Science Museum of Minnesota
April 2009
The Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM) is a large regional science museum located on the banks of the Mississippi River in downtown St. Paul. The Science Museum's programs combine research and collection facilities, a public science education center, extensive teacher education and school outreach programs, and an Imax Convertible Dome Omnitheater. They provide science education to an audience of more than a million people per year.
The SMM needed to integrate their new ticketing system, built on Tessitura, with their Drupal-powered website. After an early implementation by a different vendor had very mixed results, the Science Museum turned to Gorton Studios to do the job right. Our first task was to make it possible to register for classes online.
In order to give Science Museum programmers and staff the flexibility they needed, Gorton Studios developed three Drupal modules:
Drupal/Tessitura: handles communications in a generalized fashion between Drupal and Tessitura.
Tessitura Productions, Performances and Checkout: handles listing and selection, cart management, checkout and payment processing.
SMM Business Logic: handles the specific rules needed by the SMM for online class registrations, such as age verification, parent/guardian requirements, emergency contact information and validate all other class-specific rules.
