cdcarter Posted December 27, 2005 Share Posted December 27, 2005 Hello, I am working on a program to ease the job of the various stage managers and the technical director in an amateur/school theatre setting. The program will have an administrator side, where you add an manipulate data, and a "Reports" interface where you can print out schedules, attendance lists, cue sheets, work note sheets, cast/crew lists etc... Currenttly only the admin side has been written. A live demo is available at http://bravenewteens.com:9015/ I would appreciate it if you could look over it, and check out the functionality and just give me some feature request etc... at the rubyforge project site (http://rubyforge.org/projects/smmanagement/). Note-- The UI design is still under development, so if anyone has suggestions about the design, they would be appreciated too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
david.elsbury Posted December 27, 2005 Share Posted December 27, 2005 First thing, from the webpage- A way to go back to the previous page, without having to use the back/forward buttons on the browser.Or a Sitemap thingy with links e.g: Shows: Index >> Crew Members >> New Crewmember for example. What about a way to select existing crewmembers to fill the LD, Set Designer, Sound Op fields in the Add Show form? $0.02David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulears Posted December 27, 2005 Share Posted December 27, 2005 I'm a little in the dark. I've played with the online version, and can do the usual adding deleting (was tempted to remove the pornstars entry, but didn't). My confusion comes from the purpose. For the life of me I can't really see the need for it. I have at the moment a house crew of 13, cast and company crew of 24 plus sundry kids and chaperones, and run the paperwork from microsoft office. Excel does the hours, the box office returns, the cast ticket requests, petty cash - word handles the other stuff. I can't really see what I would use a dedicated system for? I can see that maybe for a long run, with few changing features, a cut down single piece of software might be easier - but I could link word and excel docs if I really wanted to achieve the same result. Your system seems to work, but is more a software quest, than a problem to be solved. Have I misunderstood? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cdcarter Posted December 28, 2005 Author Share Posted December 28, 2005 Right now our theatre has no paperwork infrastructure like yours. Our Program information revolves around a large sheet to write ones name on the tech room door. The scheduling is when the Assistant Artistic Director locks himself in the theatre with a calendar. The system works ok, but we need something more, stable, and I thought others may find a benefit from it too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulears Posted December 28, 2005 Share Posted December 28, 2005 I thinks you are trying to find a use for a computer when one might not be needed - fillling in forms is the bain of my life. Why not buy a big white board and coloured pens,stick it up on a wall and do it like that. A computerised system is great, but when it isn't on, or when technophobes want to know who is in, or joe bloggs calls in to say he can't do a show, but fred can - do you really want to have to power up the computer, type loads of stuff, then print out? Wipe off Joe, scribble in Fred and instantly it is done. The snag will be that you scribble on scraps of paper for quickness, then transfer them to the computer and of course, lose one! Best advice I can give, from somebody who has to do things on a pc is - DON'T, unless you really have to, it is a pain!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mac.calder Posted December 28, 2005 Share Posted December 28, 2005 Agreement with paulears re scheduling on PC. It is a pain in the rear end. I started (and have not yet found the time to complete) a paperwork management system for theatres a while ago, and toyed with the idea of scheduling. In the end I decided against it, instead focusing on the application creating the mass produced forms like call sheets etc (I would link to it, but the host it was on (source forge) change the mysql db's arround and I have not got round to fixing it). White boards are so much more accessable and versatile. They are even better when they are magnetic (I LOVE magnetic whiteboards). You can buy those really cheap, but cool plastic buttons with magnets on them, and use them for day off markers etc, you can print onto magnets etc, and you can buy rolls of narrow magnet (IIRC 3mm wide) and use it to mark up the board (you can also buy 3mm wide stickers on rolls, but I like to use the magnets so that if 6 months down the track I want to change the layout, I can) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbuckley Posted December 28, 2005 Share Posted December 28, 2005 Funny - a little while back I decided to do the same thing, started designing the database, thought of the program name (StageMistress), registered the domains, then PM'd a show and realised that what I had learned was that in most respects the computer would have made my life slower and harder. Yet Another Abandoned Project... (And I'm another one for whiteboards, my office has three, all magnetic) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andyhargreaves Posted January 1, 2006 Share Posted January 1, 2006 cdcarter I'm interested in this software, but just getting timeout errors when accessing the page mentoned. Andy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jivemaster Posted January 2, 2006 Share Posted January 2, 2006 Esp in Am dram and Schools Capital Expenditure will be hard to find. A big sheet of paper may cost less than a PC and a mag whiteboard may be a good cost/function balance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cdcarter Posted January 2, 2006 Author Share Posted January 2, 2006 Andy, I am having problems with my shared server, It should be up soon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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