Version 6.37 This version is a major release with many changes though-out Theatre Manager.   We suggest reading the release notes completely. Version 6.21 • Updates Released April 19, 2004

Key changes: Ability to return tickets directly to a default 'hold' map - prevents prime seats being taken on the internet Ability to control access to holds by user To Do/reminder capability for notes enhanced best seat algorithm to support a two pass mode where seats are purposely left open Ongoing enhancements with web sales New donor capability - tracking outstanding pledges ability to set mail lists, events and form letters inactive so that they do not show up in lists. ability to allow access to each mail lists by user ability to create 'sales' plug in code to provide more automated sales processing.

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Preparing for the Update

Theatre Manager will

• Reorganize the database

The user will need to

Before upgrade	Upgrade to version 5.72 if you are not already at that version. Refer to earlier release notes about the process. Review release notes starting from the version you are currently using, up to and including this version. Previous upgrades may require you to perform additional steps before upgrading and/or after upgrading. They may also list areas of Theatre Manager you need to update with new data requirements before using the new version.
After upgrade	If you have the web listener installed, you may need to adjust some web pages.
Optional Steps	None
Time Required	Between 30 minutes and an hour from version 6.33 or higher. It could be 2 or 3 hours from any version less than 6.33. We recommend doing this upgrade on a dark day or overnight. The upgrade performance is dependant on number of mail lists and patrons in your database.

Web Sales

• Various enhancements to web sales - all web sales clients should be running version 6.37 or higher or Theatre Manager
• The Event cache which contains the events that are on sale is now reloaded each time the listener is inactive for 10 minutes. This is in addition to start up of the web listener, restart after going into backup mode, or each time a show is taken off sale and a user tries to by it. This is an attempt to keep the sales process fast, yey reload the events that are on sale more than once a day.
• Fixed a possible issue with the checkout process and credit card authorization. Shutting down the credit card server in the middle of an authorization at the web listener could have caused the web listener to go into a loop. This is now prevented.
• The web listner will now display a message in the log (instead of a dialog that stopped web sales) if you install a new point release at other workstations and forget to upgrade the web listener.

To Do/Planner

• There is a new window in theatre manager that will show all the outstanding to-do's, etc.. It is under the "Theatre Manager" menu and is called "to-do's". When this window is opened, you can filter out all items for all patrons by:
  • any employee responsible for the action item
  • status of the action item (eg done/in progress/not done)
  • type of action item (eg letters/ notes/ to-do's, etc.)
  • bulk complete your own tasks (master users can do anybody's)
  • and more
• On the detail window for notes/to-do's, you can now specify an alarm time. This can be set minutes/hours/or days in advance of the due date for the action item. And Theatre Manager will remind you (on the alarm time) that the action item is due.

Reports

• Form Letters and Mailing Labels - able to sort the printing order by any patron field you desire
• Form Letters - with the implementation of the To Do/Planner module, you can now mass remove letters instead of doing them one by one. You do this by clicking on the To Do button from the toolbar, then do a search for all your letters, highlight the letters and click the remove button on the bottom right of the window.
• There is a new donation report called 'Donor Behind In Their Pledge Payments'. It works in conjunction with a new donor field called 'remaining plesge payments'. This report finds all donations with remaining pledge payments and then compared the nubmer of pledge reminders sent out with the amount received to far and prints a list of those donors that are late paying their pledge.
• 'simple criteria' has been enhanced to automatically select certain keys (eg order number, event number, patron number) on the child records. This can increase the performance of some reports by quite a bit.
• The 'check seat-transaction balance' report now works for general admission sales method.
• Changed reports to remove parent unique keys on the 'simple criteria'. Made some searches a lot faster

Patron Information

• Media tab - added the media kit flag for sending to media/press people
• Merging Patrons - email addresses will now be shown when you select patron records to be merged
• Cannot add/remove inactive mail lists from a patron record (see miscellaneous changes below)
• Mail Lists tab - added new columns:
  • Date Added - the date patron was first added to mail list
  • User - which user (employee) added this patron to the mail list
  • Date Updated - if a mail list was re-run and this patron still put on the mail list again, then the date this occurred
  • Source - how the patron was added either manually, via data import, via ticket purchase, mail list execution or patron added self via internet)

Ticket Selling

• Held Seats - added the function to set default holds on a venue map. This is done through Setup >> Venue Maps. You can highlight seats and click the lock button to hold the seats with the letter you specified. If these default held seats are sold but then exchange or returned they will be returned to their default hold status. Within each event and its performances you can override the default and set up your own custom holds for each performance by going to Setup >> Events & Dates >> Performance tab. Then highlighting seats you want to hold, select the appropriate hold letter, clicking the hold button. To set the custom return to hold you simply press the 'Set return hold map to Current Holds' button. At any time you can reset the holds to the default venue map holds by clicking the 'Restore return hold map to Theatre Default' button.
• Held Seats - added the ability to specify which employees are able to set, release or sell (see below)
• Exchanging Tickets - when you select a ticket and click the exchange button, the play selection window will state the event you are exchanging tickets from in the error message area of the window
• Quick Exchange - fixed an error that did not check to see if a price code was valid for the section (applicable only to reserved seating). Also, fixed an error that did not check is a selected price code was valid for the new promotion (applicable to all ticket sales types)
• Best Seats - implemented a two-pass scheme when searching for best seats and most applicable to dinner theatres. This two-pass scheme basically 'protects' seats until the second pass. Using the example of finding two seats at any number of tables ? with the goal being that all tables are filled with two people BEFORE starting to double up on tables and seating two couples at the same table:
  
  What happens (if you set the best area values correctly), is that Theatre Manager will scoot through the seats looking for the best xx number of seats that are at UNUSED tables. If it can?t find them, then it will go through the seats a second time and seat people twice.
  
  How you do this is by adding a special marker to a table or row of seats in the 'best area'. It looks like this (note the '#' at the end of some items in table 110 and table 111):
  
  

  Best Area 110 110 110# 110# 111 111 111# 111#

  Seat# 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

  
  Suppose you are looking for 2 seats. On the first pass, TM finds table 110 (seats 1 & 2) then table 111 (seats 5 & 6). TM effectively ignores the best area seats that have a # in them, which is seats 3,4,7 & 8. If none of those are acceptable, then a get next best seat will start at seats 1 & 2, then 3 & 4, then 5 & 6, then 7 & 8 ? just like it used to on the one pass method.
  
  However, if you were looking for 4 seats, then on the first pass, TM would find table 110, seats 1,2,3,4 (if they are open), then table 111 (seats 5,6,7,8). It would not do a second pass.
  
  The implication is that TM will now only consider table 110 if you are looking for 2 seats and the first two are open (otherwise it will ignore the seats). Or, it will consider table 110 if the user asks for MORE seats such as 4 seats. It wont find it for 3 seats because TM does not leave any single seats in tables (ever).
  
  Think of this as 'protecting' the seats with the # in the best area until the second pass.
  
  Extrapolating this to any other venue.... You could create a two pass method for a traditional venue where you select seats that are close to centre aisle and ignore seats at the outside on the first pass (unless the person needs that many tickets). Then on second pass, they?d be picked up. As example on the map below where 'x' represents a normal 'best area' and '#' represents a seat where the best area has a '#' at the end of it:
  
  #####xxxxxx xxxxxx##### <--- protects last 5 seats of outside of rows
  #####xxxxxx xxxxxx##### <--- protects last 5 seats of outside of rows
  #####xxxxxx xxxxxx##### <--- protects last 5 seats of outside of row
  ###xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx### <--- protects last 3 seats of outside of row
  ###xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx### <--- protects last 3 seats of outside of row
  xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx
  
  The 'protected seats' mean that the centre (near the aisle) will be filled first, unless a patron asks for 10 seats, in which case they would get the seats with '#' in them. Its just another way to dress the house.
  
  Would a typical venue use this scheme? ...rarely for most venues. Only if they really want to spread people into separate rows or all over the place. For example, a scheme like the one below where every second seat has '##' in it would seat people in every second seat - leaving holes of two seats, unless somebody wanted 4, 6, or 8 seats. It would spread people out throughout the house (theoretically).
  
  ##xx##xx##xx xx##xx##xx##
  xx##xx##xx## ##xx##xx##xx
  ##xx##xx##xx xx##xx##xx##
  xx##xx##xx## ##xx##xx##xx
  ##xx##xx##xx xx##xx##xx##
  xx##xx##xx## ##xx##xx##xx
  

Donations

• New field on donor record called D_NUMBER_PAYMENTS_REMAINING.
  • It is only for pledge payments, so if there is a pledge schedule, this will tell you the expected number of payments left
  • It is zero if there is no pledge payments at all
  • Used in a new report 'donor with overdue pledge reminder' that shows if there are outstanding pledge payments due
  • This is defined as:
  • if payments are left
  • check all pledge reminders and count amount due for reminders before today - those in future ignored.
  • count all donation receipts up to today
  • if amount due is greater than amount received, then pledge reminder has gone out and payment is outstanding
  • this gets it on the report...so show collectables
  • note: post dated payments indicate order is paid, so these would not be outstanding
• Fixed a bug in the donor notification via the internet. If a donation came in over the internet, Theatre Manager did not recognize the source and so did not send out the proper notification. Now, notification emails are sent out for internet donations if they are set up to do so
• If adding a letter for post dated payment on the donation window, it now selects the receipt date (i.e. The post dated payment receipt date) as the date for the letter for the thank you letter automatically. This means you can now set up your donation, all the post dated payments, and all the thank you notes at one time. The thank you notes are future dated, so they should come out at the right time after the post dated payment is authorized.

Mail Lists

• Revised mail list window to add users who can change the mail list.
• Put code in place to prevent executing a mail list if the user is not priviledged. (Master users are always priviledged)
• Users cannot change list of users who can change mail list if they currently are not allowed to use the mail list.
• revised mail list window to add users who can change the mail list. If you need to manage mail lists by department, an upgrade to the Outlet Version of Theatre Manager may be required.
• If using the mail list for a patron merge file to build mail list, there is now a new database field criterion you can use. It is 'mail list source' which is how a patron was originally added to a mail list (see patron information above)

Employee Management

• Held Seats - if you allow employees to sell held seats you can set which hold letters they are able to set, release or sell. This is found in Setup >> Users and Access >> Employee Setup >> Level tab in the Hold Letters field.

Sales Plug-In's

• Plugin's are special code segments that can be custom written for your venue. Their purpose is to enforce site specific rules during the sales process. For example, plug ins could achieve the following kinds of special rules:
  • if more than 10 tickets are purchased, automatically change them to a group sale
  • provide preferred seating areas to donors of a certain level
  • limit ticket sales to certain events at certain times of the year to people who buy subscriptions
  • automatically convert ticket sales from single tickets to subscriptions if the customers buys a certain number of tickets.
  • automatically give subscribers (or frequent buyers) discounts on subsequent tickets.
  • prevent a sale for next season unless a donation is received.
• Plug ins may be associated with specific sales promotions and also when checking out an order.
• If you want a plug-in, you must contact Arts Management and speak with Doug or Darwin. Standard custom programming rate per hour applies.

Miscellaneous Changes

• If necessary, you can now specify the port that you wish to use to connect to a database via the data bridge.
• Added inactive fields in letters, plays, and mail lists so you can remove them from showing up in report criteria
• Added flag to mail list 'list' window, play list, letter list to show only active. Added 'checkbox' to allow 'inactive' to be shown as well
• Change startup so that if re-connecting to the database after shutting the web listener down for backups. If the site had upgraded Theatre Manager by a point release, but had forgotten to do the web listener, TM now sends a message to the error log instead of putting up a dialog and preventing the web listener from running.