Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Product Update: Lenses and ECPs in Radmin, Timezone Fix for RSVPs, and more

Our regular Product Updates give you a rundown of the features and bug fixes that were rolled out over the past week, plus a look ahead to some of the bigger changes that are on the way.

Big update this week! We have a brand new "Lenses" tab rolling out in Radmin, plus some other features and fixes added to the backend. Make sure you check out each one below!

(There WILL be a quiz.)

Lens and ECP Creation In Radmin

As we’re getting closer to moving the final bits of Admin over to Radmin, one of the features that’s been totally reimagined is Lenses. Lens creation, especially for ECPs, has long been a decentralized and pretty confusing process.

The new Lenses tab in Radmin, going live this week, will be the centralized place for you to manage existing lenses and oversee the creation of new ones.

But first, it’s probably best we do a little vocab review.

Vocab Review: Lenses and ECPs

We throw around a lot of acronyms and made-up lingo here at DoStuff and it can sometimes be hard to keep track. To make it even more fun, we sometimes switch up the meanings over time.


So before your head starts spinning, here are two terms we should define:

  • Lens: A customized view of your metro’s Event listings, or a certain cross section of those listings. When viewing a Lens, the design elements stay consistent across Lists and Event pages. Lenses can live on-site or on a third-party site and come in three different flavors:
  • ECP: An Event Calendar Partner (ECP) is a type of Lens that "lives" on a third-party partner’s site, and lists a personalized calendar of Events for their audience.
Creating an ECP in Radmin

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s take a look at the new Lens Creation process that will be coming to Radmin in the next few days. The set up is pretty much the same for all Lenses, but we’re going to use ECPs as an example.

With Radmin you can automate a large portion of ECP set up -- from emailing designers to creating the URL to building a service agreement. In fact, our goal is to give you the ability to build an entire ECP from start to finish without DoStuff’s help whatsoever.

To create a new ECP in Radmin, you'll click “New Lens” in the top-right of the ECPs page and be taken to this form:


Here's what you'll enter into each field:

  1. Title: What's the ECP going to be called?
  2. Mode: What type of Lens are you building? (Hint: You’re building an ECP.)
  3. User: Enter the email of the user that will be voting on Events for the ECP. (Note: They must be a registered user on your site before you can create the ECP.)
  4. Original URL: Paste the URL for your ECP partner's website so your designer can match the design and layout. (Note: This field only appears for ECPs.)
  5. Designers: Enter the email of the designer(s) that will be building the ECP. As soon as the ECP is created, they will be notified along with a link to their Radmin Dashboard so they can get started. (Note: This field only appears for ECPs.)
  6. Domain: What will the Lens' domain URL be? This will create a new URL on our server. (Note: You must create a URL ending in your metro's domain name to get started -- e.g. ecpname.doxxx.com. Later on you can redirect to a partner's domain URL if that was part of the agreement.)
  7. Locked Username: Is the Locked box checked? This is the username that will be used to access the ECP before it's unlocked (be sure to give to you designer and parters).
  8. Locked Password: Is the Locked box checked? This is the password that will be used to access the ECP before it's unlocked.

Before you press 'Save', click on the Service Agreement tab to enter the contact details for your ECP partner. The Service Agreement is a standard contract generated for all ECPs and basically says that DoStuff gives the partner permission to host our Event listings on their site. Enter the required info on this tab and press "Save".

A number of things will happen when you finish all these steps. First and foremost, the ECP will be created and will be visible in your Lenses tab in Radmin.

In addition, 1.) the ECP domain URL will be added to our server automatically, 2.) your designer will receive an email with the relevant details and instructions for building the ECP, and 3.) a Service Agreement will be generated using the contact details you entered earlier.

From this point, you can work 1-on-1 with your designer and ECP contact to finalize the site design, get the Service Agreement "signed", and decide on a launch date. Before you can launch the ECP, it's your responsibility to make sure your partner reads the Service Agreement and clicks "Agree" while logged into their account. To find the link to the Service Agreement at any time, click "View Agreement" on the ECP's details page in Radmin, or through the cog menu on the main ECP page.

While all this is may seem like a lot to learn right now, you'll find that you'll soon be creating and launching ECPs completely independent of DoStuff and the support team using this new process.

Service Agreements

With this new ECP creation process in Radmin, a signed Service Agreement will now be required for every single active ECP.

We’re well aware that the large majority of existing ECPs do not have a signed Service Agreement in place at this time -- the blame for this rests mostly on our shoulders anyway. But in order to make sure that DoStuff and the metros are protected going forward, we need all ECPs to agree to the standard Service Agreement.

We’ll work with each of you in the coming weeks to help you along the process of getting these generated and "signed" using Radmin.

Timezone Fix for RSVPs

As some of you have noticed in the past, the field for automatically emailing guestlists in Radmin hasn’t always worked too well.

The root cause was that Radmin standardized all events to the same time zone in the backend, but wasn’t taking this into account in the RSVP modal. Depending on what time zone you’re in, “1 hour prior” could turn into “3 hours prior”.

To fix this, we had to add an entirely new field at the bottom of the modal that now runs on a dropdown. This is the “good” guest list field. It can tell time and do basic addition and subtraction, as opposed to the “bad” field.


But here’s the catch, before we can kill the “bad’ field we need you to manually switch all your current RSVPs to the “good” one. You can do this by entering the proper time in the “good” field and leaving the “bad” field blank.

Since both of these are currently working, it’s really important you do this for all RSVPs (Approved Events > Filters > RSVP) and let us know when you’re done. Once we know that everyone has successfully switched over we’ll kill the “bad” field and you’ll never hear from it again.

Default Share Image

We’ve added a new field in Radmin under Site Design > Images for setting the default share image on Facebook and other social sites. Up until now, the thumbnail that pops up when you share a link has been your metro’s logo, which doesn’t always look too hot when it shows up against Facebook’s white background (see below).


Now you can upload a custom photo or graphic to Radmin to improve the way your links appear in Facebook's News Feed and help drive more clicks.

Media Search Functions

There’s been some confusion about what all the buttons in Radmin’s new media search widget do, so we thought we’d clear it up so you’re not left worrying about pressing the wrong thing:


  1. Page Icon: Updates the Facebook Page info (Does NOT change the current image)
  2. Check Icon: Update the current image AND updates the Facebook Page info
  3. Arrow Icon: Scrolls to next image



The difference between the page icon and the check icon are important to note the next time you need to update a Venue or Artist’s Facebook ID but don’t want to change the background image that’s currently being used.

Hidden User Activity Is Hidden

This may sound redundant, but the activity of hidden users is now hidden across the entire site. In the past, hidden users have appeared in the Event Activity feed under the name “Anonymous Coward”.

We decided it was kind of mean to call everyone a coward so now their activity just doesn’t show up anymore.

------

That's all for this week! We'll let you know in Slack when the Lenses tab is about to go live in Radmin so you know to keep an eye out for it.

4 comments:

  1. Thank you, thank you to all involved that made / make these product updates possible! The share image feature especially is fabulous. Thanks for all you guys do!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Aw schucks... thanks Amelia! The Product team has informed me that they accept gifts in the form of Kentucky bourbon and fried chicken.

      Delete
    2. Not toooo sure how well fried chicken transports, but Bourbon and Bourbon balls are already planned as Summit gifts :D

      Delete
  2. UPDATE: The following changes were made to this post today.

    First, the New ECP Lens screenshot was updated to include the most recent product changes. The "Lens-specific Brand Ads" checkbox has been removed and is now baked into all ECPs by default (there's never a scenario when your ads would appear on a third-party ECP). This checkbox still appears when creating Metro and Conference lenses, however. Also, the "Only Show Picks" checkbox has been removed permanently. There are so few scenarios when you would want all your event listings to pull through to third-party ECP page or any other Lens that this is now only possible to do by working directly with the Dev team.

    Second, we added more details about where to find the link to a Service Agreement and how to get it signed after a few questions about that.

    Third, we decided that using "0.5 hours" on the RSVP modal instead of "half hour" was dumb so we changed it. Math is confusing, anyway. The screenshot above was updated to show off the new look.

    ReplyDelete

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Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Product Update: Lenses and ECPs in Radmin, Timezone Fix for RSVPs, and more

Our regular Product Updates give you a rundown of the features and bug fixes that were rolled out over the past week, plus a look ahead to some of the bigger changes that are on the way.

Big update this week! We have a brand new "Lenses" tab rolling out in Radmin, plus some other features and fixes added to the backend. Make sure you check out each one below!

(There WILL be a quiz.)

Lens and ECP Creation In Radmin

As we’re getting closer to moving the final bits of Admin over to Radmin, one of the features that’s been totally reimagined is Lenses. Lens creation, especially for ECPs, has long been a decentralized and pretty confusing process.

The new Lenses tab in Radmin, going live this week, will be the centralized place for you to manage existing lenses and oversee the creation of new ones.

But first, it’s probably best we do a little vocab review.

Vocab Review: Lenses and ECPs

We throw around a lot of acronyms and made-up lingo here at DoStuff and it can sometimes be hard to keep track. To make it even more fun, we sometimes switch up the meanings over time.


So before your head starts spinning, here are two terms we should define:

  • Lens: A customized view of your metro’s Event listings, or a certain cross section of those listings. When viewing a Lens, the design elements stay consistent across Lists and Event pages. Lenses can live on-site or on a third-party site and come in three different flavors:
  • ECP: An Event Calendar Partner (ECP) is a type of Lens that "lives" on a third-party partner’s site, and lists a personalized calendar of Events for their audience.
Creating an ECP in Radmin

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s take a look at the new Lens Creation process that will be coming to Radmin in the next few days. The set up is pretty much the same for all Lenses, but we’re going to use ECPs as an example.

With Radmin you can automate a large portion of ECP set up -- from emailing designers to creating the URL to building a service agreement. In fact, our goal is to give you the ability to build an entire ECP from start to finish without DoStuff’s help whatsoever.

To create a new ECP in Radmin, you'll click “New Lens” in the top-right of the ECPs page and be taken to this form:


Here's what you'll enter into each field:

  1. Title: What's the ECP going to be called?
  2. Mode: What type of Lens are you building? (Hint: You’re building an ECP.)
  3. User: Enter the email of the user that will be voting on Events for the ECP. (Note: They must be a registered user on your site before you can create the ECP.)
  4. Original URL: Paste the URL for your ECP partner's website so your designer can match the design and layout. (Note: This field only appears for ECPs.)
  5. Designers: Enter the email of the designer(s) that will be building the ECP. As soon as the ECP is created, they will be notified along with a link to their Radmin Dashboard so they can get started. (Note: This field only appears for ECPs.)
  6. Domain: What will the Lens' domain URL be? This will create a new URL on our server. (Note: You must create a URL ending in your metro's domain name to get started -- e.g. ecpname.doxxx.com. Later on you can redirect to a partner's domain URL if that was part of the agreement.)
  7. Locked Username: Is the Locked box checked? This is the username that will be used to access the ECP before it's unlocked (be sure to give to you designer and parters).
  8. Locked Password: Is the Locked box checked? This is the password that will be used to access the ECP before it's unlocked.

Before you press 'Save', click on the Service Agreement tab to enter the contact details for your ECP partner. The Service Agreement is a standard contract generated for all ECPs and basically says that DoStuff gives the partner permission to host our Event listings on their site. Enter the required info on this tab and press "Save".

A number of things will happen when you finish all these steps. First and foremost, the ECP will be created and will be visible in your Lenses tab in Radmin.

In addition, 1.) the ECP domain URL will be added to our server automatically, 2.) your designer will receive an email with the relevant details and instructions for building the ECP, and 3.) a Service Agreement will be generated using the contact details you entered earlier.

From this point, you can work 1-on-1 with your designer and ECP contact to finalize the site design, get the Service Agreement "signed", and decide on a launch date. Before you can launch the ECP, it's your responsibility to make sure your partner reads the Service Agreement and clicks "Agree" while logged into their account. To find the link to the Service Agreement at any time, click "View Agreement" on the ECP's details page in Radmin, or through the cog menu on the main ECP page.

While all this is may seem like a lot to learn right now, you'll find that you'll soon be creating and launching ECPs completely independent of DoStuff and the support team using this new process.

Service Agreements

With this new ECP creation process in Radmin, a signed Service Agreement will now be required for every single active ECP.

We’re well aware that the large majority of existing ECPs do not have a signed Service Agreement in place at this time -- the blame for this rests mostly on our shoulders anyway. But in order to make sure that DoStuff and the metros are protected going forward, we need all ECPs to agree to the standard Service Agreement.

We’ll work with each of you in the coming weeks to help you along the process of getting these generated and "signed" using Radmin.

Timezone Fix for RSVPs

As some of you have noticed in the past, the field for automatically emailing guestlists in Radmin hasn’t always worked too well.

The root cause was that Radmin standardized all events to the same time zone in the backend, but wasn’t taking this into account in the RSVP modal. Depending on what time zone you’re in, “1 hour prior” could turn into “3 hours prior”.

To fix this, we had to add an entirely new field at the bottom of the modal that now runs on a dropdown. This is the “good” guest list field. It can tell time and do basic addition and subtraction, as opposed to the “bad” field.


But here’s the catch, before we can kill the “bad’ field we need you to manually switch all your current RSVPs to the “good” one. You can do this by entering the proper time in the “good” field and leaving the “bad” field blank.

Since both of these are currently working, it’s really important you do this for all RSVPs (Approved Events > Filters > RSVP) and let us know when you’re done. Once we know that everyone has successfully switched over we’ll kill the “bad” field and you’ll never hear from it again.

Default Share Image

We’ve added a new field in Radmin under Site Design > Images for setting the default share image on Facebook and other social sites. Up until now, the thumbnail that pops up when you share a link has been your metro’s logo, which doesn’t always look too hot when it shows up against Facebook’s white background (see below).


Now you can upload a custom photo or graphic to Radmin to improve the way your links appear in Facebook's News Feed and help drive more clicks.

Media Search Functions

There’s been some confusion about what all the buttons in Radmin’s new media search widget do, so we thought we’d clear it up so you’re not left worrying about pressing the wrong thing:


  1. Page Icon: Updates the Facebook Page info (Does NOT change the current image)
  2. Check Icon: Update the current image AND updates the Facebook Page info
  3. Arrow Icon: Scrolls to next image



The difference between the page icon and the check icon are important to note the next time you need to update a Venue or Artist’s Facebook ID but don’t want to change the background image that’s currently being used.

Hidden User Activity Is Hidden

This may sound redundant, but the activity of hidden users is now hidden across the entire site. In the past, hidden users have appeared in the Event Activity feed under the name “Anonymous Coward”.

We decided it was kind of mean to call everyone a coward so now their activity just doesn’t show up anymore.

------

That's all for this week! We'll let you know in Slack when the Lenses tab is about to go live in Radmin so you know to keep an eye out for it.

4 comments:

  1. Thank you, thank you to all involved that made / make these product updates possible! The share image feature especially is fabulous. Thanks for all you guys do!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Aw schucks... thanks Amelia! The Product team has informed me that they accept gifts in the form of Kentucky bourbon and fried chicken.

      Delete
    2. Not toooo sure how well fried chicken transports, but Bourbon and Bourbon balls are already planned as Summit gifts :D

      Delete
  2. UPDATE: The following changes were made to this post today.

    First, the New ECP Lens screenshot was updated to include the most recent product changes. The "Lens-specific Brand Ads" checkbox has been removed and is now baked into all ECPs by default (there's never a scenario when your ads would appear on a third-party ECP). This checkbox still appears when creating Metro and Conference lenses, however. Also, the "Only Show Picks" checkbox has been removed permanently. There are so few scenarios when you would want all your event listings to pull through to third-party ECP page or any other Lens that this is now only possible to do by working directly with the Dev team.

    Second, we added more details about where to find the link to a Service Agreement and how to get it signed after a few questions about that.

    Third, we decided that using "0.5 hours" on the RSVP modal instead of "half hour" was dumb so we changed it. Math is confusing, anyway. The screenshot above was updated to show off the new look.

    ReplyDelete

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