General Release Information

This release contains the reintroduction and improvement of the ability to not include guest fees (i.e. to have two fields for each guest count, one for estimated and one for confirmed guests), as well as the ability to allow or disallow guests to cross a party's tier one or tier two threshold numbers. In addition, this release contains many small UI improvements and bug fixes.

Major Fixes:

• DEV-2632 - Restore and improve Include Guest Fees functionality
• DEV-2607 - Add setting to allow customers to cross thresholds in OBM
• DEV-2608 - Make OBM display accurate guest count information
• DEV-294 - View Waiver Print not working in PCS Register
• DEV-1945 - Hide "Other" referral box unless Referred By: Other is selected
• DEV-1946 - Delete data stored in "Other" referral field if Referred By is not set to "Other."
• DEV-2015 - Products are duplicated within a category when the category is sorted and when the category is renamed to something that already exists and is also sorted
• DEV-2060 - Product level Checklist Items allow users to pick and associate inactive products when ACTIVE products ONLY should be allowed
• DEV-2100 - Tiny MasterCard image used to represent gift cards in the Payments tab of PCS
• DEV-2217 - Refund and Void buttons should not be visible on "non open" orders
• DEV-2226 - Redesign Online Booking Settings Notify E-Mail Addresses field and Cancellation E-Mail Addresses field
• DEV-2227 - Redesign Online Store Settings Notify E-Mail Addresses field
• DEV-2358 - Customer and GOH creation does not restrict the user from entering a birthdate that does not exist
• DEV-2630 - Pipe symbols in ProductNames breaks the ActivityLog
• DEV-2634 - Add party pricing information to the invoice
• DEV-2643 - Move global messages to the communications tray

Click here to view the list of minor fixes included in this release.

DEV-2632 - Restore and improve Include Guest Fees functionality

The decision was made to consolidate "expected" and "actual" guest count numbers into one field, and to remove the option to "Include Guest Fees" with the release of 3.0 last November (they became included by default).
This was done to prevent the confusion that had previously been caused by these options in the past.

NOTE: If you like they way party booking currently functions in Party Center Software, you may wish to ignore this feature and not enable it.

Although the removal of this feature was considered an improvement by many customers, we received a handful of complaints from customers who had built a workflow around the actual and expected guest count fields, as well as the ability to not include guest fees when a party was initially booked, which resulted in the customer invoice to not including any fees associated with the guest count crossing a tier threshold.

With release 4.3, we are bringing back the functionality that these customers have requested with a few small improvements. We hope to meet the needs of the customers who relied upon this workflow, while simultaneously not over complicating the process for the customers who do not wish to use it.

"Expected" and "Actual" have been renamed Estimated and Confirmed. To enable the use of these two guest count fields for a specific party, navigate to Admin > Products and click on the name of the party. Click on the Pricing & Guest Count tab, and set Include Guest Fees In Price to 'No.' Note the description:

This will cause any party booked online to send an invoice that only includes the party's base price, regardless of the number of guests that the customer has indicated will be attending. 
We have added the following clarification to several places in the online booking process:

This text will only display when a customer is booking a party that does NOT include guest fees.

When the party booked online is opened in PCS Portal, you will see that the guest count number entered online by the guest has populated the Estimated Guest Count field, but not the Confirmed Guest Count field.
The party price only takes into consideration the Confirmed Guest Count:

All invoices for this party generated at this point will display the Estimated Guest Count and party's base price only:

Once the party's confirmed guest count is updated to any amount greater than 0 (you may update a party's guest count by clicking Edit Order Items from order info), you will see that the price will change to include any guest fees associated with exceeding the party's guest count tiers. In this example, the party's base price includes 10 guests, and each guest over tier one (10) is charged an additional $10.00:

Any invoice for a party generated after updating the Confirmed Guest Count will now display the confirmed guest number, and include any fees associated with exceeding a party's guest count tiers:

When booking a party that has Include Guest Fees In Price to set to No through PCS Portal, you will come across two fields for each guest count; one for Estimated and one for Confirmed:

Only Estimated is required to proceed, as the party will not yet have a confirmed number. Leaving Confirmed blank is fine, and will result in the Confirmed Guest Count for that particular party being 0.

PCS users familiar with the "estimated" and "actual" workflow will find this largely the same, with a few improvements lending to the workflow's clarity and efficiency.

DEV-2607 - Add setting to allow customers to cross thresholds in OBM

The redesign of our party pricing and guest count setup process brought to light several areas for potential improvement.
We have added the ability to allow guests to cross the Tier Two Threshold during the online booking process.
We have also added the ability to disallow guests from crossing the Tier One Threshold during the online booking process.

A toggle has been added to the settings box for each tier under the Pricing & Guest Count tab labelled Allow Guests Booking Online to Exceed Threshold. Setting this to 'Yes' will allow guests to enter a guest count greater than that tier's threshold when booking online. The online booking page will only display the pricing and guest count info for a specific tier if this is set to 'Yes,' i.e. if the tier can be crossed online. This has no impact on the in house booking process.

We have not changed the behavior that was previously in place for anyone's existing parties, so you will find tier one set to 'Yes' and tier two set to 'No' for all parties that were created before this release. Feel free to modify those setting in whichever way you wish.

DEV-2608 - Make OBM display accurate guest count information

This improvement relates heavily to the ability to allow guests to cross particular thresholds online. We have not changed the general formatting of the text that displays for your guest, but rather added important information that the text was previously lacking. You will find that it dynamically changes depending on your party settings.

A party with no tiers, or with no tiers that can be crossed online, will display text online in the following manner:

A party with one tier that can be exceeded online, or with a second tier that cannot be exceeded online, will look like this:

A party with a two tier structure that can be crossed online will display this way:

The same rules apply to parties that utilize two guest counts. A party with two guest counts that each have two tiers that can be exceeded online will display this way (this is as complicated as it gets):

Parties with a per person pricing configuration can also take advantage of the second bookable tier online, and the text for these parties will reflect that change as well:

It is important to note that the complexity of the message directly reflects the complexity of the party's pricing structure.
Simple parties with a flat fee will, of course, have the most concise description. The level of complication is up to the facility.

Another small but useful change is the inclusion of the Guest Minimum in pricing and guest count descriptions. If no minimum is set for a guest count, the text will read exactly as it did previously. For example, "FOR UP TO 10 GUESTS." If a guest count's Guest Minimum is set to a number greater than zero, the text will change to reflect that. For example, "FOR 5 TO 10 GUESTS."
The field(s) where the guest enters the guest count for their party will also now prepopulate with the minimum required for each guest count. In the following example, there is one guest count and minimum required to book is 5:

DEV-294 - View Waiver Print not working in PCS Register

The Print button was not functioning correctly when viewing a signed waiver through PCS Register.
This has been fixed, and users now have the ability to view and print a guest's waiver through PCS Register, whereas they would previously need to print through an internet browser:

DEV-1945 - Hide "Other" referral box unless Referred By: Other is selected

A field exists on customer profiles under Referred By that allows users to enter a custom referral source if Referred By is set to 'Other:'

This field is only supposed to display if the referral source is set to other:

As of this release, the field will only display when 'Other' is set as a guest's referral source:

DEV-1946 - Delete data stored in "Other" referral field if Referred By is not set to "Other."

This is a database speed and optimization fix that relates directly to the fix mentioned above. If the referral source is set to anything besides 'Other,' the field for the custom referral source should not store data. 

If the referral source is set to 'Other,' data in this field will be stored as expected.

DEV-2015 - Products are duplicated within a category when the category is sorted and when the category is renamed to something that already exists and is also sorted

The process to reproduce this issue involved creating two product categories with identical names, and then sorting the categories using the following tool on the Products page:

Creating this scenario was somewhat of a fringe case. The result would be that your products would display twice in a category:

This did not actually duplicate any products, but rather displayed each product two times. Clicking on either would open the same product. This has now been resolved, and following the steps to recreate this issue will no longer cause two copies of the same product to display within a category. 

DEV-2060 - Product level Checklist Items allow users to pick and associate inactive products when ACTIVE products ONLY should be allowed

When creating or editing a Checklist Item, the following box would include inactive products in the list it was displaying:

There is no use case for associating a Checklist Item with an inactive product, and including them in this list was causing users to have to scroll through a much larger list that contained irrelevant data.

This box will now only display products that are active in a facility.

DEV-2100 - Tiny MasterCard image used to represent gift cards in the Payments tab of PCS

If a facility enabled Record Only - Credit as a payment option and then checked Gift Card as a payment type, the corresponding icon to indicate that gift cards would be accepted on an order's payment screen appeared to be a tiny MasterCard:

This has been replaced by an appropriately-sized gift card icon:

DEV-2217 - Refund and Void buttons should not be visible on "non open" orders

Certain credit card processors, including our own proprietary solution (Party Center Pay), offer the ability to void, refund, or adjust a transaction after it has been processed.

The buttons to perform these actions would previously appear on a payment regardless of the order status:

Attempting to use these buttons on a closed order would result in an error. The buttons will now only display when applicable, i.e. on open orders. Closed orders will not display the buttons:

DEV-2226 - Redesign Online Booking Settings Notify E-Mail Addresses field and Cancellation E-Mail Addresses field

The two email notification fields under Admin > Online Booking Settings would previously require very specific formatting in order to function properly. If the user deviated from the formatting when typing their email list, the notifications would not arrive.

These free-text formatting requirements have been replaced by a system that stores your emails in a series of tags after they are typed. Users no longer need to worry about separating addresses with semicolons in order for the email notifications to arrive:

DEV-2227 - Redesign Online Store Settings Notify E-Mail Addresses field

The email notification field under Admin > Online Store Settings has also been updated to use the same system as Online Booking Settings, making it much easier to use and eliminating the risk of the emails not arriving due to improperly formatted emails:

DEV-2358 - Customer and GOH creation does not restrict the user from entering a birthdate that does not exist

When entering a birthdate during customer creation anywhere in Party Center Software, the user was previously given three dropdowns from which a birthdate could be selected:

This led to issues when users would enter invalid dates. For example, there was no way to restrict a user from entering February 30th or April 31st, although these days do not exist.

These dropdowns have been universally replaced by a date picker, which makes it impossible to select days that do not exist, and thus prevents all bugs caused by making that mistake:

DEV-2630 - Pipe symbols in ProductNames breaks the ActivityLog

Entering the pipe symbol (this symbol: | ) into a product name in Party Center Software would cause a few issues with the activity log, due to the fact that these symbols are actually treated as code:

We have restricted the usage of this symbol in order to prevent these bugs moving forward. The pipe symbol will now be automatically replaced by a hyphen, and the following message will display if a user attempts to use the pipe symbol:

DEV-2634 - Add party pricing information to the invoice

The same guest count and pricing informational text that displays for the guest during the Online Booking process has been added to the invoice. This was done in order to prevent any confusion regarding the price of the party in question. It will now display here:

DEV-2643 - Move global messages to the communications tray

Certain actions in Party Center Software cause a popup to display a message confirming the action. For example, adding a user in PCS will cause the following message to display upon saving:

These messages have been moved to our more current global communication try:

No message text has been altered. They will now simply show up in the more current communication area when the same actions are taken after this release.

Minor Fixes:

• DEV-134 - When creating/modifying checklist items, Available Products list jumps from the top to bottom of page and back
• DEV-348 - Clicking "Edit Your Info" when paying in the OBM and then clicking "Continue" causes an error
• DEV-358 - User is logged out if they sign a waiver while booking a party online
• DEV-2055 - Remove Nutshell Import from superuser company screen
• DEV-2375 - Clicking on Point of Sale before a POS screen is created causes a POS order to be created
• DEV-2635 - Invoices are not including PayWay payments
• DEV-2636 - Update "Price Per Overflow Guest" to "Fee Per Overflow Guest"
• DEV-2641 - Export Waiver shows when adding facility
• DEV-2642 - Edit User redirects to user list on save
• DEV-2662 - Update support phone numbers and text on the Oops page
• DEV-2647 - Update online guest count and pricing description text
• DEV-2663 - Remove image icons next to header text