Version 9.09

Upgrade Time

The upgrade time from version 9.08 is short. Upgrading this version requires, at a minimum:

• Installing TM on a workstation and allowing it to self deploy if you are already at version 9.08 or later.

Key Changes in Version 9.09

The following changes have been made to Theatre Manager since version 9.08

1. Add support to display seat availability on the web at a per performance basis.
2. Re-enable notifications sent by TM for items sold on the web and the venue is deferring transaction creation until end of day (for performance improvements)
3. Improve the messages and sales flow when booking subscriptions if there are issues
4. Continued improvements to Facility Management

Point Release Version History

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

• 9.09.02 - July 4, 2011
• 9.09.04 - July 12, 2011

Web Sales

• Implement an option to show which seats are already sold (or held) on the graphic map when presenting the seat choices to the patron. This option can be enabled globally, per event or per performance. It means that for some performances, you can choose to let the patron know which seats are taken (sold or held) and in others, hide that information if desired.

  Note: at this time, the colours on the map are black and white. We will be introducing colouring options later this year.

• Print at home capabilities have been improved slightly. When a patron indicates print at home in their cart at checkout, the tickets are marked printed automatically for those performances where print at home is permitted. The user no longer need rely on the printing setting in the order.
• Make the 'mail to patron' option more explicit in default data. If mail to patron is enabled, a mail fee must also be supplied (even if the fee is zero). Both must be enabled for the 'Mail me my tickets' button to activate on the web. IT is not abundantly clear on web setup if mailing is an option that can be selected by the patron.

Tickets Sales

• Add a flag to the merchant account setup that allows CVV2/CID information to be optionally sent to the merchant provider. This makes CVV2/CID similar to address verification as being optional to send to the bank. It has come to our attention that Moneris charges an additional setup fee to allow sending CVV2/CID and returns a decline if you are not, regardless if the card is ok. (This is in addition to the CVV2 setting in payment setup)

  While only really affecting Moneris authorization, this option CVV2/CID feature is now common to all merchant services.

• Fix issue that prevented ticket being released right after it was sold if the performance was set up to 'mark ticket printed'. (9.09.04)

Season Subscriptions

• Booking season subscriptions now adds patrons to any mail lists that are set up in the plays window.
• When booking subscriptions, if the expected number of tickets sold for the subscription does not match the actual count of tickets sold, the process has changed a bit. In addition to a dialog popping up warning of this condition, TM will either position the user ready to add single tickets or to clear out the entire sale and start over with different seats. If the correct number of tickets are booked, the user will be placed at the payment screen.
• Automatic order fees will now be added to the subscription for sales at the box office properly in all cases. There were some instances where it might have needed to be added manually if there were partial subscriptions booked.

Year End Rollover

• Clean up some transactions that were preventing rollover because they had not been posted. Some order transfer transactions had not been marked posted properly in earlier versions of Theatre Manager.

Posting

• Donations connected to an event are now posted to the G/L with that event tagged on the G/L. It means that the posting by event reports will show donation postings with the event associated with it, list like ticket sales. This simplifies sponsorship tracking for events.
• The donation daily audit report now prints the event currently associated with a donation on the report which is useful for sponsorship tracking.
• Improve the locking mechanisms on the posting process for all transaction types.
• Improve the delayed transaction posting process so that transactions created from web sales during end of day are marked with the web listeners 'Sales Source'. This also means that notifications will occur based on the appropriate sales source. If you have disabled deferred posting for web sales due to notifications not being sent, we recommend re-enabling it again to improve web performance.

Miscellaneous

• Disable the list that shows employee's accessing the system unless the version of postgres is 9.0 or later. This feature requires a new feature in postgres 9 to display all columns in the list.
• The patron relationship list in the patron window now displays values properly after a relationship has been added or changed. This was broken inadvertently in 9.08
• Address some instances of a master user (outlet version only) attempting to enter data into a sublist for a record belonging to another outlet - and make sure the outlet on the data is correct. It is the strong recommendation that a master user administration account generally never be used except for creating outlet administrators.
• Ensure record is automatically saved on the patron screen if some field is changed followed by editing the patron contact card.
• Modify eblast process to send right away if venue does not have web listeners (9.09.04)

Facility Management

• Implemented conflict checking for participants and volunteers for conflicting times; and tasks and performances for conflicting venues and times
• Fixed issue with detaching group calendars
• Added support for showing holidays and events in duplicate projects calendar
• Fixed a date search issue on single day calendars
• Date range now allowed for printing Gantt
• Relations in Gantt was only allowing deleting a single record at a time
• Gantt can now print to PDF
• When adding items to a group in Gantt, they were not always being inserted in the same place within the group
• Some editing of group information in Gantt has been disallowed
• You can now add extra columns, rearrange the order and remove columns (except Description column) in left side of Gantt. These changes and other settings are saved with the project and are restored the next time you open the project. They are also used as the defaults for printing and you can select which items to print/not print and the widths to use when printing Gantt.
• Task list in project detail now displays duration
• On opening Gantt, it is now more intelligent on determining where in the project you last left off
• You can now select which view of a calendar to see from the context menu
• In group calendars you can now go to any date from the context menu
• It was possible to edit some portions of a task even if you were not authorized
• It was possible to assign a resigned employee as a task owner
• Project tasks altered outside of Gantt now recalculate the starting/ending dates of the project properly
• When creating a new task in Gantt, the chart no longer shifts to the location of the newly created task, but stays where you left it
• The dates on Gantt now use the employee date defaults you selected in Preferences
• Volunteer activities now warn if you are trying to set periods longer than 6 months
• When adding a new task to a project with a starting date in the future, the task start date now defaults to the starting date of the project and not to today's date
• When harvesting Emails from the scheduling account, any Emails not having calendar attachments are deleted as spam. If anyone responds to an automatically created Email it now goes to the account the Email was sent from and not to the scheduling account
• Setting a task as inactive did not hide it on calendars
• Non-admins can now create background tasks if they have the right security level
• Implemented milestones in context menu of Gantt
• Right-clicking in the ToDo area of a calendar brings up only ToDo-type tasks in the task detail window
• Calendar task list searches now allow for both active and inactive tasks to be found
• Project list now displays projects in red/blue, depending on whether money is owed or owed to
• Projects can now be deleted if they have an order number, as long as there are no transactions or tickets associated with it
• Items in a Gantt chart now properly retain their ordering when moving them multiple times
• In many places, task types are now restricted to only the types that are appropriate for where you created the task from. This will eliminate errors on trying to save tasks with inappropriate types
• Tasks default to 1 hour if no specific length given
• In some cases the task type was not staying set
• Closing task window refreshes Notifications
• You are now warned if you try to create a ToDo that does not show on the calendar without any participants
• It was possible to attach personnel and resources to groups. They should only be attached to tasks
• Memory leaks were fixed
• Relations now strictly respect delay periods
• Notifications now show tasks you've created or are a part of, but also participants you've added, such as Emails to go to volunteers, so you don't see Emails set to go out that others have created. This also applies to those who you've designated as task editors
• End dates in ICS files were replicating the beginning date
• In some cases, changing the starting date/time in the Gantt detail window was not properly setting the ending date
• Project list was not displaying "In Progress" projects
• Some Edit/Delete functions were not available in the context menus on either side of Gantt
• It was possible to be unable to cancel data entry in project detail
• In some cases venue for a project was not set properly when selecting a performance
• Some speed enhancements
• In certain cases, activity type was not displaying on Volunteer history window
• It was possible to save a project without a name under some circumstances
• Filter tab text was not using the user-defined terms for these items
• Multiple lists on filter tabs now space out evenly when resizing the window
• Volunteer schedule was not allowing all-day items
• When new activities were added to group scheduling, new activities sometimes didn't show until the window was refreshed
• You could not change calendar view when duplicating projects
• Improve calculation of duration of task based on date range of task under some circumstances (9.09.04)
• Ensure notifications are sent to participants when tasks are deleted under certain circumstances (9.09.04)
• Prevent starts and end date of task being set to null if category had last item deleted (9.09.04)

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 are upgrading from an earlier version, you may have to do some of the 'Things a venue may need to do' for those earlier versions.
• Decide if you wish to show which seats are taken on the web interface and make the appropriate selection in Setup->Company Preferences->Web Options tab and over-ride in Setup->Events if the behaviour is to be different for specific events.
• Also on the 'Web Options' tab, review the ticket printing options and set a mailing fee and/or turn off mailing if desired.