**Self-hosted***
TNEW was already being used at this organization when I got here, so very often I don't have an answer for the questions people ask me about it. Yesterday someone asked me what "Express Web" meant in the Tessitura Network Express Web name. Does anyone know? It is just the name of the product as part as far I can tell.
Also, how do you guys explain the difference between Tessitura the client/database, TNEW, and the "website" aka the marketing site? I always try to make the distinction that it is probably possible to have the Tessitura database product without the TNEW product, although most clients don't. My reasoning behind that is that when I worked at another organization, the POS database we used had TWO ecommerce offerings. When I would talk to other organizations there was always that question that came up of "are you guys on accesso Ecommerce or Passport?" and then we would run into some orgs who had a custom solution.
I also use my previous experience in understanding the "website" vs TNEW. It was real clear over there that the website - the marketing website - was a product of a company called Integrity and that the ecommerce site was a companion product of the POS system that was integrated into out "website." Now, I am not saying there wasn't any confusion from the staff over there but it was easier to explain. Here, Adage does our website and is a partner of Tessitura. I cannot understand whether they ONLY work with Tessitura clients or not (I also have no interaction with them to ask, they interact with marketing). How do you explain this distinction to people?
And then also how to explain the parts of TNEW that have to be managed in the database vs the Admin site? I hardly ever log into that TNEW admin site, which is very different from my last job. At my last job, other than my boss, I was the only person who did things in the ecommerce admin site. And there was only one or two things that needed to happen in the database - almost everything was done over thin that admin site. Over here the marketing and ticketing people handle adding the items for sale on TNEW and I hardly ever know which parts are handled there vs the database. This makes it hard to answer some other questions I get asked.
Any thoughts?
Ashley Elliott
Database Administrator
St. Louis Symphony Orchestra
314-286-4198
ashleye@slso.org
Ashley,
All good questions! My initial answer would be "as best as I can", which of course gets you only so far (and frankly, only gets me so far; I am not sure that there IS a solution).
For the "website" vs. TNEW vs. Tessitura, what helped me there is that we WERE in fact one of those organizations that had Tessitura but NOT TNEW. We started with Tessitura back in 2010, and did not buy into TNEW until 2018. So, until that time, we had a completely custom website. That certainly made the distinction between Tessitura and the "website" very easy as they had no relationship. In 2018, though, we launched a project to build a brand new website, as our old, custom one was hopelessly outdated. I argued strongly for, and convinced enough people that we should buy into TNEW, which we did. However, TNEW, as with many organizations, did not suffice to do 100% of what we needed from the Marketing perspective, so we built a brand new site, which we have called the "Corporate" side ever since then. I made sure to distinctly clarify in the entire process the difference between TNEW and the "Corporate" side. For any employee that was part of that process, there is little difficulty now in understanding the difference, though of course I do sometimes have to remind them that "this is TNEW" or "this is Corporate".
For the people who have come on later, the easiest explanation for me is just to sit them down and look at the CMS with them. I have them look at it, look at all the pages, and then tell them to go find me the payment page, or the cart page. When they cannot find it, that is when I say, "that is because it is separate, it is over here", and I hammer home the idea that (almost) everything that involves the customer making changes/typing/selecting/etc... is a TNEW page. The best metaphor I have devised is that the two websites are like a plane. The Corporate website is the cabin, while TNEW is the cockpit and wings. You go in through the cabin (Corporate home page), can see everything from the cabin, and it gets you where you want to go (Information for performance "A"), but in order to do anything (reserve tickets), you need a pilot actually pushing the buttons and flying the plane. Once you cross the door from the cabin to the cockpit is when you make the website change. And you can do it over and over throughout the flight (going back and forth between TNEW and Corporate), put the plane on autopilot, go get a cup of coffee, etc... But eventually you have to go back and land the thing (AKA checkout). Because of that, though, that also helps to explain why things are controlled in different areas, too. The cleaning crew cleans the cabin of the plane. Engineering and maintenance work on the wings and engine. It is not the most excellent metaphor, but I suppose it has worked well enough.
Weirdly, though, even some staff who were part of that whole process and remember a time before TNEW now though still confuse TNEW with Tessitura. Especially the people who do not regularly log into the application. I have heard our marketing team repeatedly say things like "deep link into Tessitura" which just makes me squirm. I do not really have any good advice for you there. I often try to then jump in there and say "they are not IN Tessitura, as that is the application we use on our computers, they are using the website that Tessitura hosts/updates for us". But I have not really succeeded in making the distinction truly clear to some people. I think the best solution might be to try to get some of those people actually logging into the application every so often, maybe for analytics or something. But, again, I am also open to advice there.
Best of luck!
John
In reference to the meaning of express, I have this tidbit from a document I saved in 2010, though I think the same floated around for a year or three prior. As a commuter, I might have a different conception of expressway than they intended to get across at the time.
"TN Express Web is an expressway to real-time web transactions that is fully integrated with your Tessitura database and existing website. TN Express Web allows you to leverage your Tessitura system and the web with minimal cost, time and overhead, providing affordable and quick-to-market web functionality. "
If there's interest, I could send the full pdf. along.
My recollection is that the "express" part of the product's name was meant as juxtaposition to the time and effort involved in undertaking a 100% custom integrated e-commerce site (the 2010 document seems to concur).