Convert EMV Devices on Windcave to HIT

Hi Eric,

We've recently been working on this across our organizations here in Tulsa. I'm not going to lie and say it's the most straightforward thing in the world, but it's definitely achievable with some effort (and, hopefully, help from folks who use the devices on a daily basis).

You'll have to reach out to Windcave support because the EMV devices need to essentially be reprogrammed to work as HIT over USB. You'll also need them to give you HIT User Names and HIT User Keys for the devices. It used to be that each device needed a unique of each, but lately Windcave has been okay with providing a single User Name and User Key per organization.

Windcave typically has to remote in to update the device configuration. You'll need to work in TR_MACHINE_SETTINGS in Tessitura to switch the devices from PXSOCKET to PXHIT among other steps like creating new Payment Methods for HIT (since it's different from PXSOCKET), which is pretty well-documented in Tessitura's standard documentation (https://tessituranetwork.com/Passthrough?itemUri=Documents/Installation/Windcave_EMV_Cloud_Setup.pdf).

Honestly, the trickiest parts are just the coordination with Windcave and the EMV locations, especially in our case where we have ten member organizations and a bunch of devices.

Thank you,

Brian

Has there been any downside so far? My understanding is that it allows the USB readers to be used with any machine, not tied to machine name, etc. I think you know but we also are dealing with card readers all over the orgs in our consortium. Luckily we have the serials/locations, and our amount of active readers are being reduced. Thanks so much for the thorough answer! 

I will say that the PXSOCKET versus PXHIT setup has pros and cons in both directions, unfortunately.

PXSOCKET (standard) setup:

• Pros
  • EMV devices can be used on any workstation that is configured in TR_MACHINE_SETTINGS for EMV use.
• Cons
  • You need to be friends with whoever runs IT for the organizations to account for all of the firewall settings, including IP and Port configurations.
  • You can't use an EMV device to add a credit card token to the database without a transaction.

PXHIT over USB setup:

• Pros
  • The EMV devices just use the internet connection of the workstation to ping the secure Windcave transaction site, so you don't have to be friends with IT if you don't want to be (I kid, I kid). But it does make it easier to not have to get the IP, port setup, and firewall permissions completed every time.
  • You can use an EMV device to add a credit card token to the database on the constituent record.
• Cons
  • Each EMV device essentially needs to be paired to a specific workstation instead of being flexible like it is with the PXSOCKET configuration, because the PXHIT configuration requires you to specify the device serial number along with the HIT USer Names and User Keys per workstation.

I'll add that most of our member organizations have a mix of PXSOCKET- and PXHIT-configured devices at this point because neither option is the foolproof solution for all of the things. We've typically been recommending that EMV devices in back-of-house settings (gift officers, etc.) go PXHIT for the ease of storing a token via EMV (and because those EMV devices typically stay put), and that EMV devices at front-of-house (front desk, box office, etc.) stay PXSOCKET in case there's ever a need to throw more workstations at an event and shift EMV devices between them.

Ah, thanks so much for all the clarity. I think that's definitely the right approach, re: converting some but not others. I'm lucky to have a really good relationship with our IT team and we have configuring a new computer down to a science at this point. 

A lot of my IT grief comes from having three separate IT providers plus some in-house IT staff across our organizations. It's really tricky to build institutional knowledge because we'll often get different providers working from one day to the next, so the onus falls on our consortium staff to be subject matter experts about things we can't go in and configure for our members.

Ha, oh gosh.. I can't imagine. I suppose a perk of being in a small town is that lots of our consortium members use the same provider. Thanks again! 

Ha, oh gosh.. I can't imagine. I suppose a perk of being in a small town is that lots of our consortium members use the same provider. Thanks again!