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Time Date	System Updates
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 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 142 31 July 2012	View and Edit permissions for user's details will be separated down soon. The current ADMIN VIEW permission (91 for the railway and 90 for individual departments) and ADMIN EDIT permission (68 for the railway and 69 for individual departments) will no longer permit access to emergency contact details or medical information. New permissions have been created for these: View Medical details for a specific department: 140 Edit Medical details for a specific department: 142 View Medical details for the whole railway: 144 Edit Medical details for the whole railway: 146 View Emergency Contact details for a specific department: 141 Edit Emergency Contact details for a specific department: 143 View Emergency Contact details for the whole railway: 145 Edit Emergency Contact details for the whole railway: 147 ADMINS: Normally when permissions are altered we edit the system to make sure that service is continuous for those with the affected permissions, however, on this occasion, to ensure we err on the side of caution, we will NOT allocate these permissions to users who already have view/edit access by virtue of the current permissions (68/69/90/91). So, to ensure continuity of service these permissions have been created in the system now, in advance of the change, so that you can add them to the required users in readiness. The permissions have been prefixed 'FUTURE' to make clear that they are not yet in effect. When they come into effect I'll remove the FUTURE prefix.