Thursday, May 29, 2008

Integrate StudioCloud into your website

Have you ever wanted your clients to be able update their contact information through your website? Wouldn't it be even better if those changes would go straight into your StudioCloud account? What if you could allow your customers to see the status of an order?


Well now you can! Our development team has been hard at work creating new ways to integrate with your website and make your life simpler. You can now include a StudioCloud component on your website that will allow your customers to login view and update their personal information. If you choose they can even view the status of any orders they have made with you.


To use this components follow the instructions on our support page http://studiocloud.com/support/?View=entry&EntryID=60

Send Custom Emails

Do you want your emails to your clients to have a little bit more personalized feel? Well now you can! The development team recently implemented the ability to use your own email address to send emails to customers. This includes sending invoices, reminders, and Online Gallery invitations. We believe that this will decrease the probability that emails will be marked as spam or glanced over. For instructions on setting up your own email accounts see our support article at http://studiocloud.com/support/?View=entry&EntryID=61

You can use your own emails to send reminders, email customers directly from StudioCloud Basic and Professional Suites, send invoices, and even more features will be available in the upcoming CRM.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Advanced Task List

For quite some time we have had a much more advanced task system in the Workflow Manager. However, we realized that this same advanced system should also be included in the Basic and Professional Suites. So last night's update included the more advanced task system. You can now set due dates and mark task lists and tasks as completed in the Basic and Professional Suite.

Email From StudioCloud

Have you ever been looking at your client list and realize that you need to email one of your clients about his/her upcoming session, balance due, or pictures? Now you can email them directly from the Basic/Professional Suite directly from your own personal email address.

Last night's update included the ability to add one or more email accounts to the Basic/Professional Suite so that all email correspondence are from you and not from StudioCloud. You can currently add email accounts that require a secure (encrypted) connection and then click a button in the "Edit Client" window that allows you to email customers directly. Soon the ability to add email accounts that use non-secure connections will be available as well.

StudioCloud, It's just that Easy

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Update to Calendar Export

Not to long ago we gave you the ability to export your StudioCloud calendar to iCal and Outlook (http://blog.studiocloud.com/2008/05/export-your-calendar-to-ical-and.html). However, many of you found that the times you were seeing in Outlook did not match the times you were seeing in the Basic or Professional Suite. Our developers have been working hard to resolve this issue and they finally tracked it down to a problem with the way Outlook handles the time zones. They worked even harder to figure out a work around for this issue and that was included in last night's update. We recommend that everyone refresh their calendar and see if that resolves the time difference between Outlook and the Basic/Professional Suite calendar. If it is still not resolved you may need to delete the internet calendar and then re-subscribe to it following the steps in the original blog post (http://blog.studiocloud.com/2008/05/export-your-calendar-to-ical-and.html).


If after tonight's update, there is still a discrepancy in the two calendar times then please check that your computer's time zone and daylight savings settings are set correctly. You can always contact us as well and we will see what we can do to resolve the problem.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Complete Your Invoices

Last nights update included a new feature that will allow you to more efficiently view and sort your invoices. Once an invoice has been fulfilled you simply click the checkbox on that row to mark it complete. By default only invoices that have not been marked complete are visible. So once you mark an invoice complete it will no longer be visible in the Point of Sale section. However, if you need to find that invoice you can click the checkbox on the bottom left of the Invoices tab to "Show Completed Invoices".


This feature should make it much easier to work with your most current invoices.


StudioCloud, It's Just That Easy!

Quickly Switch Taxes

A while back we upgraded the invoicing system to include multiple additive taxes. We received lots of great feedback and realized that there was one more thing missing for many studios, the ability to quickly switch between different taxes. Last nights update added in what we are calling "Tax Profiles". Tax profiles allow you to create different profiles for your different tax situations. For example, you may have profiles for "Local Tax", "Out of State Tax", or "International Tax". Then once you are creating or editing an invoice you can quickly populate the the necessary taxes using a drop-down box. We believe that this will help you become even more efficient.


To begin using tax profiles, go to the Point of Sale section of the Basic/Professional Suite and select the tab labeled "Settings". Your current tax settings will remain your "Default Tax Profile". Then in the table next to the tax options you can setup as many tax profiles as you will need.


In case you are wondering, the Workflow Pipelines that used to be on the "Settings" tab has moved to the tab labeled "Workflow".


StudioCloud, It's Just That Easy!

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Tracking Prospective Clients

Last night's update provided an additional client list to keep track of your "Prospective Clients". You can add/edit/delete prospective clients from your list and easily convert them to regular clients. Keeping your clients and prospective clients separate will keep your client list from getting disorganized.

Separating prospective clients from clients will also come in handy when preparing marketing campaigns in the upcoming CRM. That way you can easily target your marketing specifically to potential customers.

StudioCloud, It's Just That Easy!

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Print Your Schedule

Last night's update brought another commonly requested feature, printing your schedule. If you go to the Calendar section of the Basic/Professional Suite and go to the tab labeled Agenda there is a button near the bottom that is labeled "Print Agenda". When you click this button it will show you a popup where you can select a start and end date for your printout. By default the start date is the current date and the end date is 30 days from the start date. Once you have selected your start date and end date click the "Print Agenda" button and a PDF of your Agenda will be created an opened up.

StudioCloud, It's Just That Easy!

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Export Your Calendar to iCal and Outlook

The latest addition to the Basic/Professional Suite is the ability to export your calendar to Outlook and iCal. To do this go to the Calendar section of the Basic/Professional Suite and select the tab labeled Calendar Settings. On the right side of this section there is a heading labeled "Calendar Export Settings". Click the checkbox underneath this heading that is labeled "Export my studio's calendar to Outlook and iCal" When you do this you will get a popup that tells you that your settings have been saved. After that you can download your calendar using the web address in the box below the checkbox.


To view your calendar in Outlook 2007 follow the proceeding steps:

  1. Open Outlook 2007
  2. Click on the menu option labeled "Tools"
  3. Select the option labeled "Account Settings"
  4. In the "Account Settings" window select the tab named "Internet Calendars"
  5. On the "Internet Calendars" tab click the button labeled "New"
  6. Copy and paste the web address from the Basic/Professional Suite into the "New Internet Calendar Subscription" popup
  7. Change the "Folder Name" from ICSFeed to "StudioCloud" or something similar
  8. Click the button labeled "OK"
  9. Click the "Close" button on the "Account Settings" popup window
  10. Go to the Calendars section of Outlook
  11. You should see your calendar either under "My Calendars" or "Other Calendars"

To view your Calendar in iCal follow the proceeding steps:

  1. Open iCal
  2. At the top of the screen select Calendar and Subscribe
  3. Copy and paste the webaddress from the Basic/Professional Suite into the window that pops up and click the button labeled Subscribe
  4. Change the name of the calendar from Untitled to something like StudioCloud or StudioCloud Calendar
  5. Change any of the other settings that you desire
  6. Click the OK button
  7. You should now see your calendar under "Subscriptions"

We will post video tutorials on how to export your StudioCloud calendar to Outlook and iCal soon. When we do we will announce it here on the blog.


StudioCloud, It's Just That Easy!

Embedded Workflow

Last nights update made some important changes to the Basic and Professional Suites. One of those changes is the inclusion of workflow functionality. As you all know, by default a workflow order is made whenever you create an invoice. This allows you to keep track of where the order is in your studio's processes. Until now you have had to track the workflow processes in the Workflow Manager. However, with last nights update you can now update and view the status of your orders in the Basic and Professional Suite.

To view/update the workflow order in the Basic/Professional Suite you go to the Point of Sale section of the Basic/Professional Suite and click on the Workflow Manager icon. A sample of the Workflow Manager is provided below.

Saturday, May 3, 2008

Update to the Address Book

After our recent change to the address book that removed notes from the clients section we received feedback from some of you that you really needed the notes field for sorting and finding specific information. So the developers put their heads together and came up with a solution that they believe will work for everyone.

The first change is that the notes field has been added back into the clients section of the Basic/Professional Suite. However, rather than showing you the entire notes section, which was very long for some studios and made the clients table unusable, it only shows you approximately the first 50 characters. This allows you to see some of the information, sort the table by the notes field, and view the full notes field by clicking on the magnifying glass.

The second addition is an update to the search functionality in the clients section. Previously when you typed anything into the search field below the table it would search a variety of the client information. But it wasn't clear what part of a clients information was matching your search. As a result, the developers updated the search section. They have added in a drop-down box that has various options in it including All Fields, First Name, Last Name, Business, Email, and Notes. When you select one of these options you are specifically searching through that field of your clients information. We hope this will help all of you get more out of the clients section and to be able to use it more efficiently.

StudioCloud, It's Just That Easy!