This is something important to me, so I wanted to get the idea out there before ballots are submitted, in case anyone else felt it would be valuable.
With our original (custom) website, we used keywords extensively to control display options and behavior for performances online. When Inventory Content/Web Content became available, I updated our site to pull that as well and used it for everything from custom messaging to ticket limits. Naturally, when we moved to TNEW, that also used Web Content extensively.
But this posed a problem for us, because while we had been able to manage keywords relatively effectively through Season Maintenance in the client, there was no corresponding way to do mass updates for Content. Mass update capability is very important to us for two reasons. First, we simply have a large number of shows in a large number of production seasons; we’re a presenter, so we might have up to 100 different performing groups at our venues over a season, each putting on 1-10 shows. Having to dig through the production elements one by one to update them would be grueling. Second, these changes often are time sensitive. When our season goes on sale at noon on a Tuesday, all of our performance pages need to reflect that immediately (and we actually have four different on sales before the start of our season). When our unseated “subscription” sales period ends and we want to turn on seated sales and SYOS, we need that to happen immediately.
So I built a set of SQL utilities which allowed me to enter a content type, a desired value, a target production element level (e.g. Production Season or Performance) and very basic search parameters for selecting products to be updated. That’s more or less served us over the years, although it would be far preferable if it was a fleshed out utility like Season Maintenance that could be handed over to the Box Office to administer.
But when we move to v7, that information will no longer be in the Tessitura database, and my utilities will no longer work. Moreover, the TNEW admin utilities for editing products may be more powerful, but they are much slower to search and scroll through than even Production Elements in the client.
I believe that we desperately need a Season Maintenance-like tool in the TNEW Admin for product administration: something that will let us pick, say, all the performances from this season, in this venue, with this keyword...except that one and that one, and then either review current settings or apply new product settings en masse. Bonus points if these updates could be scheduled (At midnight on Sunday, turn SYOS on for these performances).
I'm just getting started on my v7 conversion plan and we have many fewer productions than you do, but I agree that a Season Manager-like tool in the TNEW Site Admin console would prove extremely helpful. Thanks for bringing it up!
I think many of us have built similar bulk-update utilities, and they tend to be invariably useful. More such tools should become built-in features, for performances, constituents, orders; you name it.