Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Product Update: Mandrill Band Notifications, App-Only Latest Posts, Deep Links Fixed

Our biweekly Product Updates give you a rundown of all the features and bug fixes that are being deployed - plus one handy tip of the week.

Band Notifications Are Coming To Mandrill

Dev's next deployment will turn on Mandrill-powered HTML band notifications across the network.


We're so excited about these emails! The aesthetic is a huge leap forward from our traditional plain-text notifications - and we expect engagement (and therefore, traffic) to rise considerably. These emails can also be fully customized on a per-metro basis - which means (best of all) you can sell sponsorships into them. Huzzah!

An important note: Our larger metros may see an increase in Mandrill fees once these emails start sending. However, it should not be more than $10/month - and that fee should be well made up for by the new ability to sell these emails to sponsors.

Want to customize your metro's Band Notification emails? Just email Support!

Deep Links Are Fixed

We fixed deep links (again). The previous App Store build of the DoStuff App was crashing on first open whenever it was attempting to navigate to content via a deep link. This issue is resolved in the new build - which is now live in the App Store. Link away!

Radmin's New User Search

We've added an Algolia-powered type-ahead search feature for users in Radmin.


Metros have historically struggled with finding certain users in Radmin - and we expect this new search feature to put an end to that issue AND let you find any user with exceptional speed.

Change The Order Of Your Desktop Shortcuts

You will soon be able to manually re-order your desktop category shortcuts



Please visit Radmin -> Content -> Shortcuts to do so (beginning next week). Note that you can already re-order your app's shortcuts by navigating to Radmin -> Mobile -> Shortcuts.

This feature will have no effect on category Shortcuts that are not set to 'Display' in your shortcut drop-down.

Features & Fixes

Metros have occasionally observed that certain giveaway entrants have disappeared from their 'Pick Winners' screens. The reason for this is that un-adding any event with a giveaway caused you to be automatically un-entered.

The frequency of disappearing entrants increased with the introduction of the app - since hitting the 'check' symbol on the app is a lot easier than hitting the 'Added' button on desktop - and because there's no information about what the 'check' button does on the app, users were hitting it and un-entering from giveaways at an alarming rate.

So, we've modified the platform's functionality so that you can not un-add an event for which you have entered a giveaway. This should put a complete stop to the disappearing giveaway entrants. 

If you do attempt to un-add one of these events, the UI will appear to let you. However, it's all a lie: No real changes will happen. The event will not be removed from your profile and you will not be removed from the giveaway.

We also fixed a bug that was occasionally preventing events that were 'Approved All' in the pending queue from being properly indexed in search. If you were having trouble finding recently-created events in the past few weeks, this is likely why.

Create An 'App-Only' Latest Post

Historically, metros have needed to leverage their app's Featured Stuff to link to content that they wanted to only surface on the app. Beginning next week, we will have the ability to create an app-only Latest post.

Tip of the Week

The arrival of app-only Latest posts is a great reason to discuss what content is fair game to post in your app's Discover section. Remember that you may not link directly to a user's Followed Artists ('/artists') or Followed Venues ('/venues') in the app's Discover section. All user lists must be linked to via the plain-and-simple 'http://DoXYZ.com/vanityURL' format.

So, for instance, if you work at Do512 and want to post your Restaurants Open On Thanksgiving list to the app:
  • Do not use the 'http://do512.com/thanksgivingaustin/venues' URL. 
  • Instead, use 'http://do512.com/thanksgivingaustin'.
If a user has events, then the app will show a list of events by default.
If a user has places but no events, then the app will show a list of places by default.
If a user has artists but no places or events, then the app will show a list of artists by default.

Since the Thanksgiving list has events, the app will display a list of events by default - but will give users the opportunity to switch between 'Events' And 'Places' via the top navigation.

If the user list had no events and only places, then linking to 'http://do512.com/thanksgivingaustin' on the app would surface the list of 'Places' by default.

If you haven't already done so, we recommend reading the App-Related Workflow Changes feature on LearnStuff for all the tricks you need to know - and please reach out to Support if you have any questions about best practices for the app.

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Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Product Update: Mandrill Band Notifications, App-Only Latest Posts, Deep Links Fixed

Our biweekly Product Updates give you a rundown of all the features and bug fixes that are being deployed - plus one handy tip of the week.

Band Notifications Are Coming To Mandrill

Dev's next deployment will turn on Mandrill-powered HTML band notifications across the network.


We're so excited about these emails! The aesthetic is a huge leap forward from our traditional plain-text notifications - and we expect engagement (and therefore, traffic) to rise considerably. These emails can also be fully customized on a per-metro basis - which means (best of all) you can sell sponsorships into them. Huzzah!

An important note: Our larger metros may see an increase in Mandrill fees once these emails start sending. However, it should not be more than $10/month - and that fee should be well made up for by the new ability to sell these emails to sponsors.

Want to customize your metro's Band Notification emails? Just email Support!

Deep Links Are Fixed

We fixed deep links (again). The previous App Store build of the DoStuff App was crashing on first open whenever it was attempting to navigate to content via a deep link. This issue is resolved in the new build - which is now live in the App Store. Link away!

Radmin's New User Search

We've added an Algolia-powered type-ahead search feature for users in Radmin.


Metros have historically struggled with finding certain users in Radmin - and we expect this new search feature to put an end to that issue AND let you find any user with exceptional speed.

Change The Order Of Your Desktop Shortcuts

You will soon be able to manually re-order your desktop category shortcuts



Please visit Radmin -> Content -> Shortcuts to do so (beginning next week). Note that you can already re-order your app's shortcuts by navigating to Radmin -> Mobile -> Shortcuts.

This feature will have no effect on category Shortcuts that are not set to 'Display' in your shortcut drop-down.

Features & Fixes

Metros have occasionally observed that certain giveaway entrants have disappeared from their 'Pick Winners' screens. The reason for this is that un-adding any event with a giveaway caused you to be automatically un-entered.

The frequency of disappearing entrants increased with the introduction of the app - since hitting the 'check' symbol on the app is a lot easier than hitting the 'Added' button on desktop - and because there's no information about what the 'check' button does on the app, users were hitting it and un-entering from giveaways at an alarming rate.

So, we've modified the platform's functionality so that you can not un-add an event for which you have entered a giveaway. This should put a complete stop to the disappearing giveaway entrants. 

If you do attempt to un-add one of these events, the UI will appear to let you. However, it's all a lie: No real changes will happen. The event will not be removed from your profile and you will not be removed from the giveaway.

We also fixed a bug that was occasionally preventing events that were 'Approved All' in the pending queue from being properly indexed in search. If you were having trouble finding recently-created events in the past few weeks, this is likely why.

Create An 'App-Only' Latest Post

Historically, metros have needed to leverage their app's Featured Stuff to link to content that they wanted to only surface on the app. Beginning next week, we will have the ability to create an app-only Latest post.

Tip of the Week

The arrival of app-only Latest posts is a great reason to discuss what content is fair game to post in your app's Discover section. Remember that you may not link directly to a user's Followed Artists ('/artists') or Followed Venues ('/venues') in the app's Discover section. All user lists must be linked to via the plain-and-simple 'http://DoXYZ.com/vanityURL' format.

So, for instance, if you work at Do512 and want to post your Restaurants Open On Thanksgiving list to the app:
  • Do not use the 'http://do512.com/thanksgivingaustin/venues' URL. 
  • Instead, use 'http://do512.com/thanksgivingaustin'.
If a user has events, then the app will show a list of events by default.
If a user has places but no events, then the app will show a list of places by default.
If a user has artists but no places or events, then the app will show a list of artists by default.

Since the Thanksgiving list has events, the app will display a list of events by default - but will give users the opportunity to switch between 'Events' And 'Places' via the top navigation.

If the user list had no events and only places, then linking to 'http://do512.com/thanksgivingaustin' on the app would surface the list of 'Places' by default.

If you haven't already done so, we recommend reading the App-Related Workflow Changes feature on LearnStuff for all the tricks you need to know - and please reach out to Support if you have any questions about best practices for the app.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thoughts to share? DO!