

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.

2. CMS
News

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

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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!

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

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

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 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

All timetable-entries are shown in PartyNet and the slides for SCREENS are generated at the same time.


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


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

Notice: The food-waves are automatically displayed in the timetable.
Food-Orders

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

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

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'.

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

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...)

4. Beamsystem
Mediapools

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

Use the preview-function until you're satisfied :)

Please consult the customizing-manual for further information.
SlideMeister

Additionally, you can select your SCREENS server and select a PlayNOW for a slide. Please refer to the SCREENS-Manual for further information.


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.

PlaylistMeister


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!

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

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

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


Notice: The passwords of all presetted accounts are identical to the username so PLEASE change them before starting your party!
Usergroups

Every group has clearly defined access-rights. That way, the infoteam cannot mess up your compo-slides anymore :) (unless you want them to).

Messagegroups

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

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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