Studio Manager Bulletin

Studio Manager Support Packages, Part 1

Up till now, we've been doing support on an hourly basis with occasional sales of blocks of time. We've decided that our customers more often than not skimp on support. They don't budget for it at the time of purchase and then try to get along with little to no extra help. Because of this, some of our customers aren't getting as much as they should out of Studio Manager.

One option would be raise the price of Studio Manager so that we can offer more support with the product. Right now you get one hour of free support. We could raise the price of Studio Manager by a few hundred dollars and give you 5 hours of support. But that would penalize those of you who prefer to do things on your own with your own local or in-house FileMaker talent. Studio Manager is very popular among firms who are already using FileMaker. We aim to please, so we are going to attack the support issue by offering you incentives. Yeah, that's right, discounts!

Here's what we are thinking right now. Provide the following discounted chunks of service that can be purchased in advance: 5-hours, 10-hours, 25-hours and 50-hours. If you need a different number of hours, you can add additional hours to any one of these plans. If you want 35 hours instead of 25, for example, we'll sell you all 35 hours at a better discount than you would get by buying both a 10-hour and 25-hour package.

Discounts will range from about 5% for the 5 hour block of time to a little over 20% off for the largest block of hours. You will have 12 months to use your hours. We are working on the support packages this week and should have something firmed up by week's end.

If you happen to see this post before we've finalized our support packages and pricing, please let us know what you think. We would love the input.

Supporting You with Screen Sharing in OSX Leopard

Now that Apple has released the second update to OS X Leopard, 10.5.2, the promise of Leopard is being realized. We are enjoying being able to almost instantly see and manipulate local computers in the office. I can reach out to my iMac from my MacBook Pro and see the screen and run programs. I can open our business database if it isn't open. All this is ultra easy now.

In this world of remote desktop that Apple calls Screen Sharing, we can Screen Share with you in either direction if you are also on a Mac running OS X Leopard. We can demonstrate things on our Macs while you watch and we can also remotely control your computer when you have so authorized and make changes or add things to your custom version of Studio Manager. Pretty slick.

It's sometimes been a challenge to explain things on a graphical user interface by phone. Leopard screen sharing can make things much easier. If you ever call us for tech support or have a question that requires looking at your Mac screen running Leopard, please let us know so we can augment our conversation by seeing your screen or vice versa.

Please note that if you are using remote desktop on a Tiger based machine, we can also use remote desktop to accomplish much of the same thing. It's just a wee bit easier in Leopard.

Studio Manager Bulletin Has a New Look

Wow! TypePad just expanded their themes and I found this one that I really like. So much for white backgrounds. I just love this. I'm hoping that enjoyment won't fade quickly. We'll see. Hope you like the new look.

One of the things I like about TypePad is their strength in design. That's why I'm on TypePad for my blogging service. You aren't stuck with a generic theme either. You can add your own CSS into the page to override theme CSS.

By the way, I use CSSedit these days. Fun to use and effective! Today I'm using the theme unedited. After I examine it in more detail, I'll start tweaking.

One thing I have to do is go back and change some of my graphics to have transparent backgrounds. Black aint going to work anymore. Argh! Cutting corners sometimes bites you in the butt later.

Studio Manager 9 Demo Manual v2 Up

All right, we just spent about $2500 user testing, improving and revising the demo manual for Studio Manager 9. Please consider the demo manual as a helpful introduction to the functionality of Studio Manager. The demo manual can be a handy training resource for new employees. Perfect for getting a thorough overview of the product. It has lots of screenshots so you can see what the instructions are talking about.

If you haven't checked out he Getting Started tutorial, we also recommend it for a hands on walk-thru. Step by step. Getting Started is 12 pages. The demo manual is 24.

Please let me know if you have any questions about the manual, Studio Manager or this post. I'll be notified if you post your question as a comment here. Or you can email me. Or, feel free to call us at 415 789-5219. We're open 8 am to 5:30 pm week days Pacific time.

Tutorial: Using the Scripts Menu

This article is going to be brief but it is worth mentioning that there is a Scripts menu in Studio Manager that has handy shortcuts that will help you get around. Each of the menu items has a corresponding keyboard equivalent listed in the menu.

Light users who may be entering time and noting the completion of tasks can zip around Studio Manager with the first 6 shortcuts.

Heavier users may want to use the first seven shortcuts religiously to save time and mousing wear and tear.

Entry Screen and List Screen. The first 2 shortcuts give you a way to toggle back and forth between the entry screen and list screen. If you've gotten away from your home base, you can quickly get back to the entry screen with Cmd-1 and the List screen with Cmd-2. The most common use here is to work with a list of contacts or jobs and then view the entry screens for particular contacts or jobs to work in more detail. When you are done, get back to the list screen in a hurry with Cmd-2.

Contacts, Jobs and Timesheets. The three most popular places to hang out in Studio Manager are Contacts (command-3), Jobs (command-4) and Timesheets (command-5). If you want to quickly get to your timesheet or lookup a contact or job details, these shortcuts get you there fast.

Home Base. We aren't playing baseball, but now that Studio Manager has links and views of all your data like your current and overdue tasks on your employee screen, it's handy to be able to get there without delay. Type command-6 and you'll get back home. Many users find having a home base a nice point of orientation to the whole system. We hope this helps. By the way, those who prefer a menu can click the little target icon at the top of the righthand button bar to go Home as well.

Studio Manager 9 Demo Manual Up

We have the first version of our Studio Manager 9 Demo Manual Up. We've updated the screenshots and added coverage of Studio Manager 9 features. It is currently 24 pages. We highly recommend the demo manual as a learning tool for new Studio Manager users. Great for new employees or for employees new to Studio Manager.

Our 13-page Getting Started manual is also a good learning tool and has been redone for Studio Manager 9. Getting started is more of a walk through at the detail level, walking you through creating a job, creating an estimate, write correspondence, etc.. The Demo Manual is more conceptual, giving you a tour of Studio Manager with more context in terms of explanation, features and benefits.

We are still at work on an even better version of the demo manual based on user testing. Stay tuned.

Studio Manager 9 Out, Demo Up

Just out this morning. Come see the demo, the new features page and the New Features guide on our Studio Manager site!

Studio Manager 9 Due for release tomorrow

We are busily finishing taking screenshots, writing up descriptions and instructions right now so we can release Studio Manager 9 tomorrow. Here's a single item to whet your appetite for lots more that should be on display tomorrow. After we get all the information up on Studio Manager 9 which requires FileMaker Pro 9, we will then get the demo going. We need to get good practice data in there that matches up to our manuals and such so that's the last thing. We still are hoping by tomorrow's nightfall to have the demo up and ready to go.

Studio Manager 9 Due for Release Dec 18

We are on the verge of releasing a new version of Studio Manager. It will require FileMaker Pro 9 and take advantage of some of its unique new features like conditional formatting. We hope to have some screenshots up on our studio-manager.com site by Friday afternoon. Come take a look if you are thinking you might want to upgrade or purchase Studio Manager for the new year.

For a period of months, we will continue to sell Studio Manager 8 to users who have recently upgraded to FileMaker Pro 8.5 and aren't ready for another round of upgrades there. We do love FileMaker Pro 9, though, and highly recommend the upgrade.

Feel free to contact me at janet (at) tokerud (dot) com or call my new Tiburon, California phone number at 415 789-5219. More to follow.

Studio Manager 7 and 8 on FileMaker 9

Some users have gotten error messages when trying to open their FileMaker 7 or 8 databases in FileMaker 9. This is true even though FileMaker 9 has the same file format as FileMaker 7 and 8 and is meant to be 100% compatible with all existing FileMaker 7 and 8 databases. I wanted to comment on what I've learned about this so far.

Apparently, FileMaker 9 is more rigorous than previous versions of FileMaker in checking for errors before opening a file. When it finds something not to its liking, it puts up a message advising you to recover the file.

I would advise against this if at all possible. The Recover command in FileMaker really is not a good therapeutic tool. It is instead best for situations where you must recover your data temporarily as it is not guaranteed to leave your database completely in tact. So, use Recover when you must get data because there is no other option and then it is best to use a clone of a clean previous version of your database and import data from the recovered file to the clone. Better still, would be to export data from the recovered file and import that exported file into your clone.

The point is, don't use Recover before trying other much better options. The option I like best is to open the errant file in the highest version of FIleMaker it will open in that you have and use the Save a Copy as command to Compressed Copy (smaller). This is not the normal kind of file compression but is instead a unique-to-FileMaker cleaning process that is lossless and actually good for the file. I have yet to have a FileMaker file that did not open in FIleMaker 9 after it was first Compressed by an earlier version of FileMaker in this way.

I recommend that before you try to open your FileMaker files in FileMaker 9 for the first time, that you do this maintenance step first.

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