 |
Minor updates and code changes occur every day. Only significant or noteworthy updates are shown here. Updates shown with a gold background are (or were at the time) only available to Advanced HOPS members.
| Time Date | System Updates |
|---|---|
| Update 1105 27 November 2024 | There will be a brief period of downtime on Friday 29 November, between 0730 and 0800 GMT. This is to enable server upgrade work. That's.... 15:30 AWST in West Australia 18:00 ACDT in South Australia 18:30 AEDT in New South Wales / Victoria / Tasmania Part of this work includes changes to reduce or eliminate the need for downtime in the future, which has become all the more important now that HOPS deals with sales transactions. Time Register devices will be unaffected and will store up transactions until HOPS comes back online. POS devices will display a prompt inviting the operator to 'work offline', after which they will work normally and upload transactions when HOPS comes back online. Card payments are unaffected. For confidence, there will be a brief test period after the site is taken offline to prove the POS devices before work starts, during which time the work can be aborted if necessary. Public ticket sales websites will be offline. We apologise for any inconvenience. If you have any queries please contact your HOPS Admin, or HOPS Admins contact HOPS HQ. |
| Update 1103 22 November 2024 | There is now a facility to archive events. A link to the 'archive' is present at the top of the list. (If you find archived events showing in other parts of the system please let me know) Thanks Danny S. |
| Update 1098 13 November 2024 | Discounts on EVENTS now have additional options for: - Redeemable between dates (Eg "buy your Santa ticket during the month of August and get a discount") - Redeemable X days before event (Eg "buy your Santa ticket at least 7 days in advance and get a discount") - Redeemable for sessions between dates (Eg Where a dining train has sessions throughout the year "buy a ticket for a dining train that runs in September and get a discount"). |
| Update 1096 7 November 2024 | A route map has been added to the top of the 'Travel' page in the public tickets website, to assist passengers understanding the layout of stations. (We are aware that, for some railways, the stations have been 'fiddled' to provide the desired result, and in these cases the route map won't be suitable for public display. If this applies to you please let us know and we can hide it on a railway-by-railway basis.) We intend to develop this further to provide information about the stations, such as toilets, cafe, etc, in the future. |
| Update 1095 7 November 2024 | A clock has been added to the POS interface. This is in response to feedback as the Start bar is normally hidden on POS machines, so the clerk can't look in the bottom right corner to see the time. We hope it helps. |
| Update 1094 7 November 2024 | A new 'Offers & Discounts' card is available for the Tickets home page. It leads to a page that lists discounts that are 'Automatically Apply' and 'Show Decoration' in the settings of the Discount Code. This is ideal for 'Earlybird' discounts. The settings for the card on the Home page can be edited in Ticket System Settings > Discounts > Discount Settings Tab. |
| Update 1092 6 November 2024 | The Feedback system has now been commissioned for customers who have made online orders. The system can be accessed via https://www.raildays.org/feedback This will be developed for walk-up customers next. |
| Update 1091 5 November 2024 | A 'Location' tab has been added to the Retail Sales Order Details page showing a map of the customer's location (based on their post code). |
| Update 1090 4 November 2024 | Some tidying-up of some tick system back office pages has taken place: ORDER DETAILS PAGE This was getting too large and becoming slow to load, so has now been separated into tabs. Two commonly-used links from the top that have been moved in to tabs are: 'Refund Options' and 'Issue Credit Note' are in the 'Items & Payments' tab; 'Re-send Confirmation Email' is in the 'Comms & Emails' tab. SESSION DETAILS PAGE A new page has been added for this, with tabs for 'Bookings', 'Questions' and 'Feedback'. This has made the event overview page a but less cluttered. FEEDBACK Is reflected: - in Ticket System (feedback for all orders) [this has been moved from the Retail Systems section] - in the Order Details page (feedback for that order) - in the Event pages (feedback for all sessions on that event) - in the Session pages (feedback for that session) |
| Update 1088 26 October 2024 | "Reminder Emails" have been introduced. These are emails that are sent at a time relative to when the customer will be visiting. They can be set for any number of days up to 30 before the date of visit, and can help to prepare the customer for their visit (eg what to bring) or create excitement in the lead up to a visit (eg 'Santa is looking forward to seeing you!') Reminder emails can be set for events in the event settings and for travel in the Travel settings. Former email facilities are unaffected - the order confirmation email and "additional" email are unchanged. These are sent when the customer makes their booking. |
| Update 1087 25 October 2024 | Settings related to "Normal Travel" have been moved into a common tab in the Ticket System Settings area. The tab is named as whatever your railway called "Normal Travel" (default = "Heritage Travel"). This now houses: - General Travel Settings - Travel Options (List) - Travel Options (Matrix) - Fares - Stations - Emails (inc Reminder Emails) |
| Update 1086 25 October 2024 | It is now possible to set a discount code to automatically apply. When selected, the code will attempt to apply every time the user adds an item to their basket. Additional fields are provided for the next development of this facility, to decorate the pages with the discounted price, eg " This is a solution to the "Buy tickets up to the day before to get 10% off" requirement, using the attribute of a discount code 'valid X days before travel'. |
| Update 1085 20 October 2024 | There will be some periods of downtime on Tuesday 22 October, between 7.30 and 8.30am BST. This is to enable server upgrade work. That's.... 15:30-16:30 AWST in West Australia 17:00-18:00 ACST in North Australia 18:00-19:00 ACDT in South Australia 17:30-18:30 AEST in Queensland 18:30-19:30 AEDT in New South Wales / Victoria / Tazmania 09:30-10:30 in Italy 09:30-10:30 in South Africa Part of this work includes changes to reduce or eliminate the need for downtime in the future, which has become all the more important now that HOPS deals with sales transactions. Time Register devices will be unaffected and will store up transactions until HOPS comes back online. POS devices will display a prompt inviting the operator to 'work offline', after which they will work normally and upload transactions when HOPS comes back online. Card payments are unaffected. For confidence, there will be a brief test period after the site is taken offline to prove the POS devices before work starts, during which time the work can be aborted if necessary. Public ticket sales websites will be offline. We apologise for any inconvenience. If you have any queries please contact your HOPS Admin, or HOPS Admins contact HOPS HQ. Thank you. |
| Update 1081 7 October 2024 | When taking a telephone order it is no longer necessary to have the two-part process of recording the order in POS and then coming to HOPS to take the payment. The MOTO payment can now be conducted in POS via the three-dots near the CASH and CARD options. Permission 528 required. |
| Update 1080 1 October 2024 | A 'Template' system has been added to the Discount Codes section to enable easy creation of 'Community Donations'. Eg raffle prizes etc. Any number of templates can be created and then these can be copied easily for deployment as donations etc. |
| Update 1078 22 September 2024 | We are aware of an issue in displaying membership details for users at some railways. The issue arises when viewing a user with NO membership cards issued via HOPS. We believe it is fine where a user DOES have membership cards issued via HOPS. This will be repaired on Monday (23 Sept) morning. Apologies for the inconvenience. |
| Update 1077 16 September 2024 | It was previously possible to select whether a products should be up-sold to customers who had membership/travel/events in their basket, but not narrowed down to one or more specific events. It is now possible to specific specific, individual events, eg, 'Bottle of Champagne' with Evening Dining, 'Breakfast Roll' with Diesel Gala. |
| Update 1076 13 September 2024 | A facility for adding short 'Remarks' to a carriage on a public seating plan, eg for clearly indicating to customers which are open coaches and which are enclosed. |
| Update 1075 13 September 2024 | It is now possible to enforce seating rules, such as avoiding strangers sitting around the same table or in the same compartment. The range and complexity of these means it isn't possible to program them locally until we understand more about what the common use-cases might be. Please contact us if you wish to discuss rule options. |
| Update 1073 4 September 2024 | Seat Reservation details have been added to individual booking items in the Retail Sales Order page. Details of which line a seat reservation applies to have been added to the seat reservation items in the Retail Sales Order page. |
| Update 1070 4 September 2024 | It is now possible to upload an image to Voucher products. The image will shown Online and in POS. |
| Update 1069 3 September 2024 | Update reporting on ticket system developments commenced. |