Studio Manager Bulletin

We've moved to our own domain

Hi folks. We have moved over to studio-manager.com if you haven't discovered that yet. Feel free to peruse our blog posts here, but check us out over at studio-manager.com for the latest news including current status of FileMaker Pro relative to the imminent release of OS X Lion.

Several New Blog Posts about Studio Manager 10 Features

Just in case you are checking here and haven't seen my new blog posts at Studio Manager Story, I'm posting a list here. If you are interested in Studio Manager, you'll probably find it fun to watch as we reveal the new features coming in Studio Manager 10. Here's what we've revealed so far:

Monthly Calendar

Employee Dashboard

Capturing Relevant 1-off Emails

Calendar Week View

Task Assignments go from 1 to 4 slots per task

Contact Address Summary

Find as you Type

We've Posted Upgrade Prices for Studio Manager 10

I went through the pricing for Studio Manager 9 and made minor adjustments in your favor. Then I came up with this general set of discount rules for upgraders:

During December 2009 you get another 25% off. 

So, for example, if you currently own Studio Manager 7, you get 45% off of the new price for Studio Manager 10. And, then you get 25% off of that number if you buy before January 1st!

A detailed price schedule is available at: Studio Manager Story Upgrades tab.

Studio Manager 10 is About to be Released

 We're aiming for early next week but it may be as late as Friday, December 15. We are polishing, testing, writing stories about the new features, putting up web pages, and sending emails right now. Studio Manager 10 is a major new release and we are blogging about it at Studio Manager Story. There are two posts on Studio Manager 10 over there right now. More to come asap.

Part of the Studio Manager Story is that Studio Manager 10 takes advantage of new features in FileMaker Pro 10. Those new features and how we've taken advantage of them is the subject of some of our next blog posts on Studio Manager Story.

December Sale: 25% Off on Studio Manager

 
We haven't had a sale like this ever in Studio Manager's history. There is a first time for everything and we think the current economy, as much as it seems to have bottomed out, is still worth a good sale to rally the troops and help you make up your mind to do something good for your team's information infrastructure.

Our 25% discount is across the board for both new purchases of Studio Manager and for the already low upgrade prices we have in our current price list. We haven't changed our price list, you'll need to do the math with your computer calculator or iPhone, but we think you'll like your numbers. Just take 25% off what you see on our Pricing or Upgrades pages at Studio Manager Story.

Check studio-manager.com for the Latest News

I've been moving some of the action from Studio Manager Bulletin over to Studio Manager Story. This is TypePad and my new studio-manager.com and tokerud.com sites are based on WordPress. That's where the newest tech is at the moment, so I'll just be updating here briefly to give you highlights of what's happening and go into more depth at my new WordPress sites.

Studio Manager 9.2: Adding FM10 features, Still FM9 Compatible

We've just completed two major changes in Studio Manager.

First, we added dedicated table view layouts with subsummaries to 10-plus Studio Manager tables. All the major tables have this new interactive, browse-mode-oriented summary tool. These layouts work fine in FileMaker Pro 9, but they shine in FileMaker Pro 10 because the subsummaries work in Browse mode, not just in a Preview. You see your headings and subtotals while you edit your data (See my FileMaker Fever Posts here and here to see why this is very cool).

Second, we modifed the entry screen form factor a bit so that FileMaker 10 users can fit the entry screens with the 1" toolbar on top within the height of a 13" monitor. We wanted to support Macbooks on FileMaker 10.

The adjustment was small. The entry screens are 15 pixels wider and 14 pixels shorter. We expect our FileMaker 9 users not to notice but for FM10 users with 13" screens, the change will be critical to avoid a vertical scroll to see the whole screen.

We added a 3rd FileMaker 10 feature in SM 9.1. The FileMaker-native tabs in Contacts are now *smart* on their own. When you select a tab, the records filter to the type of Contact you are selecting with the tab. Click Clients and you get clients, etc.. This only works in FileMaker Pro 10. If you are in FileMaker Pro 9, you need to double-click the tabs in Contacts to get the automatic filtering.

Studio Manager 9.1 Demo is Up

In case you aren't also checking in at our main Studio Manager page, you may have missed our Demo announcement on Monday. The new demo is compatible with FileMaker Pro 10 now and still runs fine with FileMaker Pro 9. You can download a free trial version of FileMaker Pro 10.

We added a FileMaker 10-only improvement which makes the Contact tabs filter the records to be approrpiate for the tab with a single click. This feat isn't possible with FileMaker's new tab controls without a new feature in FileMaker Pro 10 called script triggers.

We already had and fixed bug #1 in SM 9.1. The first implementation of this demo put up on Monday had a bug in this new feature which has now been corrected. If you got the demo before Jan 22 09 3 pm, you may have the bug which causes you to land on the wrong contact sometimes. Glad we do testing on our software before and after we post it. 

Keys to Backing Up Studio Manager

We all know we should backup our data and most of us do backups on a fairly regular basis. It is a good idea but most of us don't backup as much, as thoroughly or as regularly as we should. It is human nature to succumb to wishful thinking: "I'm sure nothing bad will happen tonight".

Firms with 20 or more employees tend to have decent backup systems in place. Smaller firms may vary. I get some very unpleasant calls for help from time to time. Yes, I've had my own data problems that meant I had to do hours and hours of rebuilding to get my database back with all its current functionality. In my case my hard drive failed and then my backup drive failed while I was working on recovering from backup.

I'm writing this as a reminder for my Studio Manager customers. Hard drives fail pretty regularly. Studio Manager holds your mission-critical data, so it can be expensive, time-consuming and even devastating to lose a lot of your data due to file damage or loss when a recent backup isn't available.

The top four things to do to backup your Studio Manager data are:

Do Archival Backups. You can overwrite your backups sometimes, but you need snapshots of your data at different points in time because you may not notice a data problem right away. If you backup over a previous backup and you've got a data problem, your backup will also have that data problem.

Backup offsite at least once a week. You need to have a strategy to guard against fire, flooding and theft. Many businesses go out of business after a catastrophic event that destroys their on-site computer installation, software, data and all. It is just too hard to recover. You can either have an employee hand carry a drive or DVD offsite once a week or pay for a professional online backup service that keeps your data backed up at a data center.

Backup when Studio Manager is closed. If you have FileMaker Server, it can be set to do backups at regular intervals. You can get backups hourly, nightly, exactly what you want. And, FileMaker Server will close your Studio Manager file before it backups up so that all the automatic housekeeping that filemaker does when it closes files is done before the backup is done. Then have your regular backup program backup up FileMaker Server's backups in its regular routine.

If you don't have FileMaker Server, you need to do this closing of FileMaker manually before doing backups. The convenience of having FileMaker Server close your files and do automated backups pays for it right there in most cases. 

Backup nightly, weekly and monthly. Here's a suggested backup schedule: daily keeping the last weeks worth of days, weekly, keeping the last six weeks, monthly keeping the last six months. It is not unusual to run into a data problem that is subtle and goes undetected for more than a couple months before you realize you have a problem. It is good to have your weekly and especially monthly backups both onsite and offsite.

That's all there is to it. Make it easy on yourself and get religious about backing up your data. 

Introducing ScreenSteps for Studio Manager 9

We have something new for you today. We are switching over to live web-based documentation for Studio Manager 9. We just opened our account today and have put up a few Studio Manager lessons that are available for public access.

Shortly we will be putting up a lot more lessons that will only be available to Studio Manager customers. What that means to you if you are a Studio Manager customer is that you'll need to register for an account.

Because some of our FileMaker consulting work is not for Studio Manager, we've opened the account under the name "tokerud" and the public URL is: tokerud.screenstepslive.com. We are hoping to use ScreenSteps whenever we have a need to explain how to do something in Studio Manager, FileMaker or the Mac.

One cool feature of ScreenSteps is that the user can download a PDF of a single lesson and be guaranteed of getting the most up to date information on that subject. You don't necessarily have to print a big manual all at once. Print as needed or just download PDFs of sections you are working on. Don't keep too many too long. Better to come back and get the freshest version of that lesson when you need it.

Unlike getting a full user manual that is current as of a single date, you get each lesson updated as recently as can be. We want to put up documentation as it is written rather than waiting for months to write the entire manual from start to finish.

Another thing we like about ScreenSteps is that each lesson is like a blog post with a comments area at the bottom. That means when you read a lesson and have a question, you can post it there. We then have the option of (1) writing a comment of our own to clarify or (2) improving the lesson to handle your question.

If we do our ScreenSteps documentation at the level of excellence that we are shooting for, we hope to attract a lot of comments and useage from our customer base. Our not so hidden agenda is to create a thriving community around Studio Manager that communicates. We want you guys to help each other and share knowledge.