Custom Phone Numbers Now Available

With the latest major update of StudioCloud you can now get a custom phone number for your business. 

Custom phone numbers let you receive text message responses from customers, respond to customers directly from StudioCloud, and forward text message responses to multiple email accounts.

Here is a complete list of the custom text message phone number features

• Select a custom phone number based on country, area code, and/or exact phone number
• All text messages sent from StudioCloud, including CloudAlerts, will be sent using your custom phone number
• Text message replies can be forwarded to as many email addresses as desired.
• Text message replies are automatically saved in StudioCloud and, if possible, automatically associated with a client that has a matching phone number
• The overview page offers a widget which shows all of the text messagses that haven't been replied to
• You can view attachments that customers text you in StudioCloud or download them directly to your computer.
• If desired you can manually match a text message with an existing client or create a new client, prospective client, or lead
• You can also view a history of all of the text messages that you have received.

Click here for an overview on how to use a custom phone number

Redesigned Overview Page

With the latest minor update StudioCloud has introduced a new overview page. The new overview page provides all of the same information as the old overview page but now includes many more features which are listed below.

New Overview Page Features

• Customizable
• New Widgets
• Uses Full Space
• Popup Windows
• Action Based

Customizable

• Customize the overview page to auto hide widgets if there isn't any information to display.
• Customize the overview page to only show the components you want to see.
• Customize the overview page to only show the time frames you want to see.
• Customize the overview page to only show resources assigned to the logged in user.

New Widgets

All of the widgets have been redesigned in order to maximize space and provide the most important information. Here is a list of the widgets.

• Recently modified clients
• Pending Contracts
• Recently Signed Contracts
• Payments Due In 30 Days
• Birthdays In 30 Days
• Anniversaries In 30 Days
• Agenda
• Pipeline Stages
• Tasks
• Projects
• Jobs

Uses Full Space

The new overview page is designed to adjust to maximize the space available based on your screen size.

Popup Windows

Some of the overview page widgets support opening popup windows with more information directly from the overview page.

Action Based

The new overview page widgets are focused on resources that have an upcoming deadline. This lets you keep on top of upcoming deadlines.

Click here for a tutorial on how to customize the overview page

Mobile App Updates

Our team has released StudioCloud mobile app version 0.8.018.  The updates to the mobile app that are listed below are based on user feedback. Thank you for all of the feedback you have provided.  We will be making future updates based on your feedback.

Changes to the Client page

• Some StudioCloud users have more than 20,000 clients in the system and displaying them all in one list would be very data intensive for most cell phone plans and it would really slow down the application.  As a result,  the client interface is a search only interface which resulted in quite a bit of confusion on how to find clients. In this update the interface is still a search based interface but our team has added instructions to the page to reduce the confusion.  In addition, they have updated the search to search based on first name, last name, and business.  If you search with two or more words then the search will try to separate those and search based on first and last name.

• Our team has removed the separate client, prospective client, and lead lists as all of them were the same interface and returning very similar information as the All Clients interface.  Instead they have replaced that with a list of clients that have been recently modified.  The system will display the 10 most  recently modified clients, prospective clients, and leads.  You will also see buttons to page through that list.

Changes to the Calendar 

• The previous version of the mobile device used a daily agenda for the calendar.  Based on user feedback this has been moved to separate Agenda component and our team has added a new calendar that includes month, week, and day views.

 

 

Miscellaneous Updates

• We updated the create/edit event interface to use the native date and time components. 
• We fixed various bugs with login and the create/edit event interface

New Features

With the latest release of StudioCloud multiple new features have been added to StudioCloud. They are listed below.

New CloudForm Features

• A new combo box option that supports auto tagging a client based on the item they select in the combo box. 
• This option is great for letting clients opt-in to receiving marketing material from third party partners. The client will be tagged which allows you to easily generate and send your partners a list of all the clients that have that tag.
• A new combo box option that supports having a product, service, or package automatically added to a new invoice when the CloudForm is submitted.
• This option is great for letting a customer select multiple items in a CloudForm. Each of the items will automatically be added to a new invoice for that customer.
• There is also a combo box option where you can have a combobox combine both of the options above together.

New Contract Features

• An option to have a custom email sent to the client when they esign a contract. This email is in addition to the contract signed email they get which contains a copy of their contract.
• An option to have a contract automatically change an associated calendar type. This is useful for scheduling a tentative session on the calendar and having it automatically be switched to a booked session once they have esigned the contract.
• An option to have an event pipeline automatically assigned to an event or session once a contract has been esigned. This option is great for situations where you want to start a workflow once a client has esigned a contract.
• Now estimates and quotes will automatically be converted to invoices when a contract associated with them has been esigned.

New Scheduling Wizard Features

• The scheduling wizard now supports booking multiple client
• Click here for a tutorial on how to use the scheduling wizard.

New Calendar Type Features

• Calendar types now support limiting employees from booking sessions based on their security roles. This is used to allow employees with a specific security roles to only book specific types of sessions or events.

New Dymo Printer Features

• The dymo printer options have been updated to include the option of printing a label using a document template.

New Contract Template Features

• Contract templates now support automatically inserting payment due fields into a contract which can be used to populate a contract with the amount of money a client owes.

New Email Template Features

• Email templates now support having a email account assigned to the email template. That means that any time the email template is used that the selected email account will be used to send the email. If an email account is not assigned to an email template then the default email account will be used.
• Click here for a tutorial on how to set the default email account for an email template.

New Pipeline Features

• Tooltips have been added to pipelines to get more details regarding them.
• Pipeline Stage Employees, Pipeline Stage Deadlines and the Overall Pipeline Deadline can now dynamically changed instead of only being able to assign those when a pipeline is created.

New: Online Booking Features

With the latest release of StudioCloud the following new features have been added to the online booking.

New Features

• An option to limit the number of bookable sessions displayed per day.
• An option to have sessions booked from an online booking form to be automatically deleted if a client doesn't pay.
• An option which lets you adjust the number of days before a client can start booking a session.

Updated Features

• The option to limit how many days in the future a client can book a session has been modified to support clients booking today.

When would you want to limit the number of bookable sessions displayed per day?

This option is ideal for encouraging clients to book sessions that are grouped together rather than randomly throughout the day. Once a session is booked for a specific day a brand new session will automatically open up for the next customer.

For example, take the situation where a business wants to allow customers to book a 1 hour session where the sessions for the day start at 9 am. In that situation if the option was to set to limit the bookable sessions to 2 per day then the online booking form would show the following available sessions.

• Session available from 9 am to 10 am
• Session available from 10 am to 11 am

If a client booked the 10 am to 11 am session then the online booking form would automatically show the following available sessions for the next customer.

• Session available from 9 am to 10 am
• Session available from 11 am to 12 pm.

This option also has the nice benefit of giving your clients the impression that you are busy since it appears to them that there are only a limited number of slots available to them because the others are already booked out.

When would you want to have booked sessions automatically deleted?

Some businesses only want clients to book paid for sessions. This option ensures that all of the sessions booked on the calendar are paid for sessions. If a session is booked but not paid for then the business will receive an email saying that the client didn't pay for the session and the session was removed. The business can then follow up with the client at their leisure to address any concerns.

When would you want to adjust the number of days before a client can start booking a session?

Previously to this update the online booking only allowed a customer to book a session starting 1 day in the future unless the resource being booked wasn't available at that time. With the latest update the online booking can be adjusted so that those businesses can handle same day booking. In addition, if a business wanted to only allow customers to book sessions online 7 days in advance this feature would allow them to do that.

When would you want to adjust how many days in the future a client can book?

Many businesses want to limit how many days in the future a client can book a session to avoid scheduling conflicts. With the latest update of the online booking StudioCloud now supports the option of restricting clients so that they can only book sessions the day of. 

This feature is ideal for businesses that want to offer a booking option for clients that walk into a business and want to book a session that same day.

How do I set this up?

All of these features are options included in the online booking.

Click here for a tutorial on how to setup the online booking

New: Scheduling Features

With the latest release of StudioCloud we have added a bunch of new automated features to calendar types to streamline your scheduling workflow

New Features

• You can now have an overall default calendar type so that when a new appointment, session or event is being booked a calendar type is already pre-selected
• You can now have employees, locations, or equipment automatically scheduled when an appointment, session or event is booked.
• You can now have leads automatically converted to clients when an appointment, session or event is booked.
• You can now have a client pipeline automatically marked as completed for clients when an appointment, session or event is booked.

When would you want to set a default calendar type?

If you find yourself selecting a specific calendar type the most then it would make sense to have that calendar type pre-selected for you.

For example, portrait photographers often will have a calendar type called "Sessions" and then they will have calendar sub-types such as "Portrait Session". By setting the "Sessions" calendar type as the default they can speed up their process they go through of selecting the specific type of session.

When would you automatically book employees, locations or equipment?

Often times an employee, location, or piece of equipment is only scheduled for certain types of appointments, sessions, or events. The new automated steps reduce the need to manually add those resources when booking those events. 

For example, if the same employee is always booked for all of the sales session with customers then the automated process would streamline scheduling this employee.

When would you not automatically book employees, locations or equipment?

The automated booking should only be used in situations where there are resources dedicated to a specific type of appointment, session or event. If multiple resources can be booked for the same resource then then automated booking shouldn't be used. 

For example, if multiple employees could be booked for a sales session with a customer then the automated scheduling shouldn't be used because a decision has to be made regarding which employee needs to be booked.

When would you want to automatically convert a lead to a client?

Many businesses consider a lead to be a client once the client has been scheduled for a session. This step is useful for those businesses.

This feature is especially useful if you want to be able to access the client in ProSelect after they are scheduled for a session. Only clients are visible in ProSelect.

When would I want to automatically close a client pipeline when a session is scheduled?

Many businesses use the lead tracking with the objective of getting the customer to schedule a session. Once the session is scheduled the client either is tracked using session tracking or is no longer tracked after that point. 

This new feature streamlines the workflow for businesses whose goal is to schedule a lead.

How do I set it up?

All of the above features are setup from the create or edit calendar type window. This means that each calendar type and calendar sub-type can use the new features in a unique way.

Pro-Tip: If you setup the actions for the calendar type they also apply to all of the calendar sub-types associated with the calendar type.

Click here for a tutorial on how to create and edit calendar types

New: Add Client Details To Session Notes

With the latest release of StudioCloud you can now have client information automatically appended to the notes field when you are booking an appointment, session, or event. The client fields supported are business name, client name, address, phone numbers and email address.

This new feature is useful in providing you with the client details you need on the visible calendar without having to edit the session or event. In addition, the client details are also displayed on third party calendaring systems such as Google Calendar and smart phone's built in calendaring apps.

To select which client details you would like appended to the event notes field refer to the section header "How to Append Client Information to the Event Notes Field" from the following tutorial.

https://app1.studiocloud.com/support/index.php?/article/AA-00636

New iOS and Android Apps (Beta)

StudioCloud has released our new iPhone, iPad, Android Phone and Android Tablet app

Click here for the links to download the new mobile apps

Click here for a tutorial on how to use the new mobile app

Direct Cloud Access

• Access your business information directly from the cloud. No need to wait for any information to sync between the cloud and your device.

Auto Adjusting Interface

• The new web mobile interface has been designed to auto adjust to fit the screen size of the mobile device you are using.

Clients, Prospective Clients, and Leads

In the new client view there are a lot of new features such as:

• Save a client's social media info
• Track unique information using custom client fields
• Open a personalized CloudForm for a client
• View signed and unsigned contracts for a client
• Create a new contract for a client to eSign

Agenda

The new agenda also has a lot of new features such as:

• Schedule sessions, events, and appointments using calendar type and calendar sub-type
• Book clients
• Schedule employees, equipment, and locations

CloudForms

CloudForms have been integrated directly into the mobile app. A personalized CloudForm can be opened directly from the client view. A personalized CloudForm in the mobile is ideal to have a client verify their information on a tablet or ipad and update any inaccurate information.

A non-personalized CloudForm can be opened from the list of CloudForm and is ideal for a new client to fill out a new client form on a tablet or ipad.

Please note that CloudForm can also be integrated with online booking, payments/deposits, and contracts.

Mileage Tracking

You can now enter your mileage directly from the mobile app

Contracts

You can view all of the outstanding contracts or just the signed and unsigned contracts for a specific client from the mobile app. In addition, you can also create a new contract to be esigned.

Time Card

You can clock in and clock out directly from the mobile app.