlet directory (1)
      TMcheckout.html Added a new feature where you can require purchasers to confirm that they have read your terms and conditions before checking out
      TMticketsExport.html Changed to describe the meaning and use of the page- but probably no functional changes to the page
      TMticketsExportCustom.html New page to take the place of the TMticketsExport.html for those venues using an export to a drupal site. This page is accessed from your drupal site using

      http: // tickets . yourvenue . org/TheatreManager/1/exportevents

      tmError.txt new error message (10155) that contains text required for confirming terms and conditions.
      Files in the main templates directory
      rowTicketEventExport.html This must be set to the standard contents of this page - in order to take advantage of an upcoming feature (not announced yet, but nearly finished development)
      rowTicketEventExportCustom.html New Page - starts with the same contents as rowTicketEventExport.html, however if you have used the event export to drupal site, then make this page have the contents of your current rowTicketEventExport.html
      tmtermsandconditions.html New Page - contains the terms and conditions of ticket sales (or web sales) on your venue if you wish patrons to confirm prior to the sale proceeding. You MUST edit this page to set up the base href for your venue.
      Files in the tmScripts directory
      pleaseWaitMessageFunction.html added a function for popup window opening - which is currently only used for terms and condtions