OrgaNet Manual
1. General usage
Almost all of PartyMeister's functionality is presented either as a form to input data or a table displaying the data you've put in beforehand. If you have used a Partysystem (or a CMS) before, using PartyMeister will be pretty easy for you. All complex functionality is documented here.;)
The first screen you'll see when you browse to http://orga.party will be the login-screen.
After that, you'll see the start-page of PartyMeister. Messages for organizers are displayed here.
You can also change your password or read your messages.;)
The main-navigation is displayed at the top of the screen. From there, you can access every feature
of PartyMeister. Any main-navigation-item usually has a corresponding sub-navigation. That is displayed
on the left side of the screen.
2. CMS
News
;)
The visitors want to be informed :) Do it right here.You can choose between writing a message for organizers (visible in OrgaNet) or for the general population (visible in PartyNet). Additionally, you can upload a picture and specify a file for download (if you want).
Downloads
Pretty boring stuff. Let your visitors download stuff (jingles, invitation-demos, etc.) from the download-area in PartyNet. You can also upload a picture for each download. Why? Because it's pretty :)Polls
It's always good to know what the visitors think. Here, you can add interesting (or stupid) polls to PartyNet. This should be self-explanatory.Messaging-System
The Messaging-System is a powerful tool for the organizers. Here you can react to the needs of your visitors by reading and replying to their inquiries. You can also write either to your entire organizing-staff, to a specific organizer or a Messagegroup.3. Partysystem
Competitions
;)
This is the absolute power-center for the compo-organizers. First of all, you can create and edit
your competitions here.
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Anonymous:
As far as we know, the Ultimate Meeting has been the only party offering such competitions. It's meant for the single-artists-competitions only (but can be applied to any competition).
If you decide to make a competition anomyous, no author will be shown. Not on the entry-slides or on the voting page, but in the results.
Notice: When using Anonymous competitions, a "Participants" slide will be shown at the end of the competition. The slide features the names of every author in this competition (in random order).
From the "Manage Competitions" screen, you can enable and disable both upload and voting.
Notice: Voting can only be enabled if the upload is disabled!
;)
As soon as you disable the upload for a specific competition, you can generate the beamslides for it.
If something is missing or wrong, you will be made aware of that. So you almost can't do anything wrong here.
After the beamslides have been generated, a new playlist for that competition appears in PlaylistMeister.
This playlist is already complete and ready to be displayed.
Notice: Please take the time to preview the playlist on a secondary SCREENS server to make sure everything is alright (e.g. the songs are playing for the MSX-Competition and all pictures are ok in the GFX-Competition).
Notice: As soon as you enable voting for a specific competition, all releases for this competition will be copied to the folder <shared_folder>/competitions_ftpfiles/<competition_name>/. You can copy that one on your ftp-server.
Compo-Options
;)
Compo-Options are very helpful for both compo-organizers and visitors. The compo-organizer doesn't have
to try out every possible combination and it's very informative for the visitors to see on which platform
or graphics-card this production runs. You can think of it like some kind of "compatibility-chart".You can create as many Compo-Options as you like and assign them to the competitions. Additionally, the visitor can fill out an additional text-field, if the option of desire doesn't show up for the specific competition.
Up to three Compo-Options are displayed in the Compo-Beamslide. However, you can always code your Compo-Beamslides the way you want to :)
Compo-Entries
;)
From here, you decide the fate of all competition-entries. First of all, you can filter through the
competitions to avoid confusion by displaying all the entries of all the competitions at the same
time.You can do the following from the "Entries Manage" screen:
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Change the status of the entry
Here you can qualify or disqualify the entries. New entries are marked "unchecked".
Notice: Disqualified entries do NOT make it in the competition and are NOT displayed in the results-file. We decided to do so, because we want to give the authors the chance to compete at another party with the same entry.
If you think otherwise, please contact us. If there is time, we might code a config-switch for that possibility.
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Change the position of the entry
This is necessary to generate the beamslides correctly. The first entry must be No. "1" and there must be NO gaps. To be on the safe side, PartyMeister checks the positions before generating the beamslides. So you will be warned if anything is wrong.
Notice: Disqualified entries don't need to have a position.
;)
If you want to automate the release process, it will be necessary that you edit the competition-entries.
Here you can specify a "Final-File". If a visitor uploads more than one file (bugfixes, etc.) you can
choose the file, that is to be downloaded from PartyNet or the party-ftp. If you don't specify a file,
nothing will be made available for download for that specific entry.
If you have the time, you can also upload a screenshot for that entry here, although the visitors should do that for themselves :) The "Allow-release" checkbox is for visitors, that do not want their entries to be released at the party (e.g. buggy/ugly party-version). You can override that of course :)
If you're dealing with a MSX- or GFX-Competition, it will be necessary to upload additional files such as a .wav file (for MSX-Competitions), or the picture of the entry (for GFX-Competitions). If you don't the beamslides cannot be generated.
Notice: A proper tutorial on how to actually hold competitions and check entries, can be found very soon in the tutorials section
Timetable
;)
Managing the timetable has proven to be a very useful thing. (Like changing the deadlines and compos
without anyone noticing ;))All timetable-entries are shown in PartyNet and the slides for SCREENS are generated at the same time.
;)
Every time you change or add something, these things will be updated.
For more customizing, you can split your timetable into many categories, like "Compo, Event, 2nd Stage"
and so on. You can assign colors for every category - both for display in PartyNet or in SCREENS.
;)
Additionally, seminars and food-waves are automatically included into your timetable. Be it in PartyNet
or in SCREENS - your timetable will always be up-to-date :)
Notice: If you're in the process of creating your timetable for the first time, it may be clever to turn off the slide-rendering in the configuration. More info on how to use this, can be found here.
Food-Items
;)
If you have a food-support-area or people who sell food or other stuff at the partyplace,
you can enter it all here. If you want, you can categorize the items as you please. All the
information is displayed in PartyNet > Prices.
;)
All items entered in the category "Food (to order at the PizzaWave)" can be ordered by the
visitors in the food-wave.Notice: The category "Food (to order at the PizzaWave)" is reserved for food-orders. Please don't delete it if you want to use this feature.
Food-Waves
;)
If you offer food-waves like the famous PizzaWave at the Ultimate Meeting
you will like this. The food-waves you specify here can be used by the visitors to order the food
via PartyNet.Notice: The food-waves are automatically displayed in the timetable.
Food-Orders
;)
You can manage orders that visitors made in PartyNet or add orders by yourself.
Every order has a unique order-id which is made available to the visitor after he or she has
placed the order. The order-id can also be seen in PartyNet > "My Party".The visitors should use the order-id as reference to pay and receive their food-order. Every order has a status that has to be changed by the foodsupport-staff:
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Ordered:
The visitor has ordered food, and that's it for the moment :)
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Payed:
The visitor has payed the amount specified in his order. Hopefully, one of the organizers took money from him ;) -
Delivered:
After the food-wave is over, you should flag the order as "Delivered" to avoid confusion.
Notice: These buttons are only available if a specific food-wave is selected through the select-box. This does NOT work for a summary of all orders!
Votekeys
;)
The easiest way (and the only way described here ;)) to generate votekeys for your party, is to
use the integrated Votekey-Generator.Here you can generate as many votekeys as you like. You can also define a key-length. Only upper-case and non-irritating characters are used.
Stuff like 1, I, l etc. is being ignored.
If you are interested in the algorithm or want to change something, have a look at /_admin/_shared/pm_votekey.inc.php in OrgaNet.
There's also a "Download votekeys.csv" button for post-processing (you may want to print the votekeys on some sheets of paper ;)).
Voting
;)
If you want to know who's winning, that's the place to look :)All votes are displayed here. The view is split in two to visualize the number of total points per entry (left side) and the FINAL points per entry (right side). The final points are those validated by a votekey - they're the only that go into the results.txt and into SiegMeister'.
;)
You can change the number of points for all the entries to account for votesheets and/or public voting.
The results.txt file is also generated here. If the configuration-option "show_results" is switched on, the results.txt will be copied to PartyNet > "Results".
If you want to change the design of your results.txt, have a look at the customizing manual.
Seminars
;)
If you want to offer seminars to your visitors (like Breakpoint or Assembly)
you can manage them here. In addition to the usual stuff like speaker, description and so on, you can specify a maximum number of participants and the exact
date and time of the event.In PartyNet, the visitors can subscribe and unsubscribe to all the seminars. If a seminar is full or already over, they can't subscribe. The visitors can view their subscriptions on the page "My Party".
Notice: The seminars are automatically displayed in the timetable.
Other stuff (registrations, oneliner, rides...)
;)
This is mostly for infomation. You definitely don't have to change anything here,
but it comes in handy if some visitors accidentally entered wrong or redundant information
in one of these sections.
4. Beamsystem
Mediapools
;)
All your images, videos, audio-files and, of course, your generated beam- and composlides that you need for the beamsystem are located here.The Mediapools are nothing more than physical folders inside your shared folder. PartyMeister needs some specific Mediapools to function correctly. Those are provided in the pm_shared_folder.zip. Please do NOT delete any of them :)
If you need more Mediapools, you can create them directly in OrgaNet. To avoid confusion, the folders are divided into the categories "Audio" and "Video". For now, the directory-depth is limited to two levels (which proved to be enough for the past years).
Notice: The folders for all the compo-slides (e.g. PC Demo) are created automatically inside the "Competitions"-Mediapool.
StyleMeister
;)
You can define all the fonts and font-styles that you want to use in your beamslides here.Use the preview-function until you're satisfied :)
;)
If you want to use different fonts than the ones provided, just copy your TTF-fonts over to /<shared_folder>/mediapool/screens/fonts/.
Please consult the customizing-manual for further information.
SlideMeister
;)
SlideMeister let's you manage all the items inside your Mediapools. You can also edit, delete and preview all of your slides here.
You can explore specific Mediapools without having to scroll all the way down to the stuff you want
to see.Additionally, you can select your SCREENS server and select a PlayNOW for a slide. Please refer to the SCREENS-Manual for further information.
;)
Here you can also upload new slides (audio/video). You can specify a standard transition and length for every slide you upload.
If you want a specific slide (images only) to be a background-image for other slides, you have to specify a "Safe-Area". That way,
SlideMeister knows within which boundaries the text should be written. The Safe-Area consists of four comma-separated numbers
representing startX, startY, width and height (e.g. 30,70,964,540).;)
The feature you'll probably use the most is the creation of new beamslides.You must choose a name, a specific Mediapool, in which the slide should be saved, a default length and transition for the new slide. After that, you specify the "Blocks" for your text. A "Block" can either be text or a table with up to 5 columns.
;)
For every block, you have to specify a StyleMeister-Font and the text-alignment.
Additionally, you can override the font-size and -color for every block.
With the preview-feature, you can tweak your slide until it's beautiful :)
PlaylistMeister
;)
Here you can control your SCREENS servers remotely and also create, edit and upload playlists. Please not that a playlist can
only be played AFTER uploading it to the SCREENS server. Any uploaded playlists will be marked as such. You can also
see which playlist is actually playing at the moment.
;)
Editing playlists is quite easy. You specify a category ("Video" or "Competition", because "Audio" is not really manageable ATM) and a name.After that, you can click on the "Show/Hide Mediapool" icon to open it. Just like the SlideMeister-Overview, you have a select-box of all your Mediapools and the slides inside of them. If you want to add a slide to the playlist, just click on it!
;)
Every slide in the playlist has options you can edit. There is the slide-length, the transition, the length of the transition and
the position. "Manual advance" ignores the slide-length and waits for a user-skip to the next-slide. "No filtering" is nice
for Pixel-Graphics-Competitions, so the artists picture isn't reduced to goo :)The possibility to add an audio-clip to every playlist-item is mostly used by the Music-Competitions but may be useful for other stuff as well :)
Last but not least, save your playlist after all your changes :)
Notice: Playlists for all the competitions are generated automatically!
SiegMeister
SiegMeister (from the german term "winning") is the tool to present the results during the prizegiving
ceremony. There are animated bars for all entries and it blinks, too :)You can start SiegMeister out of the "Manage Playlists" page.
The SiegMeister playlist is on auto advance, so you'll have to skip every slide manually. The animated bars are moving, if you press RETURN!
Notice: So soon as you click on "Generate and play SiegMeister", the current state of the votings will be uploaded to BOOBS and the first screen of the prizegiving ceremony is displayed. So PLEASE be careful with that function :)
BeamControl
;)
This is where you can define your SCREENS servers. You can define as much as you want. Every Server you register here
is displayed in all the templates, where you can control SCREENS.Notice: It never hurts to have a second SCREENS-PC for testing purposes!
5. Administration
All administrative actions are controlled here. You should make sure, that only one SuperAdmin has the rights to change the stuff here :)Users
;)
All user-accounts are managed here. You can assign multiple Usergroups (access-rights are added) and
also multiple Messagegroups here.;)
PartyMeister comes with presets of users that should suffice for all parties. However, if you think you need more,
or every compoorga-egomaniac wants a unique login, you can create them here. Please don't forget to assign the correct User- and Messagegroups.
Notice: The passwords of all presetted accounts are identical to the username so PLEASE change them before starting your party!
Usergroups
;)
Usergroups are used to categorize and limit the rights of the specific organizing-teams.Every group has clearly defined access-rights. That way, the infoteam cannot mess up your compo-slides anymore :) (unless you want them to).
;)
PartyMeister comes with presets of Usergroups that should suffice for all parties. However, if you think you need more,
you can create them here. Please don't forget to edit the users and assign the correct groups.
Messagegroups
;)
Messagegroups are for Organizer<->Organizer and Organizer<->Visitor communication via the Messaging-System.By using them, you can make sure that the whole team, and not only a specific user, gets the messages.
While the organizers can send messages to either single users and Messagegroups, the party visitor is limited to send to Messagegroups only.
PartyMeister comes with presets of Messagegroups that should suffice for all parties. However, if you think you need more, you can create them here. Please don't forget to edit the users and assign the correct groups.
Configuration
;)
Many options can (and must) be edited and toggled on/off in the PartyMeister configuration table.More information on how to use them and what exactly you can change here can be found in the customizing-manual.
What is it?
PartyMeister is a complete intranet and beamsystem solution for Demoparties. Click here to get a general overview.Who uses it?
Originally developed for the Ultimate Meeting, PartyMeister has been used at Breakpoint 2005-2010 and many other parties.Read more about our users here!
Contact
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