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What's NEW With
Your Account? At a glance, here's what's new with this Version 5.0 release...
You will notice a vCalendar and vCard file attached to the emails sent by the Availability Checker, Contact Form, Quote Generator, and Booking System. These files are compatible with thousands of programs and devices, such as Microsoft Outlook, Palm (PDA), Lotus Organizer, Netscape, Novell, and Nokia Communicator. Clicking on the vCalendar file will automatically add this event to your event scheduling program or device. Clicking on the vCard file will automatically create a contact record for this person in your contact management program or device. By utilizing these globally standard files you can now import leads and bookings directly into your program of choice. For more information on vCalendar and vCard files, please visit http://www.imc.org/pdi/. If your program of choice is not currently compatible with vCalendar and/or vCard files, please contact the developer and ask that they add this functionality. With this new feature, this system essentially becomes a web-based extension of literally thousands of programs available on the market today for event scheduling and contact management. This feature can be turned on or off from the Master Settings page of your control panel.
If you have a MakesParties affiliate store, enter your site name on the Master Settings page of your control panel. You will then have the option to add an additional link for your clients within the Client Area when setting up their client login. This link will take them directly to your MakesParties affiliate store where they can order novelties, accessories, gifts, and favors. You can specify the link take you to your MakesParties affiliate store homepage, or you can specify specific event-related landing pages within the store to make the most of event-specific sales (i.e. a school event can link directly to the school party supplies page). Don't have a MakesParties affiliate store? Sign Up for one today for FREE and get your own private-labeled online party store. Earn 20% commission on any sales generated through your affiliate store. A great way to add an additional revenue stream to your business.
The Satisfaction Survey has been improved to now allow you to specify your own ranking system for the ranked questions. Rather than forcing our default responses of "Excellent", "Good", "Fair", "Poor", and "N/A", you can now specify your own labels for these values. This will allow you greater flexibility in designing surveys that more closely fit your individual needs. To edit your existing surveys or add new surveys and specify these values, just log into your control panel and go to the "Satisfaction Survey" page under the Tool Configuration section.
If you have prospective clients using your Quote Generator to obtain price quotes for their events in future years, you know that this can cause a problem if you were planning on raising your rates. With this new auto-charge, you can now automatically add on an additional charge based on year. So, for example, add an additional charge for events in 2007. This way, the early bride who books her vendors years in advance will have to pay your future 2007 rates.
You now have the ability to merge your own personal music list with the default list to create a single, massive list for your clients to search. This is perfect if our default list fits your needs but you need to add some additional tracks (i.e. ethic songs, etc.) that may not be included in the default list. Now you can upload your own list of songs and specify to merge the searching with the default list so that all songs are searched. You can activate this new feature from the "Master Settings" page of your control panel.
When your clients use the musical note to search and select songs for their special dances on their Planning Form, the song location information, i.e. disc # and track # (if you have it in your music database), will now pass back and print on the planning forms. This will help you to locate these special dances within your library if you have uploaded your own music list and it contains song location information. In addition, some cosmetic and aesthetic changes have been made to the integrated search function of the Planning Forms to make it easier for clients to make use of this great feature.
With Advanced HTML, you can add your own HTML to the pages the user sees after they submit a form through your Availability Checker, Contact Form, and Quote Generator. For these tools, you can now make use of the merge fields below to merge specific information they entered into the form into your advanced HTML. [NAME] = Inserts prospective
client's name
When adding or editing client logins you can now optionally enter a private message that will appear on the top of the main page of the Client Area. This is a great place to post a private message you only want that particular client to read. This is useful for reminders, special instructions, or any other message that would only pertain to a single client.
For your clients who log on after hours and can't remember their password, there is now a link they can follow to have their password emailed to them instantly. No longer will they have to wait for a manual reply from you. They can now quickly retrieve their password and log in to plan their event.
Now when your clients are filling out their Planning Form(s), Timeline(s), and Request Lists from within the Client Area, a "Submitted on..." indicator will appear next to each item after they submit it to you. This will remind the client that they have already completed and submitted this item, and the date on which they did it.
If you have "Force Login" enabled, you know that if you clink the link to view/print the HTML report from inside the email you receive, the system will ask you to log in. We have improved this so that if you click the link from inside the email the system will automatically bypass the force login feature, allowing you to access the report directly without having to log in.
You can now merge in the event location into your Booking System document (contract) by inserting [LOCATION] into the text of your document. In addition, [TOTAL] will insert the total amount and [DEPOSIT] will insert the deposit amount (Note: This will be different if you are using terminology other than "Deposit").
When viewing events on the Guest Request page of your control panel you will now notice that events for which at least one request has been made, the event name will appear in bold. If you have many guest request groups, this new feature will help you manage your groups by quickly indicating which lists have requests. You will now also notice that if you hover your mouse over the event name itself, a box will pop up indicating the quantity of requests that have been made towards that particular guest request list. From the front end on the actual Guest Request page itself, you will now notice that the artist and song title are hyperlinked. Clicking on these links will search the music library for the corresponding artist or song. This is a useful feature for guests of an event when using the site. If they see a song already on the request list that they want to request as well, they no longer have to manually search for that song. All they have to do is click on the hyperlink and the song will be located for them, so they can request it quickly and easily.
You can now add a drop-down box of event locations (venues) at which you perform to appear on all contact forms for all tools in place of the free-form box that currently appears for the question "Event Location". To set up your list of events, please log into your control and go go the "Advanced Settings" page.
You can now add a drop-down box of staff names to appear on the Satisfaction Survey in place of the free-form box that currently appears for the question "Event Staff". To set up your list of staff names, please log into your control and go go the "Advanced Settings" page.
As you may know, on the Master Settings page of your control panel you can currently select how you would like your request lists (both for the Music Database and Guest Request tools) to sort, either by Artist or Song. We have added a feature that allows you to override that master setting and re-sort your request list on-the-fly. In the case of the Music Database request list you can click on the column heading to either re-sort by Artist or Song. With the Guest Request tool you can re-sort by Artist, Song, or Tally. If you sort by Tally and you have a group of songs with the same number of "votes", the system will sub-sort by the default value you have set in your control panel.
Previously the Availability Checker limited a website visitor to checking 4 dates at one time. This is a great feature to prevent your competitors from checking all of your dates to see how booked you are. However, some subscribers were concerned that by limiting to 4 dates they might be limiting legitimate clients who may be checking a series of dates for a specific purpose. For this reason, we have put the control into your hands. You can now set your own limit on this feature. Everyone's account has been defaulted to 5 date checks, but you can increase or lower this from the Master Settings page of your control panel.
Some subscribers use their own contact form with the Availability Checker. If you are available, the system takes the website visitor directly to your contact form instead of the default Contact Form. By default, the system simply "redirects" to your form. We have added a new feature that now allows you to optionally "post" to your form. This is a highly advanced feature for skilled HTML/script programmers only. What this will allow you to do is capture the date the visitor entered on the date check form so you can pre-populate that date into your form (thus preventing redundant data entry by the visitor).
We've made some positive changes to our referral program that can yield greater rewards for your company. Now, every time a new full account is activated as a result of your referral, your name will be automatically entered into our regular drawings to win a full year of free service for your account. The more accounts you refer, the better your chances are to win. There are no restrictions on how many accounts you can refer or how many times you can win. To get started, visit the Referral Program page of your control panel where you can obtain your unique tracking URL as well as optional graphics you can use on your website. Full details of the program are also outlined on this page.
By demand we have added more choices for font type when customizing the cosmetic settings of your tools. To update your font choice, visit the Master Settings page of your control panel. If there is a font type you desire that does not currently appear, please contact our support department and we may be able to have it added for you.
Over the course of the past few months we have been performing a series of complex system upgrades to provide you with even better service and lay the groundwork for the future. We have invested heavily in hardware, software, and infrastructure upgrades that are now complete. From the front end, you will notice no 'cosmetic' differences. But behind the scenes there is a completely new system, re-developed from the ground up to function on one of the world's most stable, robust, and scalable database platforms offering the highest level of stability, security, and reliability. Your tools will now function at the most amazingly fast speeds you have ever seen. Your data will be even more secure behind an extra level of top rated security. You and your clients will now experience more stable, error-free, bug-free, and problem-free sessions than ever before. Your tools will function on the most rock-solid platform with virtually 100% uptime. In short, you can expect your experience to be even better than ever before. |
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