Tessitura Customisations Checklist

I am definitely following this one Heath Wilder . Great question.

I don't have a document, but I do have a series of queries that I use for looking at what we need to test on upgrades. The queries check for any custom items in Tess.  It uses the system catalogs to search for custom stored procedures, functions, tables, triggers, and views based on naming conventions (L*).   Pretty simple, but it helps me focus on where I need to test.

That sounds awesome! Are you willing to share? If so, I'm at mdorsey@spoletousa.org.

Thanks,

Michael

Probably unneeded advice for a seasoned vet like yourself, but that is the perfect time (well, once you find them all, and Carol's queries there sound like the best place to start) to also evaluate all of your customizations and discuss things like which ones are still needed, which ones can be retired, which ones can be switched over to new/standard Tessitura functionality, and which ones need to be updated.

And I do not have anything specific for this sort of thing, but I create build/to do checklists for just about everything I do.  Sure, you remember that you have already checked customization #2 the following week, but when you have been checking customizations for 2 full months, and just finished #48, you suddenly are reminded of #2, and ask yourself "Did I really look at this already?".  Looking at your log and being able to verify that you already signed off on it (or someone else did if their initials are there; plus a second column for proofing when needed), is definitely a way to lighten the mental load.

Would 100% take this also, Carol, if you're willing to share! nlegrand@rwb.org

Would love to have a look at this. Thanks Carol. hwilder@sydneytheatre.com.au (or of course heath@heathwilder.com)

From everything weve talked about over the years, your cataloging set up is brilliant. I really would love to interview you about it sometime.

To be honest a lot our customisations are some genius stuff solving a problem that you can mostly do in Tessitura anyway, or vastly over complicated business rules that gave marginal benefit. As a consequence we have a lot of stuff that has stopped us being able to upgrade, and we are newly on 15.0 and using t-stats. We'll clear it up though.

A clever pal of mine gave me a bunch of tip including running through SSAgent. 

I'm keen to get a library of the custom reports and their stored procedures, rdl, xml ready for reinstall. A lot will be rebuilt in  analytics.

Thanks all. Hope to keep the chat going, maybe at a TLCC

To be called brilliant by Heath Wilder is high praise.  I will take it, and I thank you truly.  TLCC is always a good option with me, and I am sure we can make something happen.

Oh T-Stats.  I have not thought about you for years now.  Sounds like you do indeed have a fair bit of work ahead of you, and I wish you well on it.  I am also quite confident that you will get it handled.  And I am still working on moving a number of things to Analytics myself.  It is that data lover's wish for updated data that keeps getting me.  I know that precisely up to the minute data is not what all staff needs, and certainly when it comes to long term planning and for marketing and development strategies really, everything up to the end of the previous day really IS enough.  It just bugs me.  But I am getting there, slowly.

Best of luck on this whole project!

John A. Moskal II

I keep a separate MS Access database that tracks custom reports, objects, customizations that are based on canned versions that need to be explicitly checked for each upgrade, etc. (Re the MS Access db, don't laugh ;), I created it when I started the job in 2006 and haven't moved it elsewhere yet. I have grand plans as a low priority project to actually track this in Tess...someday!) This database is also where we log all changes to customizations or significant changes to Tessitura's system table values, integrations, etc.

A simple front-end convention that we've always instituted is to put the copyright symbol (©) at the end of all of our report names. This helps end users distinguish between canned and custom reports.

And of course the leading "L" in front of all backend custom object names. It's not foolproof since some EcoSystem partners and TNEW code also use the leading L, but it certainly whittles down the list!

One area where we don't mark or track customizations, however, and I would love to hear how others are doing this, is with output set objects (groups, elements, and parameters) and list manager elements. I'm toying with the idea of adding the copyright symbol to these objects' descriptions, but how are others noting these?

MS Access!!  That made me smile. 

Similar to what you do with the copyright symbol we use "CP"  (as abbreviation for CPA/Center for the Performing Arts), but we put it at the FRONT of everything.  So a custom report is easily located by just verifying that it starts with "CP".  This DOES move it away from being next to the original report if it was taken from a standard report and only slightly modified.  That said, usually when I have done that, it is because for whatever reason we SHOULD be using the custom version instead of the canned report, so that bothers me less than it might.  Being a consortium as well, we have 8 total organizations which might have their own thing, and we use a distinct 2 letter prefix for all of them.

The only thing I have done to track things like output/list set objects/elements is to put them into our "CP Public" security group (or otherwise relevant, but we seem to do the majority of customising there) while everything else lives in our "Campus All Access" (default) group.  So, anything that is NOT available to everything is a custom element.  So, while not specifically a naming convention, it at least DOES have the benefit of being a unique identifier.  Probably would not be the best solution if we had custom elements that more than one organization wants and so probably would not work for you, but thus far at least that has not been a worry.  Unless I suppose you wanted an "All Access" and "All Access Custom" security group.  But that seems very hacky.