RTP: emending your errors
A Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and UI improvement suite written in AutoHotKey to improve the RTP|One user-experience.
⚠️ The ReTyPe package and this guide are provided as-is with limited testing (beyond what worked for us), and no support or warranty. This document is a guide and not comprehensive instructions: you will need initiative and basic Windows file-management knowledge to get it working. If this guide doesn't get you there, some added curiosity, tenacity, and experimentation to figure some config stuff out may be required. You should not need to modify any actual code (.ahkfiles, unless you want to), only some file-structure and config-file tweaks.⚠️
RTP|One by Active Network is "Ski & Attractions Management Software". Whilst the software is undoubtedly extensive and powerful, not much focus was put on UI or Ux, and I found it incredibly frustrating to work with. Furthermore, the particular way in which RTP had been configured for my place of work meant there was large amounts of monotonous repetitive tasks.
ReTyPe is my solution to many of the frustrations I had when using RTP full-time for a year, which was then expanded to incorporate requests from colleagues within my team, before expanding further to facilitate and automate tasks company-wide for different departments.
I imagine anyone else spending a lot of time in RTP having similar frustrations so I wanted to release this software as FOSS in the hope it will make RTP a little more user-friendly.
The project first started around 2013 as a bunch of simple procedural scripts, but over the course of a year became a fully object-oriented modular framework, to which you can plugin any RTP-fixing improvements you want. I had wished to release this during active development, but work priorities kinda got in the way of spending the time to clean it up for public release.
However, as my time with RTP came to an end and I realised if I didn't do it then I wouldn't be able to release it at all. As such it may be a little "raw" and require some experimentation to get it setup and working.
The best way to see what it can do is to have a nosey through the file header comments in the refills directory, but here's a few of some of the favourites
- Treeview menu resizing (so you can see more than 10 things!)
- Bulk-price multiple products by transposing a grid from Excel
- Bulk-delete items from ANY list view
- Bulk-create inventory pools
- Bulk-update product component pricing
- Synchronise product media-output
- Clone discounts (with options)
- AccessCode lookup box on components
- Swipe/login using RFID passes rather than mag-stripe cards (only need to carry one card)
- Automate credit card recharges (failed DTL, resort charge, etc)
- Prevent ENTER key auto-sending confirmation emails (seriously, Ux?)
- Remove next-to-useless Print button on batch transfer (only works with serial printers) and replace with a Post & Print that auto-fires a transfer report
- Automate adding pre-defined comments
- Automate adding hotlists
The features in this software were built using AutoHotKey v1.1.13.01 against RTP|One 2013.1.1 so YMMV against future versions. We were never able to upgrade beyond that RTP version due to resort-specific requirements. Any later (or backward compatible) version of AHK should work fine.
- AutoHotKey v1.1.x
- Nothing will work without the client install of RTP|One
I've never spent the time to build a proper installer. For development I run the scripts as-is with AutoHotKey, but for production the script is compiled and distributed on our VM array.
Depending on how you want your setup, all of these steps are optional.
- Create somewhere for the code to belong
- We use:
c:\Program Files\ReTyPe\ - The scripts or compiled
.execan be run from anywhere, but we keep it with all other installed software
- Create a Start Menu shortcut
- Per-user:
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup - All users:
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp - Only required if you want it loaded at boot
- Create the per-user config repository
c:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\ReTyPe- Try running ReTyPe before you create this as everything might work without it and any changes (but I doubt it)
Expanding on 3. above: Configuration .ini files are read from %A_AppData%\ReTyPe\. These are per-user as RTP's window and object IDs can change user-to-user on the same machine. If ReTyPe is not working out-of-the-box, a directory named ReTyPe should be created manually at C:\Users\username\appdata\Roaming\ and then populated with the example set of files from the conf directory. Quite often the only required changed user-to-user is the main RTP instance identifier Element=1, though there are many more settings if required.
As well as the config settings for "latching" on to RTP, ReTyPe can be configured whether or not to have a toolbar, which buttons to show, etc. Furthermore, many individual refills can also be configured with here with a corresponding file. Details are within each individual class file.
- Run
retype.ahk
Hopefully that's it. Open, or focus, RTP and you should see a toolbar in its titlebar
If all the button menus are empty the first time, just re-load ReTyPe (through the ? menu)
The entire ReTyPe suite can be compiled to a distributable .exe file removing the requirement to install AHK on client machines on which you wish to run it. Just point the AHK2EXE compiler at the retype.ahk script, enter retype.exe for the output file, choose the included retype.ico, and it'll do the rest. I have built for both x86 (32 bit) and x64 (64 bit) successfully.
The compiled .exe will still read .ini files from user settings (see above).