Vista Cloud release summary: H1 2026 (5.0.17) bundled update

Learn more about the new features available when your Vista Cloud gets the latest update. This is a major bundled update, including new features for multiple products, and fixes for issues identified since the last bundled update for Cloud. It is rolling out to clients from January 2026, and aligns with the 5.0.17 release for Vista Classic (on-premises) clients. 

Contact your Vista account manager if you need more information about accessing any features, upgrading your existing products, or if you'd like to learn more about a different product.

Operational Excellence new features & improvements

Cinema Manager and POS

• Allow customers to add tips directly on the PIN pad instead of just on-receipt (paper) tipping. To enable this, select the PIN pad tipping enabled checkbox on the Workstation Groups form. A new setting has been added to the Order Surcharge form to configure if order surcharges are included in suggested tip percentage calculations. These options can be downloaded from Head Office to Cinema.
  Note: Enabling PIN pad tipping restricts tip editing if the workstation is part of a group with PIN pad tipping enabled, and prevents payment-type surcharges from being used.
• Programmers can now create draft schedules in Film Manager, allowing them to work on upcoming schedules or program special events where titles and price cards can't be disclosed until the sale date. Cinema managers without permission to see the draft schedules see blocked placeholder timeslots.
• For unpaid bookings that only contain concessions, POS now automatically loads the primary Loyalty member when the booking is collected. 
  Note: This only applies to bookings created after upgrading.
• The Head Office scheduled task Spain ICEC Extract is now available on the Cloud platform.
• We've integrated OpenTelemetry (OTEL) to improve the data we use for troubleshooting, enabling faster resolution of issues and reducing downtime.
• We've improved the performance of Cinema databases.
• POS has been updated to prepare for a new code signing certificate. The current code signing certificate expires in February 2026. These changes do not impact the user experience. 
• We've made improvements to the corporate booking user interface, including making it easier to see the film name, party name and organisation name on bookings.

Group Sales

• In Group Sales installer, the Vista.Service.Authentication.ServiceHostAdapter.GroupSales package version has been updated from 12.4.0 to 12.5.0. This improvement ensures better visibility and diagnostics across a wider range of .NET applications.

Film Manager

• Programmers can now create draft schedules in Film Manager, allowing them to work on upcoming schedules or program special events where titles and price cards can't be disclosed until the sale date. Cinema managers without permission to see the draft schedules see blocked placeholder timeslots.
• We've made improvements to the corporate booking user interface, including making it easier to see the film name, party name and organisation name on bookings.

Head Office

• Allow customers to add tips directly on the PIN pad instead of just on-receipt (paper) tipping. To enable this, select the PIN pad tipping enabled checkbox on the Workstation Groups form. A new setting has been added to the Order Surcharge form to configure if order surcharges are included in suggested tip percentage calculations. These options can be downloaded from Head Office to Cinema.
  Note: Enabling PIN pad tipping restricts tip editing if the workstation is part of a group with PIN pad tipping enabled, and prevents payment-type surcharges from being used.
• We've integrated OpenTelemetry (OTEL) to improve the data we use for troubleshooting, enabling faster resolution of issues and reducing downtime.

• We've added Time to make (min) to the Linking and Site Variable Data form for concession items.

  Regional improvements

• We've updated the film hire extract to correctly identify films by Rentrak code, for customers across the German market using MACCS for reconciliation and customer self-billing.

Sales Server

• Sales Server now supports different barcode lengths for vouchers and gift cards, allowing them to use the same database. This change allows for the unified database necessary for full Cloud support, as well as making functions such as selling gift cards online possible for customers with different product code locations.
• We've updated Sales Server so that when an unpaid booking is collected at POS it will be associated with the primary Loyalty member.
• Sales Server has been updated to prepare for a new code signing certificate. The current code signing certificate expires in February 2026. These changes do not impact the user experience.

Moviegoer Engagement new features & improvements

Loyalty

• We've added a Purge historical data scheduled task to clean up historical data, enabling improved data maintenance. Contact your Vista account manager if you want to understand more about how we maintain data for Cloud customers.

Operational Excellence fixes

Cinema Manager and POS

• We've improved how session cards display in compact view in Showtime Manager.
• In Showtime Manager, trailer, intermission and clean-up durations now display consistently on session tiles for draft sessions.
• On the Kitchen screen in POS, the Search & Filter page now correctly displays at lower resolutions.
• When performing a Card Balance check in POS, the User Log now records it as "Card Balance", rather than "Block Activation".
• Payment type maintenance is now accessible in Cinema Manager for non-admin users with All HO permissions.
• In Showtime Manager, we fixed an issue where sessions added from holdover bookings wouldn't inherit the booking's Sneak Preview and Played Film properties.
• We've improved the performance of the HO Download Import task in Head Office, reducing query runtimes and improving memory usage.
• The scheduled task CXM Download task now, correctly, runs in Sandbox environments.
• In Showtime Manager, sessions can now, correctly, be created from marathon film holdover bookings.
• When creating miscellaneous deposits using CashDesk in Cinema Manager, sales tax is now correctly calculated based on the sales tax for that Fund Transaction Type.
• Requests to use a Cinema PIN token generated for one site in a tenant to execute requests against the transactions for another site now returns an unauthorised response.
• In Head Office, multiple attributes assigned to a session are now correctly delimited by commas in the tblCinema_Session_HO.Session_strAttributes field, improving parsing in customer exports and reports.
• InTouch now uses Firebase services for iOS and Android push notifications, meaning push notifications now work as expected.
  Note: The InTouch app must be on version 500.17.0 and InTouch service on version 500.17.0 or higher.
• We've fixed an issue where POS would fail to launch when the workstation wasn't bound to Service Framework. Now, when starting POS, the workstation will display a keyboard prompt requiring manager credentials to connect it to Vista Cinema.
• We've fixed an issue where leftover data for deleted sessions could cause broken seats to show as available and be sold.
• POS now prompts operators to choose whether extra Loyalty 3rd-party member tickets should be added to the order (using the highest priced ticket in the same area category). If the operator declines, both the tickets and recognitions are correctly voided.
• In Film Manager Showtime Manager's time block view, copying and pasting sessions between Cinema columns now saves correctly, no longer triggering a screen layout error message.
• In Head Office and Cinema Manager, users in a User Group with all permissions set can now successfully create report schedules.
• We've fixed an issue in Data Views where clicking a link to a cabinet (e.g. Screens) would result in a permissions error message.
• We fixed an issue in Task Scheduler where extract tasks stopped running unexpectedly.
• We've fixed a date formatting issue which could prevent some vouchers from being displayed in the POS Voucher Inquiry form.
• Report generation is faster.
• In earlier versions of POS, if a workstation group had offline box office sales disabled and the workstation token expired, POS would repeatedly display the message "POS has lost connection with the server." We've improved this behavior so that the message now appears only once.
• We've improved performance of the Create Waste page in Cinema Manager, reducing load times.
• In Cinema Manager, the Calculate recommended values and Delete items with no order quantity buttons above the purchase-order creation grid are now correctly positioned (to the right).

• Clicking grid cells in Maintenance data views now navigates to the web form or cabinet form for that row.

  Regional improvements

• Philippine Concession Reports now correctly calculate VATable Sale and VAT Amount for transactions with ticket fees and concessions.
• Philippine Terminal Summary report now displays correct concession values for each workstation when generated for a date range covering multiple business days.

Digital Signage

• We've fixed an issue where sessions for some screens weren't showing on Digital Signage when using Session Times templates.

Film Manager

• In Showtime Manager, trailer, intermission and clean-up durations now display consistently on session tiles for draft sessions.
• Film Manager Showtime Manager now successfully loads after upgrading Film Programming to version 5.0.17 or 5.0.18.
• In Showtime Manager, we fixed an issue where sessions added from holdover bookings wouldn't inherit the booking's Sneak Preview and Played Film properties.
• We've fixed an issue which prevented the correct corresponding week loading for a new site when changing sites in time block view in Film Manager Showtime Manager.
• When using the bulk-copy feature in Film Manager's Showtime Manager, the Next button now correctly becomes available when you click either Map by screen or Map by capacity.
• In Film Manager's Showtime Manager, sessions are now auto-spaced correctly based on the Gap Between Sessions setting, without requiring the setting to be saved again.
• In Film Manager's Showtime Manager, after adjusting the session auto-space time setting, sessions are now correctly spaced according to the new time interval, without causing sessions to disappear.
• In Showtime Manager, sessions can now, correctly, be created from marathon film holdover bookings.
• Film Manager Showtime Manager now correctly routs API calls through the Cinema Proxy for Service Framework and Cinema-CDN when the Cinema Proxy service is enabled, fixing an issue which prevented some customers from upgrading their environment.
• In Head Office, multiple attributes assigned to a session are now correctly delimited by commas in the tblCinema_Session_HO.Session_strAttributes field, improving parsing in customer exports and reports.
• Assisted Scheduling in Film Manager now successfully generates sessions when screen configuration is mismatched between Head Office and Cinema Manager.
• In Film Manager Showtime Manager's time block view, copying and pasting sessions between Cinema columns now saves correctly, no longer triggering a screen layout error message.

• In Film Manager, the Settings window now closes after clicking the Save button, improving the user experience.

  Regional improvements

• If two or more users run the America: Holdover Confirmation report at the same time, it now works as expected.

Group Sales

• The session time for public booking records now displays the correct session time for the cinema's time zone instead of being converted to the central server time zone.
• Group bookings now display the correct booking dates consistently across all views.
• In Group Sales, the Cinema Scheduling Sync task now runs successfully when Service Identity is enabled.

Head Office

• The Head Office Audit now displays Cinema Box Office data in the audit entries, even when there is more than one cinema operator at cinema with the same Head Office operator code. The audit log will include a warning that multiple cinema operators exist with the same Head Office operator code, and which one is used for the audit.
• We've reduced instances of POS designer stopping unexpectedly by improving how memory is managed when a POS profile is closed.
• After a session swap, the film-hire calculation now succeeds without any errors, ensuring that film-hire records are correctly created for each cinema.
• The Site Banking Deposit Summary no longer fails to open when the cinema name includes non-English characters.
• We've improved the performance of the HO Download Import task in Head Office, reducing query runtimes and improving memory usage.
• The Head Office Download Export task no longer fails if the database has invalid IDs for Opening Hours.
• The default timeout value for the Head Office Integration service has been increased, so larger data amounts can be pulled without timing out.
• Weekly cash overs and shorts calculations in Site Finance Review now display accurate results.
• We've fixed an issue where upgrades weren't working when Change Tracking was enabled on the tblScreenAttribute table.
• In Head Office and Cinema Manager, users in a User Group with all permissions set can now successfully create report schedules.
• If the Head Office download to Cinema is configured to use the SFTP file transfer type, running the HO Download Import task via Task Scheduler or the Cinema Imports and Exports cabinets form now no longer displays an error and successfully performs the download.
  Note: This is only relevant for on-premises Cinema, which can be paired with on-premises or Cloud Head Office.
• Report generation is faster.

• Clicking grid cells in Maintenance data views now navigates to the web form or cabinet form for that row.

  Regional improvements

• Greece: Film Hire report is now showing the correct tax and net value when there are ticket types with the same price but a different tax structure.

Service Framework

• We fixed an error where the ServiceFramework installer stopped working while creating a new ServiceFramework domain-signed certificate.
• We've significantly improved the performance of the Configuration Service when it is queried. This is particularly important for on-premises, Central-machine upgrades for large circuits, but benefits all queries to the service, including in Cloud environments.

Sales Server

• Sales Server no longer returns bad selling data when Web Loader requests concession buttons and concession tabs data, fixing an issue which could have caused data from Connect to not be updated.
• Sales Server no longer generates an error when adding a ticket to an order when the cinema SQL server instance has case-sensitive collations.

• If a delivery method includes an amount to charge, the TotalTax amount in a GETPAYMENTTOTALEX request now correctly includes the tax on the delivery fee.

  We've also added new return fields in the GETPAYMENTTOTALEX request to represent the tax amounts on the delivery method:

  • FreightTax1
  • FreightTax2
  • FreightTax3
  • FreightTax4
• Sales Server now sends the correct information to payment connectors when attempting to redeem a voucher where the issue price and redemption price are different, fixing an issue which could have caused customers to be undercharged.
• We fixed an issue which could cause transactions through Sales Server to fail if there were no active ticket price adjustments or ticket fees configured.
• Sales Server now detects when debtor codes and element IDs are incorrectly reused, reducing issues for the Kitchen Display Screen.
   

Moviegoer Engagement fixes

Loyalty

• Custom SQL validation of recognitions with non-standard parameters now works correctly.
• The subtasks in the Loyalty scheduled task Purge historical data are now sorted by a numbered priority, which appears in the details of the task in Task Scheduler. The numbered priority also appears in Settings > Data purge in Loyalty Manager.
• The Cinema tasks Subscription Recurring Payment and Reprocess Recurring Payment now correctly return a failure status if they have a critical error, e.g. unable to communicate with Master Data service.
• Loyalty now identifies items by item group, fixing an issue where a subscription could be incorrectly activated when purchasing a ticket or item which shared an HO code with a billing item in a different item group.
• When a member attains a new level as the result of a group recalculation, their last change date no longer gets updated in each subsequent group recalculation.
• When a TRANSUPD request is received with the SessionId parameter using lowercase 'd', the value will be accepted.
• Groups linked to member levels that are scheduled for calculation during the Night Batch are now calculated approximately 15% faster.
• When the Loyalty web service validates GAS tokens, there is no longer an unnecessary number of calls made to Service Framework to retrieve configuration, reducing traffic between the services.
• When the Night Batch scheduled task is assigning recognitions to members, it no longer fails when there are errors with other processes that are running at the same time.