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Version 8.20

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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