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Update 1254 28 July 2025	HOPS Updates HELP PAGES We have reviewed and updated our Help pages on managing permissions: Permissions overview: https://www.hops.org.uk/help/permissions-introduction Permission groups: https://www.hops.org.uk/help/permission-groups We hope these are useful and we will continue to update and develop the help pages in HOPS. These can be accessed via https://www.hops.org.uk/help/ or via the question mark icon in the top right corner of HOPS. === SAFETY CIRCULAR A volunteer member of staff was struck and seriously injured as they alighted from a wagon forming part of a works train. https://www.hops.org.uk/safetycircular/90 Safety Circulars are published for the benefit of all heritage railways sharing lessons learned and best practices. https://www.hops.org.uk/safetycircular You can subscribe (and unsubscribe) to email update notifications via the link above. Sharing lessons learned with other organisations, and learning from lessons from other railways is an indicator of "Excellence" in RM3. === TIME REGISTER - ANOMALIES The sort order of the Anomalies list has been switched so that the OLDEST is now at the top. This is to assist in guiding the user to resolve the sign-ins before the sign-outs to make resolving the sign-outs easier. === ASSET MANAGEMENT - DEFECTS Advanced warning that update work will be taking place on this part of the Asset Management system over the next few weeks. There will be a short period of time where logging/editing/closing defects will not be available. We will advise in advance when this is to take place. === PURCHASE ORDERS Thank you to everyone who has fed back on the overhauled purchase order system. There are a small number of things we are still aware need to be ironed out: - Search facility on Cost Centres drop-downs - Search facility on Supplier Name - Page load speed. - "My CC Approvals" and "My FD Approvals" tabs still occasionally showing too many POs. We are working through the above as soon as possible. === GREASE TOPS We now have all the sizes of Grease Top Hats back in stock, especially size 57 - apparently the standard for Drivers across all HOPS Heritage Railways in the UK and beyond. https://www.heritage-ops.org.uk/product/160 === HOPS UPDATES We try our best to communicate information about HOPS services and developments as best we can. This is to note that, in times of service disruption, updates will be posted on the main HOPS Facebook page, where they can be viewed by admins and users - https://www.facebook.com/HeritageOps/ We will no longer post updates on X (formerly Twitter). In normal operation, updates are posted on HOPS in System > Updates ( www.hops.org.uk/updates ) and on either HOPS Admins Group or the main HOPS Facebook page (depending on the target audience). You can subscribe (and unsubscribe) to email update notifications via the Updates link above. Thank you === HOPS VIDEOS We are making good progress re-uploading HOPS videos to YouTube. However, it is taking a lot of sifting through videos from the cutting room floor to find all the right tapes. If anyone wants to admit to having pirated the videos and wants to give us back a copy of the ones we have not yet found please let us know! Thank you. === Thank you Danny Scroggins
Update 1251 23 July 2025	New Purchase Order System Now Live The HOPS Purchase Orders system has been comprehensively overhauled. There should be only minor changes to functionality, such as bug fixes. If you find any issues please let us know. * The Purchase Orders pages have been re-written into New HOPS, giving a better UI and better operation on phones and narrow screens. * There are no new or changed permissions, but permissions are now slightly more diligently/logically applied where they previously weren't. The result of this will be some users no longer able to do some things and will need permissions allocated, but there are not any cases where users will be able to do things they previously could not. * Updating the 'flags' now takes place in a popup without the need to load a separate page. Permissions to update flags are now diligently applied: Mark Goods received (P176), Invoice Received (P182), Paid (P174), Statement (P172). * Three tabs have been provided: "Purchase Orders", "My CC Approvals" (P171), "My FD Approvals" (P192). Under the Purchase Orders tabs are lists of POs including All Open POs, My Open POs, All Closed POs, My Closed POs, Deliveries Expected (P172), Awaiting Payment (P173) and Forced Closed (P260). These behave in the same way as in the old system. The My CC [Cost Centre] Approvals tab contains a list of PO Line Items that require the user's approval (or have already been approved). This is only displayed to users with P171. The My FD [Finance Director] Approvals tab contains a list of POs that require the user's approval (or have already been approved) because they meet the threshold for FD approval. This is only displayed to users with P192. * A new "Stock Location" field has been provided for users of HOPS Retail Systems to indicate the location (eg shop/cafe branch) that the stock is to be added to the stock total for when it arrives. An interface is not yet provided to create Stock Locations, please contact us for assistance with this. There are some outstanding issues which will be resolved tomorrow (24/07/25): - "My CC Approvals" and "My FD Approvals" tabs are showing too many POs. This will be filtered down to only POs awaiting the user's approval, and POs approved by the user. - Some column widths are not formatted correctly - Some pages are slightly slow to load. We will try to improve this. We will be on standby in HOPS HQ on Thursday morning (24 July) for any issues arising. Please let us know via the support ticket mechanism if you have any problems, or via phone to HOPS HQ on 0118 321 8752 if urgent. Thank you.
Update 1248 23 July 2025	HOPS Videos | Purchase Orders | Help Pages | HOPS Updates | Grease Tops PURCHASE ORDERS The purchase order system will be under maintenance from 7pm (UK (BST) time) tonight for maintenance work. If you find the PO system accessible then it is fine to use. Some/all parts of it will be unavailable as work progresses. It will be back online by the morning (UK time). There should be no changes to functionality (apart from bug fixes) - if you find anything not working as it should please let us know. --- HOPS VIDEOS We are making good progress re-uploading HOPS videos to YouTube. However, it is taking a lot of sifting through videos from the cutting room floor to find all the right tapes. If anyone wants to admit to having pirated the videos and wants to give us back a copy of the ones we have not yet found please let us know! Thank you. https://www.youtube.com/@HOPSHeritageRailways --- HELP PAGES We have reviewed and updated some further Help pages: Guidance for new users of HOPS: https://www.hops.org.uk/help/new-user We hops this will be useful for Admins to send to new users of the system to explain the first steps. Managing occurrences of two (or more!) users with the same name at the same railway: https://www.hops.org.uk/help/handling-duplicate-names Resetting Passwords: https://www.hops.org.uk/help/reset-users-password Email address validation: https://www.hops.org.uk/help/email-address-validation We hops these are helpful. Help Topics can be viewed via System > Help Topics, or via the question mark icon in the top right corner of HOPS, or this link: https://www.hops.org.uk/help We are working to update and develop as many pages as we can. --- HOPS UPDATES We try our best to communicate information about HOPS services and developments as best we can. This is to note that, in times of service disruption, updates will be posted on the main HOPS Facebook page, where they can be viewed by admins and users - https://www.facebook.com/HeritageOps/ We will no longer post updates on X (formerly Twitter). In normal operation, updates are posted on HOPS in System > Updates ( www.hops.org.uk/updates ) and on either HOPS Admins Group or the main HOPS Facebook page (depending on the target audience). You can subscribe (and unsubscribe) to email update notifications via the Updates link above. --- GREASE TOP HATS After a long wait, we are pleased to say that we now have all the sizes of Grease Top Hats back in stock in our shop: https://www.heritage-ops.org.uk/product/160
Update 1245 17 July 2025	Online Shop ONLINE SHOP We have made some great steps recently towards being able to offer an online shop facility. This will enable 'Stock Items' to be sold by themselves, where it is currently only possible as an upsell at the checkout (add-ons). We previously launched the 'donations' system, which makes use of this because a 'donation' is just a 'stock item' that can be sold. ** IMPORTANT info for railways that already have stock items which are used as add-ons / upsell: There are many new attributes relating to postage costs and delivery mechanisms for products. In order to ensure your upsell products continue to behave as they currently do, these items have been set to: - NOT contribute to any postage costs calculations - NOT require delivery information to be collected [Eg asking the customer whether they would like to have the item posted or collect on arrival, and their delivery address] Therefore the system will continue to be silent on both of these things, as it has been in the past. If you wish to, you can change these settings so that the customer does have the option to collect on arrival or receive by post, and whether they should be charged postage for having it sent. But if you take no action there will be no change. --- In general, railways that are already used to HOPS retail systems are welcome to start preparing settings etc in readiness for products that you already sell via POS to be sold online. [There are also settings if you which specific products to only be available via one mechanism or the other.] Settings for the shop system in general can be found at Tools > Retail Systems > Shop System, or https://www.hops.org.uk/shop_system.php Settings for individual products can be found in Tools > Retail Systems > Shop System > Stock Items List, or https://www.hops.org.uk/shop_system.php?t=2 To help in this preparation process some helpful additional reports have been compiled: Report 135. Products without Names Report 136. Products without Descriptions Report 137. Products without a lead time Report 138. Products with a retail price of zero (free) Report 134. Products without URL Slugs Report 139. Products with a weight of zero (Method A) Report 140. Products with no postage volume limits (Method A) Report 142. Products with no postage group (Method B) Report 141. Products with no postage price (Method D) Report 143. Products that can be purchased when out of stock --- If all the above makes no sense to you at all, but you would like to know more, please contact Steve Morris, who helps railways learn about, deploy and exploit maximum benefit from HOPS Retail Systems at steve.morris@hops.org.uk and he will be happy to answer questions or give a demo. Thank you to everyone from all railways that have worked with HOPS to bring this latest retail development to fruition!
Update 1239 17 July 2025	"Open" Tickets OPEN TICKETS New options are now available in Ticket System Settings to allow 'Open' tickets, ie where a specific train isn't required to be selected for a travel ticket. https://www.hops.org.uk/ticket_sales_settings.php?t=16 It is possible to select whether an 'open' (no specific train) ticket should be available for leg 1, 2, 3 of the journey. This enables rules such as: "Passenger must specify a train out, but can take any train back" "Passenger can take any train out, but must specify a train back" "Passenger must specify a train in both directions" "Passenger can take any train out and any train back" The booking confirmation, receipt, etc says "No specific train", rather than "Any train", recognising that there might be non-public trains in operation. Separate settings are available for POS and Online, so these options can be applied differently for the two sales methods. Where these options are not set the passenger will be required to select a train. This has been the case up to now so all railways are set to this, so no action = no change.
Update 1233 15 July 2025	YouTube Videos | Purchase Orders Update | Disposals | Safety Circular YOUTUBE VIDEOS Most HOPS videos are available again on the new HOPS YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@HOPSHeritageRailways There are videos for users, managers and admins on various topics relating to HOPS, Raildays, Retail Systems, and heritage railway management topics in general. You can subscribe in the normal way to receive notifications when new videos are published. We have nearly completed the uploading of our back catalogue of videos. --- HELP TOPICS We have reviewed and updated our Help page for new users of HOPS: https://www.hops.org.uk/help/new-user We hope this will be useful for Admins to send to new users of the system to explain the first steps. ... And our guidance on managing occurrences of two (or more!) users with the same name at the same railway: https://www.hops.org.uk/help/handling-duplicate-names --- RETAIL SYSTEMS A set of new reports has been added to Reports & Export to assist with auditing products. This will be especially useful to railways preparing their product itinerary ready for online sale. Reports: 135 Products without Names 136 Products without Descriptions 137 Products without a lead time 138 Products with a retail price of zero (free) 134 Products without URL Slugs 139 Products with a weight of zero (Method A) 140 Products with no postage volume limits (Method A) 142 Products with no postage group (Method B) 141 Products with no postage price (Method D) 143 Products that can be purchased when out of stock --- PURCHASE ORDERS The New HOPS purchase orders system will be back soon. When it launched a couple of weeks ago there was a suggestion that permissions were not being applied properly so it was taken offline. It transpired that permissions were working correctly, but there has not yet been the opportunity to re-release it without affecting the smooth-running of the existing system. It was intended that both old and new systems would run side-by-side for a period, until development work on the new system was no longer back-compatible with the old system. This point has now already come and gone, so there will now be a changeover between old and new systems when the time comes. We will give further info when that is about to take place. --- HERITAGE RAILWAY DISPOSALS GAZETTE https://www.hops.org.uk/disposals GNR Double Bolster Wagon No. TIC 1352 The East Anglian Railway Museum is looking to dispose of 1920 built GNR Double Bolster wagon number TIC 1352. The vehicle is thought to have been built by Cravens Railway C&W Co. LTD in Sheffield. The vehicle was previously known to be at the North Yorkshire Moors Railway and the National Railway Museum Shildon. No work has been carried out on the vehicle at Chappel and it’s offered free of charge to parties intended to restore/re-purpose the vehicle with the buyer to remove the vehicle from site at their own cost. Viewings can be arranged. The museum will prioritise any interest from other accredited museums/railways and then heritage/preservation groups/societies. Other interested parties are invited to enquire. If no interest is reached by 9th September the vehicle will be cut up on site. The Heritage Railway Disposals Gazette is available free to all heritage railways. Thank you to all the railways who have worked together to provide this facility for everyone's benefit. If you would like to subscribe directly please visit the Disposals Gazette (link above) and then the 'Subscribe' tab to subscribe. [Note we do not commit to promoting items for disposals via this System Updates system every time, this is a rare occasion to promote its existence. Please subscribe via the disposals link above if you would like to be sure of receiving notifications for new items.] --- "EXCELLENCE" IN RM3 SAFETY CIRCULAR https://www.hops.org.uk/safetycircular It has been a quiet period for Safety Circulars recently. It would be nice to think that that was due to there being no safety lessons to learn, but... perhaps that is wishful thinking. Please do remember the existence of Safety Circular, a good opportunity to show a high level of safety maturity, and RM3 "Excellence", and helping to share lessons learned, both with pain and with pride. Circulars do not have to state the railway from which they originated. ---
Update 1232 8 July 2025	Drugs & Alcohol Screening | Medication Checking This is a reminder that HOPS offers Chemistry Services for Drugs & Alcohol Screening (post-incident for-cause, and random), and Medication Checking. Both services are provided by external specialist suppliers that conduct the same work for main-line railway companies. Railways can subscribe to either or both of these schemes. In both cases, contact details to call-up the services and a PIN number are provided to railways to make use of the services 24/7 without HOPS's involvement. A cost-saving is achieved by railways being part of this scheme rather than all contracting the service individually and all paying the full subscription fee to the supplier. (Regrettably we are only able to provide this service in the UK.) --- DRUGS & ALCOHOL SCREENING SERVICE Details of the Drugs & Alcohol Screening service can be found here: https://www.hops.org.uk/drugs This can be used for post-incident screening or random checks. This is a very useful statement to staff/volunteers of safety culture intent that is especially important for heritage railways. It also helps the railway's defence after an incident to be able to demonstrate that those involved were clear of drugs and alcohol. ** Annual retainer fee: £40 ** For-cause screening call-out (test up to four people): £250 ** Random screening call-out (test up to 16 people): £230 ** Results analysis, per person: £65 --- MEDICATION CHECKING SERVICE: Details of the Medication Checking Service can be found here: https://www.hops.org.uk/medication The medication checking services is useful where there is doubt about whether a member of staff/volunteer should conduct safety-critical work when taking medication. It is especially useful for occasions where a member of staff is taking more than one medication at the same time, where there might be impact that isn't apparent from the individual advice on the label for each medication. ** Annual retainer fee: £40 ** Per medication check: £16.50 --- Thank you to railways that are already subscribed. The annual retainer fee has increased this year, reflecting the increased cost of providing the service. This will be billed in the August invoice unless you let us know you don't wish to renew. The cost for a medication check has increased by 50p, and the drugs and alcohol screening fees are unchanged for this year. Thank you Danny Scroggins
Update 1229 7 July 2025	Links to Privacy Policy etc New options have been added to the General Retail Systems page for some links that appear at the bottom of all public-facing sales pages: * Privacy Policy [required] * Cookie Policy (this is the same link as is shown on the cookie popup for organisations that have this) [required if using non-essential cookies] * Terms and Conditions [recommended] https://www.hops.org.uk/retail_systems.php?t=1 All of these accept a URL that can be outside of the HOPS environment, eg to the appropriate pages on the main company website [This is preferable to storing the policies in more than one page]. When set, the links appear in the footer at the bottom of public-facing pages in all parts of the system (travel, events, shares, membership, shop, etc). Thank you
Update 1226 4 July 2025	Email Sending We apologise that email sending crashed yesterday evening. It is now running again. All emails will be delivered, but it will take some time to clear the queue. The cause of this happening is related to some huge emails being sent, overwhelming the email sending system. Usually large attachments in HOPS-comms messages. We will be making some changes to the attachments system to improve this, more info on that will follow. For info, HOPS sends about 20,000 emails a day, usually at a maximum rate of about 50 every 30 seconds. The recipients for nearly all emails is controlled by the railway via permissions, or the user themselves via opting in and out. There are two YouTube videos that may be useful here, on how to control email opt in/outs for users: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUW7JYgcUIU And for Admins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13woTU4MNQk Thank you Danny S.
Update 1223 3 July 2025	Defect Reporting ASSET MANAGEMENT - DEFECT REPORTING Significant work is taking place on asset defects over the next week or so to enable better use on mobiles etc, including uploading photos from phone cameras in a similar way to what currently exists on Spot Report. There should be no disruption but please let us know if you find any problems.
Update 1218 2 July 2025	Postcode / Address Lookup Facility The Postcode/Address Lookup service trial has now ended. Thank you to everyone who has signed up to use it on an ongoing basis. If your organisation would like to subscribe to the facility, to both save time and improve accuracy, from now on please let us know via a support ticket or email. It is provided: - when adding or editing a user's address (themselves or a manager entering details of another user) - when adding/editing emergency contacts - for public customers making online ticket purchases - for public customers making online shares sales - for public customers making online membership sales - for public customers making online shop sales There is a cost to HOPS in providing this service, so the lookup feature is an optional add-on for railways for which a small fee (£5 per month) will be charged. Thank you. Full details: https://www.hops.org.uk/help/address-lookup
Update 1214 25 June 2025	Force User Log Out A new "Force Account Log Out" button has been provided on the 'HOPS Account' tab of a user profile (P415 required, so generally only visible to admins). This will end all the user's logged-in sessions. The next time they try to browse to a page they will get either 'access denied' or 'you have been logged out' on all devices that they use. This is useful if a user's access or permissions are reduced and you require that change to take place immediately. The user will be able to log back in again (unless the change you've made prevents this), and their new permissions etc will be applied. This is in response to feedback, and also in preparation for the upcoming multi-factor authentication work.
Update 1208 24 June 2025	Purchase Orders | Helpdesk Tickets | YouTube | Defect Reports PURCHASE ORDERS PURCAHSE ORDERS Work on the Purchase Order system has been taking place over the last few weeks. This is to both improve the interface, integrate it with Retail Systems, and also make possible future developments to do with spending limits etc that have been requested. The existing menu option for Purchase Orders has been re-labelled "Purchase Orders (Old)" and a new menu option has been provided "Purchase Orders (New)". Users are encouraged to use Purchase Orders (New) where possible, and report any issues to your HOPS Admin for reporting to HOPS HQ. Purchase Orders (Old) is still available for the moment in case of any issues with the new system. There should be only minor changes to functionality between the old system and the new system. Please let your HOPS Admin know if you find any issues with the new system. For users of HOPS Retail Systems - new functionality in the new purchase order system: - Selection of a stock item when creating purchase order lines - POs appear in POS machines for checking-in once stock arrives. Checked-in POs are automatically added to the stock level in the stock control system. - The delivery destination of stock can be set when creating the PO so that the incoming stock shows to the correct stock location (eg station, shop, etc). === SUBMITTING HELPDESK TICKETS Please could I beg and plead with everyone that raises HOPS Helpdesk tickets to please follow the guidance when raising tickets? It really helps us to help you more promptly and saves a lot of time. Particularly providing a name of a user affected and a link to the affected page allows us to immediately admin-login as the affected user on the affected page. This not only saves time, but also gives us a better chance of responding even if we're not at a computer and can use a phone etc to see the issue. The pre-populated questions also help us obtain the information required and avoid several to-and-fros for us to understand the problem. The demand on HOPS support time is high, so please help us to do the best we can and respond as promptly to tickets as we can. Thank you. === YOUTUBE VIDEOS We are making progress uploading videos to YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HOPSHeritageRailways Recent videos include information on entering details and events for public display in the Raildays app: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6GXYdV8KgfsydmmfOddRkzQ_2Tyy3vln We are limited in what we can do with the new channel until it gains some credibility, so please do subscribe to the channel and that will help it gain credibility and unlock additional functionality. Thank you === ASSET MANAGEMENT - DEFECT REPORTING Work will be taking place on this over the next week or so to better use on mobiles etc, including uploading photos from phone cameras in a similar way to what currently exists on Spot Report. There should be no disruption but please let us know if you find any problems. === Thank you Danny Scroggins
Update 1205 11 June 2025	Max Limit on Voucher Purchases A max limit of £2,000 has been applied to the purchase of vouchers. This is to satisfy risk mitigation for card payment providers. Note, there is nothing to stop the same customer making more than one order for £2000 of vouchers each. https://www.hops.org.uk/retail_systems.php?t=9&t2=6 For ease, this limit has been applied to all voucher purchases, including by other payment methods such as cash. If it is required to sell more than £2000 of vouchers by cash, this can be done by making several orders for a maximum of £2000 each.
Update 1202 11 June 2025	Purchase Order System Work Heavy work will be taking place on the Purchase Order system over the next week or so. This is in connection with its upgrade to New HOPS and integration with the Retail Sales system. We will closely monitor any errors arising, but if you find anything not working properly please do let us know via a support ticket. There should be no change to functionality at this stage. Thank you -- Reminder - any user can subscribe to HOPS updates such as this via www.hops.org.uk/updates HOPS Admins, please encourage users with management roles to subscribe for the updates and service announcements.
Update 1199 10 June 2025	Card Payments - Chaneg to Process Hello A change is being made to the processing of card payments. Currently, once a customer taps their card on the card device, the money in the account is ring-fenced, and only captured when the transaction is completed in POS and uploaded to HOPS. This has caused an issue whereby poor internet connections might mean inconsistencies arise between the card machine and POS, leading to the potential for lost payments. The new system captures the money as soon as the customer taps their card, rewardless of what POS subsequently does. This arrangement more closely matches the behaviour that might be expected from an independent card terminal. The one change to clerks is this: If a customer asks to make a part-payment by card (eg on an order for £20 they taps their card to pay £10 with the intention of paying the rest by cash) if they then change their mind and what to cancel the whole order the VOID ALL button will not be available. Instead, a REFUND button adjacent to the payment in the basket is required to be pressed to give the customer their £10 card payment back, then the basket can be voided off. [Note, a enterprising booking clerk could get round this by closing the browser, etc, but that risk also existed previously. Previously the risk was that there'd be an order with no payment, now the risk is there'll be a payment with no order, which I hope you will agree is preferable.] I imagine the occurrences of making part-payments is low, so I hope this will have low impact. Please let us know if you have any queries or issues. Thank you
Update 1196 8 June 2025	Discounts & Gift Cards GIFT CARDS https://www.hops.org.uk/retail_systems.php?t=17 * The number of each gift card product sold, redeemed, and not redeemed, has been added to the list of gift cards. This is to help identify, as the year progresses, what the likely demand on remaining event spaces is likely to be. * A tick box mode has been added to the Gift Cards list page to enable easier alteration of settings. --- DISCOUNTS https://www.hops.org.uk/ticket_sales_settings.php?t=13 * Additional tabs have been added to the 'Community Discounts' section to make it easier to see which codes have been used and which have not. (Note there is no difference between a 'normal' discount and a 'community' discount, they are just stored on different tabs for ease of administration.) New tabs are provided for codes that have been not used at all, and codes that have had some use. The 'Used' list should not be construed as 'Completely Used', as it is not possible to sensibly discern this with a discount code (eg it may not be usable now, but may have a start date in the future). * We have added a 'used on items' column to the 'discounts used' tabs so that it can be seen how many items have been discounted with each code. --- DEFINITIONS As a reminder, 'Gift Cards' are where the customer buys a ticket for a specific event, but not for a specific date. They give the gift card to the recipient, and then the recipient picks the date and pays £0. The purchaser pays the price of the Gift Card (which can be different to the price of the event its valid for). The 'sale' is counted on the day the gift card is purchased. Gift Cards can be valid for a period of months from the date of purchase, or until a hard deadline. You can see an example here: https://nnr.hops.org.uk/giftcards This is different to a 'Voucher', which is valid for an amount of cash. The customer pays some money in return for a voucher, and then spends that voucher at a later date. The amount of money the voucher was purchased for is exactly the amount that it can be spent for. Until they spend it, the value of the voucher is a cash liability for the railway. The original customer pays the amount of cash the voucher is valid for, and that is the amount of cash that can later be spent by the recipient. The 'sale' is counted on the day the voucher is 'spent', and the sale amount is the normal amount. (No sale takes place on the day the voucher is purchased.) Vouchers can be valid for a period of months from the date of purchase, or until a hard deadline. You can see an example here: https://sdr.hops.org.uk/vouchers And, for completeness, a 'Discount' is a code that allows the price of an item to be changed. Eg a 50% off discount code changes the price of the eligible items by 50%. Discounts have no liability. Sales are counted on the date the discount code is used, and the sale amount is the discounted price.
Update 1193 5 June 2025	Donations | Membership Types | Address Lookup DONATIONS Donations can now be collected via HOPS Retail Systems. This uses and early iteration of the upcoming 'shop' system. A donation is managed as a 'product'. Products can be created for '£10 donation', '£20 donation' etc, and/or with no given price so that the donor can enter their own price. Products are added and edited in Retail Systems > Shop System > Stock Items List. When creating/editing products that are donations, be sure to select NOT 'stock manged'. This ensures there is no limit on the number of donations that can be sold, and that sold ones don't appear on the stock value list. Allocate the donations products to folders in the normal way. A product can be in more than one folder, so it will, in future, be possible to achieve: A person who is likely to buy an OO gauge model of a particular loco might also be inclined to make a donation to the restoration fund for that engine, so the donation product could ALSO live in the 'OO gauge models' folder; Conversely, a person who is likely to make a donation to the restoration of that engine might also be interested in buying a badge with the engine on, so the badge product could ALSO be in the donations folder. Where donations are allowed for different specific projects, these can be created as specific products, eg '£10 donation to engine fund', '£10 donation to track fund'. If desired, to assist giving information to customers, they can be places in different sub folders of the overall 'donations' folder. Details of the 'product'/donation can be added to the product details and/or the folder details. This might include suggestions for what a donation is spent on, eg 'Your donation of £10 could buy the railway one sleeper' or 'Your donation of £10m could completely relay all the track on the entire line!'. A 'slug' field is available for giving products 'pretty' urls. If left blank a slug will be created from the product name. Links can be shared to individual folders and/or individual donation products as required. Eg x.hops.org.uk/shop/models/oo/black-fives DONATIONS CARD ON HOME PAGE A card on the Home page of the sales system (alongside events, travel, vouchers, etc) can be implemented via settings in Retail Systems > Donations tab. The colour, text, and image on the card can be set here. (As always, avoid using an image with text on as it is cropped in different aspect ratios in different parts of the system.) Also in these settings, the location of the 'donations' folder can be set. This is the folder that the user will be directed to when they click on the Donations card (or visit x.hops.org.uk/donations ) The card always points to the URL x.hops.org.uk/donations, even if the target folder is changed. Upon visiting the url the user will be directed to the 'Donations' folder specified. The target folder can be set in Retail Systems > Donations tab. The /donations link works even if the card is not enabled on the Home page. GIFT AID To collect a Gift Aid declaration on donation items the following three actions are required: * The railway is set to 'Store Gift Aid' in System > HOPS Config * The Retail System is set to offer Gift Aid declarations in Retail Systems > General Settings tab, 'Offer Gift Aid' setting. * The donation products have a 'Gift Aid Proportion' of greater than 0%. For donations, in most cases, this will be 100%. NOTE The Gift Aid Proportion is the PROPORTION of the overall price that can be Gift Aided, not the amount of Gift Aid or the rate of Gift Aid. Eg for a donation it will be 100%. OTHER NOTES The Shop Interface must be enabled for the railway. Please request this via HOPS. ====================================== MEMBERSHIP SYSTEM The Membership Type editing page has been replaced with a newly-written one, resolving several long-standing niggles. This also now has increased functionality for different membership expiry methods: The 'expires at the same month each year' (Method B) now has a 'years' option, for multi-year membership. The 'months' option now only applies to the 'expires after X months' expiry method (Method A). We hope this helps model the surprisingly-complicated issue of establishing expiry dates! ====================================== POSTCODE / ADDRESS LOOKUP The new postcode / address lookup feature in HOPS is currently half-way through its trial period. It is available to all organisations for a trial period until the end of June 2025. Please opt-in now if you wish to keep access to it after then! This is available: - when adding or editing a user's address (themselves or a manager entering details of another user) - when adding/editing emergency contacts - for public customers making online ticket purchases - for public customers making online shares sales - for public customers making online membership sales - for public customers making online shop sales This aims to: * speed up the entry of user data * reduce the effort required by customers complete their checkout for purchases * reduce the propensity for errors / missing address components Addresses can still be added 'manually' for occasions where the required address isn't in the Royal Mail list. There is a cost to HOPS in providing this service, so the lookup feature will be an optional add-on for railways for which a small fee will be charged (£5 per month). The railways with which we have developed this feature believe that the time, staff effort, and wasted postage, saved will deliver an overall saving to their railways. The system is currently switched on for all railways for a trial period (without charge) until the end of June. Railways may OPT IN at any time to subscribe to the service to continue after then if they wish. (If no action is taken, the feature will disappear at the end of the trial, and no fee charged). If you wish to OPT-IN to keep access to the Address Lookup service after the end of June please do so now by raising a support ticket or emailing alan.johnson@hops.org.uk We hope this new feature is useful - Thank you to everyone who has worked with us to develop it.
Update 1190 3 June 2025	Address Lookup | HOPS YouTube Videos POSTCODE / ADDRESS LOOKUP The new postcode / address lookup feature in HOPS is currently half-way through its trial period. It is available to all organisations for a trial period until the end of June 2025. Please opt-in now if you wish to keep access to it after then! This is available: - when adding or editing a user's address (themselves or a manager entering details of another user) - when adding/editing emergency contacts - for public customers making online ticket purchases - for public customers making online shares sales - for public customers making online membership sales - for public customers making online shop sales This aims to: * speed up the entry of user data * reduce the effort required by customers complete their checkout for purchases * reduce the propensity for errors / missing address components Addresses can still be added 'manually' for occasions where the required address isn't in the Royal Mail list. There is a cost to HOPS in providing this service, so the lookup feature will be an optional add-on for railways for which a small fee will be charged (£5 per month). The railways with which we have developed this feature believe that the time, staff effort, and wasted postage, saved will deliver an overall saving to their railways. The system is currently switched on for all railways for a trial period (without charge) until the end of June. Railways may OPT IN at any time to subscribe to the service to continue after then if they wish. (If no action is taken, the feature will disappear at the end of the trial, and no fee charged). If you wish to OPT-IN to keep access to the Address Lookup service after the end of June please do so now by raising a support ticket or emailing alan.johnson@hops.org.uk We hope this new feature is useful - Thank you to everyone who has worked with us to develop it. ----- HOPS YOUTUBE VIDEOS Unfortunately, due to a change in service provider from Google Workspace to Office 365, the HOPS YouTube channel has to be started again from scratch. We will re-upload all the videos that remain relevant, but this might take us a little time. Unfortunately the URLs will be different, but we will update where these are embedded in HOPS as they are re-uploaded. This also provides us with a good opportunity to review them, and highlight them to users who might not have seen them before. Here are links to videos on: * Competence Evidence Assurance Function: https://youtu.be/cVyxmjSw9Bk * Recording Asset Mileages: https://youtu.be/Mizbg-zJDj0 ----- HOPS UPDATES We don't intend that HOPS Updates will be published as frequently as they have been in the last week. There has been a lot going on recently so it we hope you find it useful that we keep you updated. If you are reading this via a forwarded email you can subscribe (or unsubscribe) yourself here: https://www.hops.org.uk/updates Thank you
Update 1187 2 June 2025	New News about News The interface for writing HOPS News stories has been updated, achieving several long-standing ambitions. - Pasted text now retains its line breaks - Each block can now contain multiple paragraphs - The issue asssociated with adding carriage returns in to existing text, and removing carriage returns to combine paragraphs together, are now resolved. - Further formatting options are available such as underline and italic, font colour, etc The new interface is the same as is used in Members' News. The use of a consistent interface across these, the upcoming Shareholders' News (for railways that keep shares registers in HOPS), and enables easier ongoing development of the functionality in the future. The current blocks available are: Titles, Text and Image. Thank you
Update 1184 30 May 2025	Multi-Factor Authentication MULTI-FACTOR AUTHENTICATION HOPS will soon be offering Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) on HOPS accounts. This is in response to feedback from several railways. Like most things this isn't a straightforward as just 'doing it', there are lots of wider effects to consider, technical, procedural, and human-factors, so here are our current plans: * There will be an initial trial with a small group of invited users. * After the trial MFA will be available (optional) to all. * Railways will be able to enforce MFA for specific users. * In the long term, MFA will become a requirement for users with certain permissions (eg permission to administer permissions (015), permission to admin-login (080), etc) - permissions that enable access to personal data. It is likely the permissions included in this list will increase over time, and bring more users within the requirement of MFA. We recognise this may not be welcome by some users, but the demands from railways for us to implement MFA are now overwhelming, and once MFA is available we don't feel it is defensible for HOPS to not require it where appropriate. * Railways will be able to enforce MFA for selected users who otherwise don't require it by means of a permission that will fall in the above list. The permission itself won't do anything, it will just be the thing that requires the user to set up MFA. This being a permission will make it easy for railways to 'fit and forget' the permission to appropriate Permission Groups, ensuring that any new users in those groups automatically obtain the 'Requires MFA' permission without the HOPS Admin needing to take any action. This will also cover the case of a user obtaining the permission by being added to a department (eg 'Directors Department', etc). * All the above will be implemented gradually over a period of several months, with notifications to affected users in advance. * MFA will become an alternative to 'Personal Questions' for password resets for users who have joined accounts. * MFA will require the user to use an authenticator app. Any TOTP-compliant authenticator app can be used: Google Authenticator and Microsoft Authenticator apps being the two most popular. Built-in and third-party Password Managers are also available for all major web browsers which have integrated authenticators. Note that a HOPS login applies to logging in to *HOPS*, rather than in to a specific railway. Once logged in to HOPS a user is free to jump between their railways. Therefore if a user's permissions at any one of their railways demand MFA then it is applied to their account and they will need to use MFA to log in, regardless of which railway they wish to view. --- Forgetting / Losing MFA details: A new button will soon be provided in the user profile page for managers to reset users' Personal Questions. This will remove the need for Admins to raise a support request to have questions reset. Currently, where a user works for more than one railway, their accounts are separated out before the Personal Questions are removed. This is to avoid a rogue Admin obtaining access to a user's account by means of changing their email address and obtaining a password reset, and then jumping to the user's other railways. By separating out the accounts, the rogue Admin can only obtain access to their own railway's data, which they had access to anyway. This is currently performed by HOPS HQ but the new button will enable Admins to manage this locally. When MFA is introduced, a similar button will be provided, which will separate out the user's accounts and then remove MFA on only the user's account for the requesting railway. This will prevent a rogue Admin being able to access another railway's data by illegally obtaining a password reset in the same way as described above. ---
Update 1181 29 May 2025	HOPS Updates Notifications A new system has been introduced for notifying users when updates to the HOPS system take place. Any user can subscribe/unsubscribe from updates via the links at the top of the System Updates page: https://www.hops.org.uk/updates There are two distinct mailing lists: * HOPS Updates, for updates relating to HOPS compliance tools and services * HOPS Retail System Updates, for updates relating to HOPS retail systems This new system replaces old permission 168, which used to be the mechanism for subscribing to HOPS Updates. I believe all users who used to have 168 (including via groups and depts) have been subscribed to update notifications, so hopefully no action = no change. If you are reading this update BY EMAIL then you are subscribed. This new system will better-enable HOPS to keep interested users updated as HOPS development takes places. If you don't wish to receive these updates, please unsubscribe via the System Updates page (link above). Thank you
Update 1170 28 May 2025	Updates are currently being deployed to News, Members' News and Shareholders' News. There may be some errors encountered in the next 20 minutes. Apologies for any inconvenience.
Update 1167 30 April 2025	Address / Postcode lookup has now been added to POS machines, for use when selling address-required items, or Gift Aid items. It works both on POS machines in booking offices and on PCs for telephone sales. This is part of the free trial period of the address / postcode lookup facility: https://www.hops.org.uk/update/1158
Update 1166 30 April 2025	RESETTING PERSONAL QUESTIONS A new button has been provided in the user profile page for managers to reset users' Personal Questions. This removes the need for Admins to raise a support request to have questions reset. Where a user works for more than one railway, their accounts are separated out before the Personal Questions are removed. They then have separate login credentials for each railway. Their password and Personal Questions will all happen to be identical to their current ones, but they will have a separate username for each. The Personal Questions are only removed from the account that is used for the railway that has made the requests. The user can then use the Forgotten Password facility, or the manager can 'Issue Password Reset' [does the same thing] and the user will be able to reset their password without needing to answer the Personal Questions. The user will need to follow the same process on the other railways they work at to re-gain access to those. The user can re-join their accounts together again once they have re-gained access to both. This accounts are split out to avoid a rogue Admin obtaining access to a user's account by means of changing their email address and obtaining a password reset, and then being actually logged in as the user and jumping to the user's other railways. By separating out the accounts, the rogue Admin can only obtain access to their own railway's data, which they had access to anyway. (Note this is the same process as has always applied, just previously it has been implemented by HOPS HQ rather than railway admins.) Admins should never be /actually/ logged in as other users. It is very bad practice to ask users to reveal their passwords. Admins should use the Admin-Login facility. The admin login facility does not allow jumping between railways.
Update 1162 29 April 2025	(Republished as item 1184)
Update 1161 28 April 2025	USER PHOTOGRAPHS We have reviewed and updated our help page on user photos to improve the quality of photos on ID cards: https://www.hops.org.uk/help/profile-photos Apart from making the info clearer, there is a new requirement for users to not be wearing sunglassess or a hat (religous headwear permitted). Both of these obscure or cast shadows on significant facial features which feedback has identified reduces the effectiveness of the photo. It is always tricky when accepting/rejecting photos, so the overriding concern will always be the user being identifiable, and the technical requirements/limitations of printing on ID cards. Occasionally we make mistakes, so if you believe a photo has been rejected in error please ask your Admin to contact us and we will be happy to accept it or give feedback. Thank you to everyone who tries to upload photos of their cats and dogs. We do enjoy them... before we reject them.
Update 1164 25 April 2025	POSTCODE / ADDRESS LOOKUP A new postcode / address lookup feature in HOPS it now available to all railways for a trial period until the end of June 2025. This is available when adding or editing a user's address (themselves or a manager entering details of another user), emergency contacts, and for public customers making online ticket sales, shares sales, membership sales, and shop sales. This aims to: * speed up the entry of user data * reduce the effort required by customers complete their checkout for purchases * reduce the propensity for errors / missing address components Addresses can still be added 'manually' for occasions where the required address isn't in the Royal Mail list. There is a cost to HOPS in providing this service, so the lookup feature will be an optional add-on for railways for which a small fee will be charged (£5 per month). The railways with which we have developed this feature believe that the time, staff effort, and wasted postage, saved will deliver an overall saving to their railways. The system is currently switched on for all railways for a trial period (without charge) until the end of June. Railways may OPT IN at any time to subscribe to the service to continue after then if they wish. (If no action is taken, the feature will disappear at the end of the trial, and no fee charged). Please do this by raising a support ticket in the Helpdesk, or emailing in. We hope this new feature is useful - Thank you to everyone who has worked with us to develop it.
Update 1158 25 April 2025	POSTCODE / ADDRESS LOOKUP A new postcode / address lookup feature in HOPS it now available to all railways for a trial period until the end of June 2025. This is available when adding or editing a user's address (themselves or a manager entering details of another user), emergency contacts, and for public customers making online ticket sales, shares sales, membership sales, and shop sales. This aims to: * speed up the entry of user data * reduce the effort required by customers complete their checkout for purchases * reduce the propensity for errors / missing address components Addresses can still be added 'manually' for occasions where the required address isn't in the Royal Mail list. There is a cost to HOPS in providing this service, so the lookup feature will be an optional add-on for railways for which a small fee will be charged (£5 per month). The railways with which we have developed this feature believe that the time, staff effort, and wasted postage, saved will deliver an overall saving to their railways. The system is currently switched on for all railways for a trial period (without charge) until the end of June. Railways may OPT IN at any time to subscribe to the service to continue after then if they wish. (If no action is taken, the feature will disappear at the end of the trial, and no fee charged). Please do this by raising a support ticket in the Helpdesk, or emailing in. We hope this new feature is useful - Thank you to everyone who has worked with us to develop it.
Update 1160 25 April 2025	CONSTRUCT ROSTERS Has now moved over to the New HOPS system, with improved interface. Tick box mode has been improved so that multiple attributes of the selected turns can be set in one operation. Apart from tick-box mode, the functionality should be the same as before, but please let us know if you find any problems.
Update 1163 24 April 2025	Thermal till receipts now include the company logo at the top.
Update 1165 21 April 2025	We will soon be trialling a new postcode / address lookup feature in HOPS. This would be available when adding or editing a user's address (themselves or a manager entering details of another user), emergency contacts, and for public customers making online ticket sales, shares sales, membership sales, and shop sales. This aims to: * speed up the entry of user data * reduce the effort required by customers complete their checkout for purchases * reduce the propensity for errors / missing address components Addresses can still be added 'manually' for occasions where the required address isn't in the Royal Mail list. There is a cost to HOPS in providing this service, so the lookup feature will be an optional add-on for railways for which a small fee will be charged (~£5 per month). The railways with which we have developed this feature believe that the time, staff effort, and wasted postage, saved will deliver an overall saving to their railways. The system will initially be switched on for all railways, for a trial period (without charge). At the end of the trial railways may OPT IN to subscribe to the service if they wish. (If no action is taken, the feature will disappear at the end of the trial, and no fee charged). We will advise when the trial period starts and the mechanism for opting to continue using the lookup system after the trial. We hope this new feature is useful - Thank you to everyone who has worked with us to develop it.
Update 1156 21 April 2025	We will soon be trialling a new postcode / address lookup feature in HOPS. This would be available when adding or editing a user's address (themselves or a manager entering details of another user), emergency contacts, and for public customers making online ticket sales, shares sales, membership sales, and shop sales. This aims to: * speed up the entry of user data * reduce the effort required by customers complete their checkout for purchases * reduce the propensity for errors / missing address components Addresses can still be added 'manually' for occasions where the required address isn't in the Royal Mail list. There is a cost to HOPS in providing this service, so the lookup feature will be an optional add-on for railways for which a small fee will be charged (~£5 per month). The railways with which we have developed this feature believe that the time, staff effort, and wasted postage, saved will deliver an overall saving to their railways. The system will initially be switched on for all railways, for a trial period (without charge). At the end of the trial railways may OPT IN to subscribe to the service if they wish. (If no action is taken, the feature will disappear at the end of the trial, and no fee charged). We will advise when the trial period starts and the mechanism for opting to continue using the lookup system after the trial. We hope this new feature is useful - Thank you to everyone who has worked with us to develop it.
Update 1155 9 April 2025	There is a new link on the Roster Construction page that links to a preview of the New HOPS Roster Construction page. HOPS Admins (and those keen enough to read these updates) are welcome to try it out. The original Roster Construct page is still in place so if you find any issues with the new one [which is likely] please let us know and then do whatever it is on the old page. When the reports die down we'll move the new page in to the place of the old.
Update 1154 6 April 2025	As usual for our weekend project at the moment, work is taking place on Rosters which should have no visual or functional change to users, but if you spot anything please let us know. Thank you
Update 1153 4 April 2025	As part of our work to support multi-company operations in Retail Systems (eg a "Trust" and a "Limited"), Cost Centres are now attributed to a 'company'. The company short name is now shown in brackets after the cost centre wherever the cost centre is shown in the system, eg "123. Loco consumables; 456. Coal (LNER)" There is no change to functionality at present.
Update 1152 3 April 2025	Further work has taken place on Rosters today, which should have no visual or functional change to users, but if you spot anything please let us know. We are aware of the issue where sometimes a newly-added turn gets put in a separate horizontal line to all the rest of the turns on that day, and we are fixing it as it arises. Please continue to report instance of it so that we can find all the routes through the system where it can occur! Thank you
Update 1151 3 April 2025	Work has taken place to improve the performance of the server-side PDF creator. Please let us know if you spot any issues. Thank you.
Update 1150 3 April 2025	Retail Sales Updates: Emails sent in connection with Retail Sales orders now have more comprehensive reporting of status of delivery and, where available, when it was opened and links clicked. Note it is not always possible to report this, so the absense of a report does not guarantee that the email wasn't opened or clicked. Membership Updates: Interlocking between 'date of birth' and 'membership types' is now available, to enforce minimum and maximum age of members purchasing specific membership types. A new attribute is available on each membership type to control how far in advance a member can renew their membership. Default is no constraint, which was what it was previously so no action = no change. Custom checkout questions can now be asked on a per-membership-type basis. POS Updates: Shelf-edge labels / product barcode labels can now be printed from POS.
Update 1149 13 March 2025	A new 'Exceptions' option has been added to Calendar Entries. This allows individual days within the entry to be marked as cancelled, or not shown at all. This is in addition to all the existing constraints on days of the week, etc. Thank you to all railways that work together with HOPS to facilitate improvements such as this.
Update 1148 20 February 2025	The discount 'items required in basket' system has been significantly upgraded and now gives the option of selecting any ticket type / journey type / fares scheme / session in any combination. This makes it a lot easier to create discounts such as 'child goes free with every adult' on a SESSION (previously easy on travel but difficult on sessions), and all permutations of 'buy one get one free' and 'buy X get Y free'. These facilities can be accessed via the overall discounts list, when 'Require other items in basket' is set to 'yes'.
Update 1147 19 February 2025	Work is going on on roster-related pages at present. There should be no visible change but if you spot anything not working as it should please let us know. Thank you
Update 1145 13 February 2025	Some new tools have been added to the Asset Management System to assist railways in maintaining asbestos registers. There is a new option on defects to specify that a defect is 'asbestos-related'. When this is set to 'yes', two additional options appear for recording the type of asbestos and its condition. Each individual instance of asbestos should be entered as a defect in this way. If there is more than one instance/type/condition of asbestos on an asset, the asset will have more than one asbestos-related defect. The presence of asbestos is considered a 'defect' in that it is undesirable. It is not to suggest that there is necessarily a defect in the asbestos or that is is unsafe. If there are containment measures in place, these should be recorded as control measures. All asbestos-related defects (and therefore all instances of asbestos) appear in the Asbestos Register (accessible from the Asset Management System home page), along with the details of the defect and normal risk assessment. If/when the asbestos is removed, the defect can be closed in the normal way and it will be removed from the Asbestos Register. A yellow triangle with an 'A' in it appears next to any defect number related to asbestos, and next to any asset that contains asbestos. -- In order to ensure that the Asbestos Register is exhaustive (i.e. it contains all known asbestos, not just 'the asbestos that has been found'), it is also possible to mark a Maintenance Task as asbestos-related. These asbestos-related maintenance tasks behave in the same way as normal tasks, but earn the yellow A triangle symbol, and appear in the Asbestos Regiser. A good task would be 'Asbestos Survey'. The task can be the conduting of the survey, but not necessarily the removal of the asbestos. Once the survey has been conducted, and the instances of asbestos entered into the Asset Management System as defects, the maintenance task can be marked as completed. This ensures that it is known whether an asset is 'not yet surveyed' or 'has been surveyed, and therefore all its asbestos will be in the Asbestos Register'. Each asbestos-related task will be presented as a tab at the top of the Asbestos Register.
Update 1138 12 February 2025	The stock system is now in and working. The stock quantities shown in the system should now be accurate, and increment/de-increment in line with sales. All railways have been started at 0 stock today. Incoming stock should now use the 'Re-Stock' facility in POS. (This is also temporary, until the PO system is finished.) Wasted stock should be disposed of via the 'Waste' facility in POS. The purchase prices of items are calculated in accordance with: https://www.hops.org.uk/help/inventory-stock-value-calculation The current values for cost and latest cost can be seen in the Product Details page in HOPS. This will be re-calculated every time new stock is added via the Re-Stock (and later PO) facility. Adjusting quantities of stock controlled items on existing orders, eg when a customer changes their mind, can now only be done in POS, not HOPS. (This is to ensure the stock levels are updated after saving). The 'Transfer' facility in POS now works, for transferring stock between Stock Locations. Unfortunately it only copes with one product at a time at present (multiple quantities are handled). Stock Locations can also be used for things like 'The back of Fred's car' when he takes stuff to trade shows, etc (Hence we used the term 'Stock Location' rather than 'Branch'). A special stock location of 'In Transit' is used when items are transferred between Stock Locations. The item is sent from one Stock Location, and lands in the In Transit location, until it is checked-in at the receiving location by means of the 'Delivery' tab in POS. The number of each item in stock at each Stock Location can be viewed in HOPS > Shop System in the 'Inventory' tab, and in POS in Stock > Stock Levels. When an item is refunded, and POS gives an option for whether it will be returned to stock or not. If it is damaged, so not being returned to stock, it will go Customer > Stock Location > Waste in one movement. If it is being returned to stock it will go Customer > Stock Location. Please let us know if you find any anomalies.
Update 1139 28 January 2025	The email options for Group Bookings have been updated to enable emailing to the Customer, or to the Point of Contact. Previously it emailed the Point of Contact if there was one, and if not the Customer contact. Reminder: The Point of Contact is specific to the GB, and is only necessary to populate if the details are different to the selected customer's details.
Update 1135 28 January 2025	We have been asked by Railway200 to try to gather quantifiable data on the performance and impact of the Railway200 year. The first of these KPIs is in new volunteer engagement. It occurred to us that there are many other activities and promotions that for which it would be useful for railways to gauge success in terms of new volunteer engagement as well, so we have expanded the scope to be more general. Are now some new tick boxes on the New User form, displayed for Working users only (and on the Edit User form if a user is being made up to a Working user), to enable the 'reasons for wishing to work for the railway' and 'how you heard about opportunity to work for the railway'. When ticked, a text box is shown to allow the recording of additional or more specific information. Multiple tick boxes can be applied if a new user was influenced by more than one source. Predicting that you will come up with brilliant ideas for additions to the list, and inevitably also want your own local ones, the system facilitates this, so let us know if you have other specific promotion channels to monitor. Using this information, HOPS will be able to show railways not only the proportion of users that were influenced by each source, but also how many survive as working users year after year. Eg a promotion that produces 6 volunteers that last 10 years might be more valuable than a promotion that produces 100 volunteers that are gone after a month. One of the options is Railway 200, and this should be ticked (in addition to any other appropriate boxes) if it could be said that the existence of Railway 200 contributed positively to this new person becoming a volunteer. We hope this is useful!
Update 1132 20 January 2025	Just want you wanted to all hear after Thursday's update(!)... we are currently implementing a server software update. There should be no visible impact but please let us know if you find anything wrong. Following your positive feedback of the technical information from last Thursday, this is an update to PHP 8.4. This is work that would previously have required downtime, but thanks to our new containerised infrastructure downtime is not necessary! Thank you Danny S.
Update 1129 16 January 2025	Thank you to everyone for your patience during the maintenance time this morning. We're pleased to say that the work was completed and we're now hosting HOPS as a container cluster. There are now redundant copies of HOPS running invisibly in the background, at the same time, waiting to handle all your requests. A huge amount of work has taken place behind the scenes over the past six months to move the HOPS infrastructure over to a container platform and our thanks go to James Walker at Heron Web for undertaking this upgrade with us. Development on HOPS started over 15 years ago and at that time the traditional method for hosting a website was to rent a server with a website host. Over the years we've moved HOPS to bigger and faster servers but in 2024 we started to approach the limits of what's possible with that type of hosting. Concurrently, an excellent uptake in Retail Systems customers last year made it clear we needed to focus on reliability and response time as our next big project. A more modern approach to website hosting is to break the system down into smaller self-contained parts - containers - and run multiple copies. Each part of the system has a file, like a cooking recipe, that describes how to use it as a container. Once running the containers themselves are short-lived and don't store any data - so they can be added and removed from the overall system very quickly and reliably. We've been using this system to host our frontend user interfaces - New HOPS, Time Register, Point of Sale and the retail websites - for over two years so we're confident that it meets the demands of those services. When users visit a HOPS page they are now invisibly distributed between the containers, so that the load is balanced. If one of the containers fails it is automatically removed, and a new container is instantly added to the cluster to replace it. If we expect, or experience, a period of high use (e.g. Steam Gala) we can easily add more containers to the pool to handle the extra load. All containers share the same HOPS database (which is also separately balanced across multiple copies) so there is no possibility the containers will go out-of-sync with each other or have stale data on them. Our software development team can also use these recipe files to run an exact copy of HOPS on their own computers more reliably. Developers can test upgrades more thoroughly and know that next time the containers are recycled HOPS will be running from the same recipe, reducing the risk associated with future updates and changes. This has been a huge migration (as big, if not bigger, than "New HOPS" a few years ago) so we'd appreciate your patience over the next week or two while things settle down in their new home. Please report any problems to your HOPS Admin, and HOPS Admins can open a Support Ticket in the usual place.
Update 1127 16 January 2025	SYSTEM MIGRATION You may experience issues uploading/downloading files from HOPS. These files will be available again when the maintenance work is completed later this morning.
Update 1125 12 January 2025	REPORTS & EXPORT - CSV DOWNLOAD This has received some love today to improve useability. Using 'Download as CSV' now downloads a file rather than showing CSVs on the screen. Note that a CSV is used for storing DATA, not prettily-presented INFORMATION. CSVs are really intended for machine-reading, but there are a number of programs that will open them and present the data in a human-readable way, eg Excel. We have found that, in some cases, opening a CSV in Excel shows just the data, but using 'Get Data from Text/CSV' in Excel show the data in a much prettier format, so if the former doesn't give the desired result then the latter might.
Update 1124 11 January 2025	CALENDARS Further work has taken place on calendars: - It is now possible to archive a Custom Calendar (please let us you know if you find any archived ones still being displayed in the system!) - A new calendar view has been added to Customer Calendar view. The old list view is still available, setting in Custom Calendar Settings. - The attribute of whether or not a calendar shows on the Daily Operations page, which caused a lot of confusion versus permissions, has now been removed and is entirely controlled by permissions. - The main Calendar Monthly view has been re-labelled 'Month List' and a new 'Month Cal[endar]' tab has been provided which displays the same information in calendar view. --- As always, if you find any problems with any of the above please let us know. Thank you
Update 1123 6 January 2025	POINT OF SALE A 'reason' field has now been added when a supervisor adjusts the price of an item at the point of sale.
Update 1122 4 January 2025	ASSET MANAGEMENT SYSTEM It is now possible to allocate individual assets to individual users. New permission 539 (per asset register) enables a user to assign assets to users. This is a separate permission from 292, which is the permission to edit assets, so that a user can be allocted 539 to allocate/de-allocate assets to users without having permission to edit the rest of the details about an asset. This facility is intended for recording the issue of individually-identifiable assets to users, such as laptops or safe keys. It isn't intended for numerous assets which aren't individually identifiable, eg general site keys, for which an Element is the more appropriate method of recording. When allocating an asset to a user a 'Return/Review' date is set. This is to ensure that loaned assets don't get forgotten about for too long a period so as to make it difficult to recover, or such as the asset becomes life-expired when allocated to a user that no longer needs it when it could be more productively re-deployed. This enables the company to _demonstrate_ it is making good use of the company's/charity's assets. The default is three years, but up to five years can be set. A shorter date can also be set, for users allocated assets for fixed-term projects. If an asset's review/return date becomes overdue, this is shown on the asset register front page. At the point of the review/return date, it is possible to confirm the user still needs the asset and extend the review/return date. A 'Justification' field is also provided, enabling the justification of the allocation of the asset to be recorded. When a user returns an asset, this is recorded in the same way. Whenever an asset is allocated, confirmed or returned, an entry is added in the Work Record, so that the history of allocation to previous users is preseved. In the Asset Register, a new 'Allocations' tab shows all the assets in the register allocated to users, and their review/return date. A new 'Assets' tab in the User Details pages shows assets allocated to the specific user. An additional traffic light has been added to the User Archive screen that shows red if the user has assets allocated to them.
Update 1121 3 January 2025	Commercial Contacts now have attributes of 'supplier' and 'customer'. A contact can be both. Only suppliers are shown in Purchase Orders and Product Suppliers. Only customers are shown in Group Bookings and Retail Sales. Hopefully this makes the drop-down lists a bit shorter!
Update 1120 3 January 2025	A new attribute is available in System > HOPS Config Settings which determines which is the most appropriate word to use an in address: 'county', 'state', 'area'. Eg the majority of railways in England/Wales may prefer 'county', in Scotland 'area' will most likely be preferred, and in Australia 'state' may be best. Each railway can make its own choice. Addresses are being standardised as: Field 1 - street Field 2 - town/city Field 3 - county / area / state (as determined by the new attribute) Field 4 - post code / zip code. Changing the attribute in HOPS Config only changes the LABEL of the field on forms etc, it doesn't change any data in the field itself. We will almost certainly have missed some places in the system where address field are sticking to their old labels. If you find them please let us know. Thank you.
Update 1119 3 January 2025	GROUP BOOKINGS Significant work has been undertaken on the Group Bookings system tonight. The only visible changes should be improvements in the the selection of the customer. The 'saved' customers now refer to the Commercial Contacts in the Finance menu. The customer's address and contact information are shown automatically on selection, and change if the drop-down menu is changed. When editing a group booking, if the address and contact details for the customer (in the commercial contacts record for that customer) differ from those stored on the group booking, yellow highlighting will be applied to encourage the user to update the deatils to the more recent data. It is now only necessary to enter contact details for a specific 'point of contact' if these differ from the stored ones (eg specific teacher for a school visit, where the company details will have listed the accounts contact). We believe we have got to everywhere in the system that uses this info, but please let us know if you find anywhere behaving suspiciously. COMMERCIAL CONTACTS The Commercial Contacts page now highlights where duplicates might exist (two contacts with the same name). A 'Merge' page is provided to assist in merging duplicates in to one. Tabs on the Commercial Contact Details page now show all the POs, Group Bookings and Sales Orders for each Contact.
Update 1118 31 December 2024	POINT OF SALE Further to update 1117, new tabs for 'Adjusted Prices' have been added to: - Retail Sales (all items) - Ticket System (travel and events only) - Shop System (products only) showing items where the price has been changed, values, and reason. This is to help keep visibility of prices being changed by clerks.
Update 1117 31 December 2024	POINT OF SALE A facility to adjust prices of items in an order has been provided. This is guarded by permission 538. This is ideal for us in shops, where a customer might receive a one-off discount for a slightly-damaged or ex-display item. It is necessary to re-enter the clerk's PIN number when using this facility (to make sure that they are still really there and haven't walked away from the till leaving it logged in). It isn't necessary to give all clerks this new facility if that isn't desired - the new 'supervisor' facility can be used, and a clerk can call the supervisor for the price adjustment if that is the preferred method of working.
Update 1116 31 December 2024	A new concept of a 'supervisor' has been implemented in POS. As all actions are controlled by permissions, a "supervisor" is any user who can do something that the current user can't. Ie, there is no single attribute that makes someone a 'supervisor'. This is to facilitate the different policies on different railways, eg some railways allow all clerks to do refunds, and some require a manager. In the former case, the refund facility will be (and is already) available without supervisor intervention, in the latter case a supervisor (someone with refunds permission) would be required to log in to do the action. The following permissions relate to POS actions, which can now be done by a supervisor if the clerk doesn't have permission. 524 - Conduct refunds in POS via Recall Method 525 - Conduct refunds in POS via Quick method 526 - Create Provisional Orders 527 - Create Deposit Orders 528 - Collect payments by MOTO Method 538 - Adjust Prices on the fly The supervisor can log in using the orange button in the 'Supervisor' menu on the right hand side. When logged in, the top of the screen goes orange as a visual reminder (similar to when Admin-logging-in to HOPS). When the supervisor has completed their action, they can press 'log out', and the POS will be returned to the original user. All this can take place while an order is in progress, the basket etc is unaffected.
Update 1115 28 December 2024	ENGINEERING POSSESSIONS Further work has taken place to improve the saving of dates and times on engineering possession parts, but it isn't finished yet. A new 'Duplicate' facility has been provided (link at the top of the item page), recognising that many items are duplicates of previous ones. A new concept of 'Draft' and 'Published' has been introduced. Users with permission 163 (view possessions) can only see published items. Users with permission 165 (add/edit possessions) can see draft possessions. If a published possession is edited, an 'Explanation of Change' field has been provided. A new concept of 'Cancelled' has been added. A possession that has been published can be 'cancelled', whereupon it continues to show to all users but with the heading 'Cancelled'. A draft possession cannot be 'cancelled', but it can now be deleted. A published possession can't be deleted.
Update 1114 28 December 2024	VOLUNTEERING FOR VACANT TURNS This function has been updated and now includes a facility to allocate an alternative turn to the one the user orignally volunteered for. If an alternative is selected the user is advised in their email [note this may take some explanation initially if a user is allocated an alternative turn that appears to be identical]. All the 'busy' and 'competence' red notes on the page have been updated to reflect the many and varied options, but please let us know if you find anything amiss.
Update 1113 28 December 2024	The Engineering Possessions section of HOPS has received some improvements to formatting. EDITING possessions now gives the opportunity to select locations from a list, as well as writing in free text, but there is further work to do on editing, particularly relating to entering of dates. Options to delete 'parts' of a possession, and whole possessions, have been added. A new tab has been added to the Daily Calendar page to show possessions that occur on that date. The overall Possessions page (Tools > Engineering > Possessions) is now sorted by month instead of week. Possessions have been added to the Week Calendar (Calendars > This Week). If you find anything new not working please let us know.
Update 1112 13 December 2024	Significant work has taken place in the Purchase Orders system. There should only be minor visible changes, but if you notice anything that looks incorrect please let us know. A noteworthy change to the PO pages is that they will now highlight if the contact details of the supplier have changed since the PO was created and give the opportunity to update the details on the PO to the most recent details or leave the original details.
Update 1111 10 December 2024	The Gift Cards system has been fully implemented. It is now possible to sell Gift Cards for specific Events/Sessions via the online method, and via POS, and for the receipient to redeem them via the online method or via POS.
Update 1110 10 December 2024	The Stock Items sales tools are being upgraded to facilitate use of Retail Systems in shop environments. A new 'Shop System' menu item under Retail Systems which contains all the relevant facilities relating to Stock Items. New permission 536 applies to Shop System. All users and groups with existing permission 474 have been allocated 536. The Stock Items List and Stock Items Sales List have moved from Retail Systems to Shop System. The Stock Items list is now sorted by Cost (Revenue) Centre (to avoid issues with a single list containing thousands of items). A new Stock Item Search tab has been provided. A Detail page has been provided for each product (as the amount of detail stored is too great to show all on the overview list). The detail page includes all the existing deatils, plus a tab for Sales of that item, and a new tab for Barcodes. POS has been updated to accept barcode scanning of products. A product can have multiple barcodes. More than one product can have the same barcode (eg for products that are customised on-site). When a barcode is scanned that applies to more than one product, the POS shows images of the products to the clerk so that they can pick the appropriate one. Further work will take place over the next few weeks in response to demand from railways to expand this part of the Retail System. Thank you to everyone who gives feedback to HOPS to steer its development for the benefit of all railways.
Update 1109 8 December 2024	Marking off Cheques sent by post and BACS payments is now in the system. This can be accessed from the sales order details page (unsuccessful payments section), or via the Unsettled Orders tab, then Payments Expected tab in Retail Systems. Permission 535 required.
Update 1108 4 December 2024	There will be some brief periods of downtime on Wednesday 25 December 2024 for back-up restoration drills. The periods of downtime will be brief ( < 1 minute). If HOPS is working when you visit it it is safe to use. There will periods of downtime between 7.30am and 9.30am GMT on Thursday 9 January 2025. The period of downtime is likely to be at least 45 minutes. This is to facilitate server upgrade work which will improve resilience and reduce the requirement for downtime in the future. A two-hour range is being advertised to ensure there is sufficient time to roll-back to the old server if required. If HOPS is working when you visit it it is safe to use. This downtime is being held-over from December to avoid disturbance or risk to Christmas operations at all railways. The two-hour period on 9 January starts at 7.30am GMT, that's: 15:30-17:30 AWST in West Australia 17:00-19:00 ACST in Northern Territory 18:00-20:00 ACDT in South Australia 17:30-19:30 AEST in Queensland 18:30-20:30 AEDT in New South Wales / Victoria / Tazmania 09:30-11:30 in Italy 09:30-11:30 in South Africa If you have any queries please contact your HOPS Admin, or HOPS Admins please contact HOPS HQ via support ticket.
Update 1107 4 December 2024	Sticky column headings on the View Roster page are back again, thanks to the page now being a New HOPS page. There may be different browsers on which the behaviour will be better or worse so please bear with us as we try to cope with them all....!
Update 1106 1 December 2024	A new 'Internal Remarks' facility has been added to turns on rosters. This shows only on Construct Rosters and is intended for the roster clerk to make notes to themselves, eg where a person has been rostered for a specific reason such as to avoid lapsing or following a specific request. The internal remarks can be edited in 'Quick Assign' or 'Edit Turn Details'.
Update 1105 27 November 2024	There will be a brief period of downtime on Friday 29 November, between 0730 and 0800 GMT. This is to enable server upgrade work. That's.... 15:30 AWST in West Australia 18:00 ACDT in South Australia 18:30 AEDT in New South Wales / Victoria / Tasmania Part of this work includes changes to reduce or eliminate the need for downtime in the future, which has become all the more important now that HOPS deals with sales transactions. Time Register devices will be unaffected and will store up transactions until HOPS comes back online. POS devices will display a prompt inviting the operator to 'work offline', after which they will work normally and upload transactions when HOPS comes back online. Card payments are unaffected. For confidence, there will be a brief test period after the site is taken offline to prove the POS devices before work starts, during which time the work can be aborted if necessary. Public ticket sales websites will be offline. We apologise for any inconvenience. If you have any queries please contact your HOPS Admin, or HOPS Admins contact HOPS HQ.
Update 1104 27 November 2024	There will be a brief period of downtime on Friday 29 November, between 0730 and 0800 GMT. This is to enable server upgrade work. That's.... 15:30 AWST in West Australia 18:00 ACDT in South Australia 18:30 AEDT in New South Wales / Victoria / Tasmania Part of this work includes changes to reduce or eliminate the need for downtime in the future, which has become all the more important now that HOPS deals with sales transactions. Time Register devices will be unaffected and will store up transactions until HOPS comes back online. POS devices will display a prompt inviting the operator to 'work offline', after which they will work normally and upload transactions when HOPS comes back online. Card payments are unaffected. For confidence, there will be a brief test period after the site is taken offline to prove the POS devices before work starts, during which time the work can be aborted if necessary. Public ticket sales websites will be offline. We apologise for any inconvenience. If you have any queries please contact your HOPS Admin, or HOPS Admins contact HOPS HQ.
Update 1103 22 November 2024	There is now a facility to archive events. A link to the 'archive' is present at the top of the list. (If you find archived events showing in other parts of the system please let me know) Thanks Danny S.
Update 1102 17 November 2024	As part of development of the Asset Management system, we invite railways to send in details of specific measurements they record when conducting maintenance tasks on S&T assets, eg, track circuits and FPLs. This is with a view to establishing common and diverse practices among railways. If you are happy to send in details of your S&T maintenance task measurement requirements please send to danny.scroggins@hops.org.uk (The items sent in will not be shared with other railways.) Thank you
Update 1101 16 November 2024	Details of Timesheets have been added to the 'Time' tab on the user details page. Timesheet info is shown in addition to the existing information about Time Register records. The date range filtering facility has also been improved and is available for both Time Register and Timesheet lists.
Update 1100 15 November 2024	The menu option for Custom Calendars has now been integrated in to the 'Today', 'This Week', 'This Month' menu options. There's no difference to functionality at this stage. This is part of our work to enable more than one timetable/modifier to be used on the same day.
Update 1099 13 November 2024	Additional Columns have been added to the Employee Leave Allowance table to show the number of AL days taken and remaining in the current year.
Update 1098 13 November 2024	Discounts on EVENTS now have additional options for: - Redeemable between dates (Eg "buy your Santa ticket during the month of August and get a discount") - Redeemable X days before event (Eg "buy your Santa ticket at least 7 days in advance and get a discount") - Redeemable for sessions between dates (Eg Where a dining train has sessions throughout the year "buy a ticket for a dining train that runs in September and get a discount").
Update 1097 13 November 2024	The employee annual leave response form has been updated to show the working pattern of other staff during the time the person has requested off. This will help to manage leave where there are expectations that only N people will be on leave at the same time.
Update 1096 7 November 2024	A route map has been added to the top of the 'Travel' page in the public tickets website, to assist passengers understanding the layout of stations. (We are aware that, for some railways, the stations have been 'fiddled' to provide the desired result, and in these cases the route map won't be suitable for public display. If this applies to you please let us know and we can hide it on a railway-by-railway basis.) We intend to develop this further to provide information about the stations, such as toilets, cafe, etc, in the future.
Update 1095 7 November 2024	A clock has been added to the POS interface. This is in response to feedback as the Start bar is normally hidden on POS machines, so the clerk can't look in the bottom right corner to see the time. We hope it helps.
Update 1094 7 November 2024	A new 'Offers & Discounts' card is available for the Tickets home page. It leads to a page that lists discounts that are 'Automatically Apply' and 'Show Decoration' in the settings of the Discount Code. This is ideal for 'Earlybird' discounts. The settings for the card on the Home page can be edited in Ticket System Settings > Discounts > Discount Settings Tab.
Update 1093 6 November 2024	It's time for the annual reminder of the URL for users to confirm their details are up to date: https://www.hops.org.uk/user/confirm This is a useful process in the renewal of ID cards, and also useful for railways that don't use the ID card system to be in a strong position to demonstrate they have taken reasonable steps to make sure information needed in an emergency, especially medical and emergency contact, is up to date.
Update 1092 6 November 2024	The Feedback system has now been commissioned for customers who have made online orders. The system can be accessed via https://www.raildays.org/feedback This will be developed for walk-up customers next.
Update 1091 5 November 2024	A 'Location' tab has been added to the Retail Sales Order Details page showing a map of the customer's location (based on their post code).
Update 1090 4 November 2024	Some tidying-up of some tick system back office pages has taken place: ORDER DETAILS PAGE This was getting too large and becoming slow to load, so has now been separated into tabs. Two commonly-used links from the top that have been moved in to tabs are: 'Refund Options' and 'Issue Credit Note' are in the 'Items & Payments' tab; 'Re-send Confirmation Email' is in the 'Comms & Emails' tab. SESSION DETAILS PAGE A new page has been added for this, with tabs for 'Bookings', 'Questions' and 'Feedback'. This has made the event overview page a but less cluttered. FEEDBACK Is reflected: - in Ticket System (feedback for all orders) [this has been moved from the Retail Systems section] - in the Order Details page (feedback for that order) - in the Event pages (feedback for all sessions on that event) - in the Session pages (feedback for that session)
Update 1089 30 October 2024	The order of the role columns on rosters has been standardised. Previously it was: 1st - Order (specified in the Roles editing page) 2nd - the order in which the roles were added to HOPS Now it is: 1st - Order (specified in the Roles editing page) 2nd - Alphabetical. The order can always be set by the railway (via the role editing page), but if no order is set or if two roles have the same sort order, the next sort is now alphabetical rather than just 'the order they were entered in to HOPS'.
Update 1088 26 October 2024	"Reminder Emails" have been introduced. These are emails that are sent at a time relative to when the customer will be visiting. They can be set for any number of days up to 30 before the date of visit, and can help to prepare the customer for their visit (eg what to bring) or create excitement in the lead up to a visit (eg 'Santa is looking forward to seeing you!') Reminder emails can be set for events in the event settings and for travel in the Travel settings. Former email facilities are unaffected - the order confirmation email and "additional" email are unchanged. These are sent when the customer makes their booking.
Update 1087 25 October 2024	Settings related to "Normal Travel" have been moved into a common tab in the Ticket System Settings area. The tab is named as whatever your railway called "Normal Travel" (default = "Heritage Travel"). This now houses: - General Travel Settings - Travel Options (List) - Travel Options (Matrix) - Fares - Stations - Emails (inc Reminder Emails)
Update 1086 25 October 2024	It is now possible to set a discount code to automatically apply. When selected, the code will attempt to apply every time the user adds an item to their basket. Additional fields are provided for the next development of this facility, to decorate the pages with the discounted price, eg "£20 £15 Earlybird offer". These will be implemented later. This is a solution to the "Buy tickets up to the day before to get 10% off" requirement, using the attribute of a discount code 'valid X days before travel'.
Update 1085 20 October 2024	There will be some periods of downtime on Tuesday 22 October, between 7.30 and 8.30am BST. This is to enable server upgrade work. That's.... 15:30-16:30 AWST in West Australia 17:00-18:00 ACST in North Australia 18:00-19:00 ACDT in South Australia 17:30-18:30 AEST in Queensland 18:30-19:30 AEDT in New South Wales / Victoria / Tazmania 09:30-10:30 in Italy 09:30-10:30 in South Africa Part of this work includes changes to reduce or eliminate the need for downtime in the future, which has become all the more important now that HOPS deals with sales transactions. Time Register devices will be unaffected and will store up transactions until HOPS comes back online. POS devices will display a prompt inviting the operator to 'work offline', after which they will work normally and upload transactions when HOPS comes back online. Card payments are unaffected. For confidence, there will be a brief test period after the site is taken offline to prove the POS devices before work starts, during which time the work can be aborted if necessary. Public ticket sales websites will be offline. We apologise for any inconvenience. If you have any queries please contact your HOPS Admin, or HOPS Admins contact HOPS HQ. Thank you.
Update 1084 20 October 2024	There will be some periods of downtime on Tuesday 22 October, between 7.30 and 8.30am BST. This is to enable server upgrade work. That's.... 15:30-16:30 AWST in West Australia 17:00-18:00 ACST in North Australia 18:00-19:00 ACDT in South Australia 17:30-18:30 AEST in Queensland 18:30-19:30 AEDT in New South Wales / Victoria / Tazmania 09:30-10:30 in Italy 09:30-10:30 in South Africa Part of this work includes changes to reduce or eliminate the need for downtime in the future, which has become all the more important now that HOPS deals with sales transactions. Time Register devices will be unaffected and will store up transactions until HOPS comes back online. POS devices will display a prompt inviting the operator to 'work offline', after which they will work normally and upload transactions when HOPS comes back online. Card payments are unaffected. For confidence, there will be a brief test period after the site is taken offline to prove the POS devices before work starts, during which time the work can be aborted if necessary. Public ticket sales websites will be offline. We apologise for any inconvenience. If you have any queries please contact your HOPS Admin, or HOPS Admins contact HOPS HQ. Thank you.
Update 1083 7 October 2024	'Next Turn' date has been added to the Competence Lapsing and Cometence Expiring pages.
Update 1082 7 October 2024	We have spent some time re-working the system for merging accounts, and cleared the backlog of previously un-mergeable ones. If you have a HOPS account at more than one heritage railway, you can merge them together to avoid the need to hold two sets of login credentials. Here is a video that explains how: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfqhvAmIJ2I
Update 1081 7 October 2024	When taking a telephone order it is no longer necessary to have the two-part process of recording the order in POS and then coming to HOPS to take the payment. The MOTO payment can now be conducted in POS via the three-dots near the CASH and CARD options. Permission 528 required.
Update 1080 1 October 2024	A 'Template' system has been added to the Discount Codes section to enable easy creation of 'Community Donations'. Eg raffle prizes etc. Any number of templates can be created and then these can be copied easily for deployment as donations etc.
Update 1079 1 October 2024	It is now possible for an Asset Manager to log a task that they are responsible for via the Asset Managers page. This will help where an asset manager is responsble for assets across a range of registers.
Update 1078 22 September 2024	We are aware of an issue in displaying membership details for users at some railways. The issue arises when viewing a user with NO membership cards issued via HOPS. We believe it is fine where a user DOES have membership cards issued via HOPS. This will be repaired on Monday (23 Sept) morning. Apologies for the inconvenience.
Update 1077 16 September 2024	It was previously possible to select whether a products should be up-sold to customers who had membership/travel/events in their basket, but not narrowed down to one or more specific events. It is now possible to specific specific, individual events, eg, 'Bottle of Champagne' with Evening Dining, 'Breakfast Roll' with Diesel Gala.
Update 1076 13 September 2024	A facility for adding short 'Remarks' to a carriage on a public seating plan, eg for clearly indicating to customers which are open coaches and which are enclosed.
Update 1075 13 September 2024	It is now possible to enforce seating rules, such as avoiding strangers sitting around the same table or in the same compartment. The range and complexity of these means it isn't possible to program them locally until we understand more about what the common use-cases might be. Please contact us if you wish to discuss rule options.
Update 1074 5 September 2024	Update reporting on ticket system developments commenced. These can be found in a new tab in System > System Updates.
Update 1073 4 September 2024	Seat Reservation details have been added to individual booking items in the Retail Sales Order page. Details of which line a seat reservation applies to have been added to the seat reservation items in the Retail Sales Order page.
Update 1072 4 September 2024	A sort order field has been added to Stock Diagrams.
Update 1070 4 September 2024	It is now possible to upload an image to Voucher products. The image will shown Online and in POS.
Update 1068 4 September 2024	Adjustments have taken place in connection with gradual conversion of Rosters to New HOPS format - User Roster and My Roster are in the new format. Improvements have been made to ensure these pages reflect Railway Time (regardless of the physical location of the viewer). At the same time, improvements were made to the Next Operating Days widget on the home page to ensure that respects Railway Time correctly.
Update 1069 3 September 2024	Update reporting on ticket system developments commenced.
Update 1067 24 August 2024	The diagrams, locos and staff working each train is now shown on train list tab of the daily page, with links to the appropriate roster and the user details page (for obtaining phone numbers etc) Eg https://www.hops.org.uk/operations_date.php?d=2024-08-22&t=t
Update 1066 5 August 2024	The Competence Element Requirements section of the Role Editing page has been overhauled to make it easier to search and find the desired element, especially where the number of elements on the railway is very large.
Update 1065 5 August 2024	The 'Save as Draft', 'Publish' etc buttons at the top of Members' News have been separated out to make their operation clearer.
Update 1064 5 August 2024	A warning has been added in the 'Add New User' page if a user with the same firstname and surname already exists. This will hopefully reduce the volume of duplicated users being added.