In board-view, one can now right-click on individual cards and if the current user isn't already subscribed to changes on a lead/project, can subscribe right from there:
Task improvements
Tasks in Kanban boards are now sorted better by default (higher priority at the top, and within each priority level sorted by due date or completion date)
Kanban board improvements
Kanban boards can now be keyboard navigated (arrow keys select other cards).
When cards are selected (keyboard, mouse, or touch), they are moved to be visible. (This is especially important when keyboard navigation causes an item that is off-screen to be selected. The board now automatically scrolls).
Kanban boards now use our new scrollbars.
When the mouse is moved over a photo shown in a card, a larger version of the photo is shown.
Kanban boards now support right-click menus (currently used in Leads/Projects… see above)
1.152.0.0 - 4/16/2025
Mini-markdown render performance has been improved, and some minor cosmetic rendering improvements have been made.
There have been some minor/cosmetic fixes with the new scrollbar rendering in grids.
Interfaces with an Overview page now refresh that page whenever the contents of the form are saved.
Leads and Projects
The leads and project panes now show the change history of the item in the summary display.
The lead and project edit UIs now have a history tab.
Kanban boards now have an indicator icon in each card whenever users have subscribed to change notifications for that project/lead. If the current user (you) is one of the subscribed users, the icon is shown in green, and the tooltip text has an according note. This makes it very easy to see which projects/leads on is currently subscribed to.
Tasks
When a task is associated with an event signup, the task now shows which event and attendee it is linked to (both in the list of tasks as well as in the single-task UI). Note however, that a signup cannot be opened as a single item/UI, therefore, when one clicks on the link, a messagebox shows that it cannot be opened.
The Tasks kanban board now shows a reminder-indicator to make it easy to see if a task has an active reminder set:
The Accounts tab in Olympus had some old columns removed from the grid. Also, there now is a Merge Accounts button that can be used to merge multiple accounts.
The interface to edit an account now also uses the vertical tab layout, and it has associated notes. (Past merge operations are listed in the notes as a system note).
Event Signups now have an indicator (icon) for signups with assigned tasks. Also, the Notes preview is now called Notes & Tasks and shows both (if present). It is now also possible to group records by whether or not they have assigned tasks.
1.151.0.1 - 4/11/2025
Changes to the event edit form:
This UI now remembers the selected tab page and opens up on that page the next time it is opened.
The Signups page now has an active New Signup button that allows to manually sign up an attendee. (Note: This requires the person to already be in the system. If the person isn't in the system already, simply add the person through the people interface.)
This form now has a Notes tab for the entire event, allowing attaching event notes and it also shows all notes associated with individual signups in one place.
A bug with uploading author/contact photos that caused an error message to be displayed for some image formats, has been fixed.
The Events page in the name UI now allows to manually add the person to an event that is in the past.
Olympus now supports deep linking and sharing (see also: Sharing).
All the major forms in Olympus now support sharing through the sharing icon in the status bar:
This brings up our Share dialog, which allows sharing information in a variety of ways, such as sending information as an email: This then ends up in the recipients inbox as an email with clickable links that open Olympus and then directly the item that was shared (“deep linking”). Here is an example of the received email:
Other options are the ability to just copy the link, copy a short version of the text (very useful when sharing to media such as Slack or Teams), and a verbose version of the text. Those versions are copied to the clipboard (a convenient button is provided), and then pasted somewhere else.
When notifications for task reminders or changes are sent out via email, the email now includes a link to open the task directly.
The same is true for changes in leads or projects.
The Consulting Service edit UI now uses the new vertical tab approach, including the display of an image and the addition of an Overview page:
The logo generator can now save JPEG files in addition to PNG files.
5.150.0.0 - 4/7/2025
Tabbed interfaces (sucha as all the new vertical tab layouts) now remember the selected page when the form closes and re-launches the form with that same page selected the next time it is opened.
Opening items from the menu has been optimized and the first control in the loaded UI is automatically selected.
There have been a number of small behavioral and cosmetic changes for the new scrollbars and the new search textboxes, so they behave and look as expected.
All grids/lists now have modern scrollbars.
The Name form now shows name information at the top of each tab (except for the Overview page, which already has far more detail) to make it easier to see which name we are dealing with:
The Leads and Projects panes now have an improved filter button/textbox in the toolbar, replacing the (temporary) older implementation:
The Tasks pane now features a filter button:
A mass email processing issue has been fixed that made it appear as if batches were stalled. This was just a display issue, and the batch of emails was in fact processed corectly, even though it showed as stalled. This display issue has now been fixed.
CSV export of event signups now exports many more columns of data.
5.149.1.0 - 4/2/2025
General improvements and changes:
There have been some overall UI changes due to Olympus having grown large and resource intensive. Many of these changes have been made to keep the overall UI usable with the large amount of information presented. Some items have been purely performance driven, as Olympus often loaded so much information that it sometimes even ran out of memory.
Further performance improvement in the render engine make Olympus more resource friendly.
Many of our UIs have been transitioned from having multi-tab interfaces with tabs across the top, to having vertical tabs down the left. This works better for UIs with a lot of “sub pages”. The pages can now also be grouped into collapsable categories.
The tab control itself is now also aware of the attachments an item has and automatically renders an image of attached standard header artwork as well as the first photo it finds - see below in the task example. (Examples: Articles and blog posts now show associated art).
We have introduced a new lightweight custom-built mini markdown render component that allows us to render markdown (although with support for limited markdown features) without having to load a web browser behind the scenes, each time markdown needs to be rendered.
The main application menu has been re-written in a way that is both more functional and also more resource friendly.
The overall menu has been cleaned up and is now grouped into categories.
The ugly scroll bar has been replaced with a custom rendering scroll bar that looks more modern and doesn't get in the way all the time.
Our menu has always had items that were hidden and only appeared when the user searched for items. The new menu now has an option to show all items. (This is remembered and Olympus will start with the same setting the next time you launch it.):
The old (ugly) search textbox has been replaced with a custom textbox that performs better on searches and looks better:
The menu can now define favorite items. To do so, simply move the mouse over a menu item. This makes a star-symbol appear. Click that star-symbol to add the item to your favorites. Similarly, an item can be removed from the favorites. (Favorites are remembered between sessions, of course).
The tooltip on the bubble text of menu items has been improved to show more information:
Leads & Projects
This UI is one of many UIs that uses the new vertical tab standard.
This UI now has an Overview page:
The UI now has a Customer Graph page that shows the relationship graph for the assigned customer.
Changes in the Names UI
The main Names UI has been considerably cleaned up. It uses the new vertical tab layout (with hierarchical categories) and individual entries have been re-sorted. Beyond that, every single sub-area in this UI has been modernized and cleaned up.
The first page is now an Overview page, to provide the most important information about a name without going into every page. (Note: This is done using our new lightweight markdown rendering capability to improve resource consumption of the form.)
The Bios page now uses the new lightweight markdown rendering components to display the bios:
Changes in the Event UI
This UI now uses the vertical tab layout
This UI now has an overview page:
Changes in the Magazine Issue UI
This UI now uses the vertical tab layout
This UI now has an overview page (which shows slightly different information, depending on whether the issue is a future issue or has already been published):
Changes in the Article UI
This UI now uses the vertical tab layout
This UI now has an overview page:
Changes in the Task UI
This UI now uses the vertical tab layout
This UI now has an overview page (note that the photo displayed in the top-left corner is there because the task happens to have an attachment in the Photos category, which is automatically picked up by the UI):
5.147.0.0 - 3/24/2025
Overall performance and resource allocation (and memory use) across Olympus has been improved considerably.
Name relationships:
Names now have the ability to have relationships with other names expressed in the database.
The name form now has a Relationships tab page, which is used to show and edit relationsips.
There is a fully interactive Graph view mode that shows the relationships between people in the form of a graphical “web”:
There also is a fully interactive (and “never ending”) Tree mode:
5.146.0.0 - 3/17/2025
AI Query capabilities on the names search has been improved to get more complex queries correct. (This is part of our continuous improvements that will go on forever).
The AI data dictionary has been updated to include some of our recently added tables and fields. Also now allowing the AI to query file attachments, which were previously off-limits.
Rendering performance of all Kanban board views has been improved when a large number of cards are displayed (such as in Leads, Projects, and Tasks).
A new profile photo feature has been implemented (see also: Profile Photos).
As part of this feature, we now also have the ability to upload other photos related to a person or company. These photos are usually used for internal purposes only.
Profile photos are now managed as standard file attachments. (Previously, they were stored in our database).
Other parts of our system, such as services and web sites, are now using these new profile photos instead of the old one.
All old photos have been migrated to this new system.
There now is an AI-powered profile photo upload feature for names that accepts a photo, finds a face in the photo, and applies different default crop operations to create different sizes of the profile photo as needed by our system. The user can still manipulate the details.
5.145.0.0 - 3/2/2025
The Leads and Projects panes now feature a search button in the toolbar when the kanban board view is visible. This allows for quick filtering of the displayed items based on a text filter:
The kanban board view in Leads and Projects now correctly goes back to the home position when new data is loaded, which fixes a former problem where the board often confusingly remained scrolled down, showing nothing when the new list of data was smaller than the prior list.
5.144.0.0 - 2/27/2025
Leads
The lead edit form now has a Generate Description button, for leads (or projects) that do not have a description. The AI then tries to create a description based on the attached history (notes and activities). This is especially useful for imported leads.
There now is an Add Me button in the people tab, which makes it easy to add yourself to the list of project people.
The bug in the kanban board that prevented the selection of cards when scrolled vertically is fixed.
The kanban board now supports the Home key to reset scroll offsets back to the home position. (This now also happens automatically when the bucketization/categorization changes).
The kanban board now shows the number of notes and the number of assigned tasks for each lead.
There now is a Show Summary option in the toolbar. When toggled on, there is a summary pane that shows information about the lead (this feature is still a work in progress, especially for the display of tasks in the summary).
Toolbar buttons in the leads pane have been re-arranged to be more consistent with the toolbar for tasks.
There was a bug where notes and activities imported from Zoho could not be edited. This bug has been fixed.
5.143.1.0 - 1/8/2025
Fixed the ePub file upload into our cloud store, so it doesn't get corrupted for Amazon Kindle use.
Making sure we always show some magazine type when opening the magazine issues pane.
5.143.0.0 - 12/29/2024
General User Interface improvements
Kanban board improvements
Kanban cards can now show additional information in bubbles in the bottom-right corner of the card, such as number of notes or number of tasks associated with the item the card represents.
Various parts of a card can now show tooltip information (left bar for completeness, top-right corner icon for priority, bottom-right corner for assicuated task and note counts).
Grids now have the capability to show tooltips as the mouse hovers over certain parts of the grid (such as when hovering over an icon in the list of event signups).
Names
Names now have a new Notes tab that shows the new-style notes for names. (The old notes tab is still there for now as a legacy feature, but will be removed once all notes are moved over into the new system).
Tasks
It is now possible to add tasks directly for event signups through the list of event signups. (See also: Events, Conferences, and Training)
Tasks now show how many notes are attached to a task:
Tasks shown in the Tasks tab page associated with other items now show all the same information as the main tasks pane (including % complete bar, priority,...)
When the task summary is active in the tasks pane, notes associated with tasks are now included in the preview:
Note: Notes and activities can be edited right from that preview. New notes can be added by opening the task and adding to the Notes & Activities tab.
All our lists now have the ability to show tooltips for detailed rendered in grids/lists
The magazine issue pane now shows tooltips for the file attachments column:
5.142.0.0 - 12/26/2024
Magazine Issues
The issues pane now shows download counts for EPub files
The issues pane now has a column showing which of the important files are attached (EPub, Mobi, PDF, Print-ready file, Cover, and Cover Image) so we can quickly an easily see if something is missing.
There now is a filter option on the toolbar that allows filtering down the differnt publications one wants to see in the list. (For instance if one only wants to see CODE Magazine issues, that is now possible).
The filter setting is remembered when the UI opens the next time.
5.141.0.0 - 12/25/2024
Electronic magazine versions
ePub file exporting for magazines should now be working.
Kindle (MobiPocket) export is working again (there used to be a version conflict with a dependency, which has been updated and resolved).
Leads
Fine-tuning various minor rendering issues.
Fixed a bug where notes with a lot of content caused a problem when rendered in snippet view.
Notes
Notes with empty titles (or where the title is “New Note”) now have their titles AI auto-generated based on the contents of the note.
Notes tabs are now called Notes & Activities
When notes are displayed in timeline mode inside a tab, individual notes can now (optionally) restricted in height by the use of a Limit Note Height toggle button.
When notes are displayed in snippet mode, the snippet now shows either creation date or updated date, depending on whether the sort order is based on created date or updated date. (Previously, it always showed the last update date, which could be confusing).
Tasks
Tasks with empty titles (or where the title is “New Task”) now have their titles AI auto-generated based on the description of the task.
Notes now all have a unique note number across all notes in the system (such as note #1 or note #216) which makes it easier to identify and refer to notes.
Note display styles have been updated to achieve better readability in certain scenarios (such as lists of items, or lists with embedded links).
Leads
The lead description now opens in read-optimized mode, once a lead has been saved. The description can be switched into edit mode by clicking the “Description” title or the icon right next to it. (Note: For new lead entries, the description opens in edit mode).
When a new lead (or project) is created from the Name-UI, the UI now shows the customer name correctly. (Note: It always created the lead/project correctly, but confusingly, the name wasn't displayed initially.)
There now is a new Subscribe Me button in lead/project notification subscriptions that allows the current user to quickly subscribe to email notifications for changes.
When a lead is flagged as lost, the UI now shows a number of option to track why the lead was lost.
5.139.3.0 - 12/17/2024
All markdown throughout the app does not NOT require the markdown-linefeed character at the end of lines anymore (\) to create soft linebreaks.
Performance of the signup list has been optimized. (Some of the features introduced in recent versions made the display of signups slow. This has been re-engineered to do background processing of all the slow parts.)
When adding notes to signups that didn't previously have notes, these notes are now immediately showed correctly, when the notes pane is open.
Notes/Activities
Notes now also display customer inquiries.
Numerous new note/activity types have been added.
Data structures have been changed behind the scenes to allow linking notes to an unlimited number of items. (Olympus has been updated to support this new structure).
New activity types are rendered correctly in notes list and timelines. New icons have been introduced to support these types.
System and Web Inquiry notes/activity types (which are now displayed) are banned from editing in Olympus.
Leads/Projects
Notes can now be saved immediately (after saving the lead the first time) when creating a new lead.
The current user is now added as the owner of a new lead by default.
5.139.2.0 - 12/16/2024
Fixed a bug in the grid that caused save buttons (and similar behavior) to trigger when incremental search happened (such as pressing s in the grid to navigate to the first record that started with an S).
Shortened some toolbar button captions, to make sure controls fit on the screen, even in lower resolution displays.
New flags for signups have been added to store a variety of indicators.
Badge Printed - Indicates whether the attendee badge has been printed for the attendee.
Regular Attendee Status - We can now differentiate between “regular” (real) attendees and people who were also there, but are not really in our target audience (examples are Microsoft hosts, or user group leaders, who may only be there to help us facilitate the meeting). This flag allows us to get a better count of “interesting” people.
Surveys Taken - There now are several new fields that indicate whether we sent pre-event and post-event surveys to attendees, and whether they filled them in. (This is a bit of a temporary feature in preparation of a more complete survey feature).
Consultation Requested - We can now track whether an attendee requested an at-event and/or follow-up consultation and whether we handled it.
The Set... toolbar menu has been renamed to Signups...
All these flags have corresponding items in the Signups... toolbar menu as well as the right-click menu.
Notes for signups/attendees
New notes can now be added to event signups through the Signups... and right-click menus.
Signups can now be grouped by whether or not they have assigned notes.
There is a new column indicating whether there are notes for the name/signup and if so, how many. (This is especially useful when copying the list to Excel, or when sorting by number of notes).
There now is a new notes display feature that can be toggled on and off (and will be remembered when the UI restarts):
This opens up a new notes pane that shows the notes we have for the signup as well as other notes that are associated with the name.
Notes in that preview pane can be edited by clicking on the note title. (Note: This is not supported for “old notes”, which are usually in the comment-field in the names. This feature will be deprecated anyway.)
Notes (global features across the app)
The “Notes History” and “Set Original Date” buttons in tabs are now not available anymore in Timeline view
There now is a new “Notes History” button available within each note edit form.
Fixed a rendering problem in the notes tabs display, where the “optimize width” option sometimes was ignored, especially after switching into timeline view and back to individual notes
Notes can now be opened for editing out of the timeline view, by clicking on the note title
Editable notes in timeline view and in previews (such as in event signups) now show an edit icon next to their title, to make it more obvious that they are editable
Name edit form
Fixed a bug that caused the Edit Comment button to change caption whenever a different type of communication information record was selected in that grid. (Rather than changing the button above that grid).
5.138.0.0 - 12/05/2024
Leads/Projects
The Kanban Board for Leads and Projects can now be viewed bucketized by owner.
The leads and project lists now show a column with the initial creation date.
The Kanban Board for Leads and Projects now supports drag & drop within buckets.
The Projects and Leads panes now memorize settings.
Notes/Activities
The menu now shows active counts for owned projects and leads.
There now are numerous additional activity types to categorize notes/activities:
There now is a timeline view for notes:
5.137.0.0 - 12/04/2024
Tasks
New Kanban Board options have been added
Tasks in kanban board view now have an option (on by default) to “optimize card width”, which resizes the width of the card (within reason) to adjust to the currently available space within the window.
There now are options to define what happens with empty “buckets” (aka “swim lanes”): Show, Hide Uncommon, and Hide All. Hiding empty buckets (such as not showing a “Completed (abandoned)” bucket, when there are no items in it) declutters the display, but it also eliminates the ability to drag into such an empty column (for instance, if there is nothing in the “Closed” column, and the column is hidden, then it isn't possible to close an item by simply dropping into that bucket and one instead has to double-click to open the task and edit it there). The “hide uncommon” option is a compromise that hides less used buckets, such as “Planned”, “Completed (abandoned)” and “Resolved” but keeps other empty buckets around, since they are a commonly used drop target.
These options are memorized and will re-appear with their previous settings the next time the board is opened.
The tasks pane now remembers whether the Task Summary is visible and reloads the same way the next time it is opened.
The task tabs in various forms now support the Task Summary display (just like the global tasks pane… see below).
This also remembers whether the summary is shown and loads the same way the next time a form with a task tab is opened.
The task tabs in various forms now also support the same board options as the global tasks pane (see above) and also memorizes those settings.
The global tasks pane now correctly remembers the last chosen owner filter.
There now are more data filter options in the global tasks view
Data filter: All - returns all tasks for the selected owner (or all owners), but caps the maximum tasks shown at 200.
Data filter: Smart Range - returns all open tasks but for task that are done (completed, abandoned, closed), it only shows the ones that were done in the last month. (Also returns a max of 200 tasks.)
It is now possible to turn individual task statuses on and off (such as not seeing planned or closed items). This is in combination with the data filters. For instance, you can choose the Smart Range option and still hide planned tasks.
Tasks now keep track of change history a bit better, especially for fields such as Status or Priority, which now store a more descriptive version of the change information.
Tasks now also participate in the notification mechanism for projects/leads (when a task is assigned to a project or lead).
Leads and Projects
Our Leads and Project panes now also have basic support for a Kanban Board view. (This is not nearly as feature-complete as the Task pane, but it's a starting point.)
5.136.0.0 - 12/03/2024
Leads and Projects
The user interface has been improved to support more features
Internal data infrastructure has been improved to achieve a stable version for both data storage and history tracking.
Tasks
Kanban Board Cards now show a due date (when applicable)
The selected card on the board is now rendered in a way that should make it a bit more obvious which card is selected.
The global list of tasks now remembers the view settings (such as list vs. board view and which bucketization the board uses).
The Tasks-tab in individual forms now also remembers view settings and re-opens (across all windows), with the settings last chosen when any such form was closed.
The Tasks-tab in individual forms now has feature-parity with the global tasks pane. (All the views are supported. Drag and drop operations are supported. All the rules are the same.) - Note: Task Summaries are not yet available in tabs. That feature is planned for the next version.
The colored bar on the left side of the card now indicates % completeness of the task (where applicable and only if the status is “in progress”)
When looking at tasks by status, there now isn't an “overdue” bucket anymore. Instead, overdue items stay in the status bucket they belong (such as “in progress”), but they show text and color indicators that they are overdue (or very close to being due).
Tasks that are “done” (resolved, closed, or completed) can now not be assigned to different people by drag and drop anymore.
Mouse-wheel scrolling is now supported in kanban boards.
Explanation of the most important elements of the kanban cards:
There now is a Task Summary display that can be turned on in the tasks pane, which shows a lot of information about the selected task:
5.135.0.0 - 11/11/2024
Tasks have been improved greatly in this build.
We have a more complete task edit UI:
We now also have a functional, interactive Kanban Board view in addition to a task grid, which is currently used in the overall Task pane:
Note: It is also possible to switch into a Kanban Board view in the Tasks tabs of various forms. However, it there it only supports viewing and not any kind of interactive editing. (Expect that functionality in the next build).
5.134.0.2 - 11/10/2024
Leads/Projects
The Leads/Projects interfaces now make use of the new Notes feature (see below).
The Leads/Projects interfaces now make use of the new Tasks feature (see below).
In Leads/Projects, the Notes participate in the notification subscriptions, so users subsribed to changes in a Lead/Project will also get notified when a note associated with a Lead/Project gets added or edited.
The Leads/Projects UI now features a Copilot that uses the data from the Lead/Project as well as associated Notes and Tasks:
A new Notes feature has been added to Olympus. This allows adding notes to many different items in Olympus.
The Notes system keeps a history of changes within a note:
All notes tabs have the ability to show a note-specific Copilot:
Note: The Copilot in the Notes tab can sometimes be replaced with a Copilot for the entire window that includes the notes section. To avoid confusion, the CODE Copilot button then only shows up in the main toolbar.
Note: While this Copilot is tied strongly to the notes, it is also aware of the overall data edited in the UI (such as article information in the article UI, or event information in the Event UI, and so on…) and it also automatically detects and uses associated Tasks, where applicable.
Tasks: Leads now support a first implementation of associated Tasks. Just like Notes (or Attachments), Tasks can be associated with many different item types in Olympus (and we are adding more all the time).
The New Contact interface now allows entering a Source and an Inmate Number:
5.133.0.0 - 11/06/2024
There now is the starting point for Leads and Projects managed in Olympus
People now have a Projects tab that shows both leads and projects:
There now is a project edit form (screen shot above) that can be used to edit both leads and projects.
The form has fundamental information about a lead/project and its status.
We can assign people to a lead/project and assign them specific roles. (Including an Owner role).
The system supports subscribing to notifications in order to get email notifications when anything in the lead/project changes.
We can add attachments to a lead/project, which can be used to attach anything from contracts and design documents to whatever other files users want to track.
When saving projects/leads, the system keeps a history log of all the changes that have been made.
There now is a menu item for Leads that shows a list of all leads.
Leads can be filtered by owner as well as other people assigned to projects (note that these two filters are applied as an “or” combination). This also makes it easy to see projects you are involved in.
We can show only active leads or both active and inactive.
There also is an equivalent Projects pane.
5.132.0.0 - 11/02/2024
Tab pages now generally have the ability to scroll their content if the window is too small to fit everything that's on the page. This is especially useful in places like the event edit form.
The signup field shows several additional Columns (LinkedIn handle, Facebook, Twitter/X, Web, Phone, Email, Super-Fan Status, "Where did you hear [about this event]?"). These are especially useful when exporting lists to Excel.
The linked-in field also indicates whether the used linked-in handle is specific to this event signup or whether it comes from the names record, and whether the attendee wants the linked-in handle to be hidden, or whether it is to be used for networking (and could therefore potentially be printed on the name tag and other things):
There have been overall improvements to the signu map display
The map now auto-zooms to show all markers withint he map.
The map now displays smoothly as signups are selected and unselected, smoothly adding and removing markers and zooming to show them all swiftly.
It is now possible to email selected attendees through your default email client (typically Outlook).
The signup list view now can show a map of selected signups to the right of the list (in addition to the larger map view):
The signup list can now also show other social media information of theselected attendees. Supported information includes LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Facebook, Web, and a “smart” social media feature that picks one of those, if available. (Multiple panes can be active at the same time):
There now is an option to turn on a “where did you hear about this event?” question during the signup process and also edit associated options the attendee can pick from (plus, there always is an “other” option that is implied and doesn't have to be specified):
When permanently removing more than one spam signup, Olympus now opens only a single console window to show the complete deletion history, rather than opening one window per deletion (and potentially running the system out of memory that way).
There was a bug in the signup list that caused the name's title to be shown instead of the badge-specific title. (Note: Those two fieds are often - but not always - the same).
The list of signups can now be grouped by additional fields (special assistance needs, dietary needs, super-fan status)
More individual fields can now be set for signups (special assistance needs, dietary needs, food allergies, badge information, UTM fields):
There is a new form to edit badge information and UTM source fields for individual records (note that name, company name, and title fields can also update the information in the associated person record in addition to the signup-specific information, depending on the chosen option in the bottom/right corner, which can be used to never update person fields, always update them, or only update them if they are empty in the person record):
Special assistance needs, dietary needs, and food allergies can be edited from the Set... menu as well as the right-click menu (this can be done for multiple selected records at a time):
Signups can now show whether a signup is a “super fan” by displaying an icon inspired by the superman logo:
Super-fan status can also be changed from this list through the Set... menu as well as the right-click menu. Note that this sets the flag on the person record as it is not specific to the signup.
Grouping by VIP-status and also by Staff-status now puts VIPs and Staff at the top of the list, rather than the bottom.
The list of signups now also shows the original source of the name (where the name originally came from) in addition to the source of the specific signup:
Some menus in the event signup page have been cleaned up a bit (both right-click menus and toolbar menus).
5.130.0.0 - 10/23/2024
E-Reader support:
Added support for EPUB export of individual issues (in the attachments tab for the issue).
Fixed the Kindle export, so it correctly exports article images based on the new file attachment mechanism.
It also now uses the standard Olympus Console to show progress information.
Update to Magazine Issue Generate schedule to set the correct dates
Save and Load All Fields in Email Forms
When saving an email form, you can assign a meaningful name and choose a category for easy identification.
All data filled in the email form will be saved, ensuring you don't lose any information.
When you load an email, all previously saved data will automatically populate the relevant fields.
Save Options If you have a loaded email and choose to save it, you will be presented with options:
Save as New - Create a new entry with the current data.
Update Current - Overwrite the existing entry with the new data.
You can now filter emails by categories, making it easier to find specific entries.
Active Status Management: You can set or unset the active status of your emails to archive old ones.
The event list now shows icons for events with follow-ups (red flag) and events with missing required header images (blue palette icon):
For confirmation emails, sender, sender email, and subject can now be specified on an event-by-event basis. (Defaults are used if these fields are empty).
Events can now be flagged to collect LinkedIn information and for attendees to opt-in for networking within an event (which, presumably, will print their LinkedIn information on the badge in some form, probably a QR code). Note: This also needs to be surfaced through the web site, which hasn't happened yet, but should be happening soon.
The event signup histogram now shows when email batches were sent in relation to signups. The red bars in the “background” show when batches were sent. The relative width of the gradient-bars give an indication of the relative size of the batches. When the mouse is moved over such an area, a detailed description is displayed:
Signups
The signup tab now remembers the view that was last used (Grid, Map, Histogram, Source-Graph) as well as some sub-parameters (Grid-View and Grid-Grouping) and re-opens with the same configuration the next time the form is opened.
Google made a breaking change to their map API, which caused our map to launch empty. This has been fixed.
The loading efficiency of the signup map has been improved (delayed loading).
The map view now shows considerably more information about the person (if we have it):
The open follow-up item count displayed in the menu now displays “in progress” items correctly as open.
The session grid now renders with a bit more detail and makes better use of the available space to show more information.
Event signups
There now is a new “Source” view in the grid display mode, focussing on UTM fields (source, campaign, medium)
The map showing signups now shows more information when clicking on a marker/person, and the person name is clickable (to open the person's detail) and so is the email address, if we have one on file (opens the default email app):
The signup histogram graph now shows a lot more information. (Note: Green days are weekend days).
There now is a new source chart view, with three different sub-view modes:
By UTM Source
By UTM Campaign
By UTM Medium
5.126.0.0 - 10/11/2024
Blogs
There now is a new Blogers security role. People in that role (as well as admins) have access to the blog posts interface.
Only admins have access to setting up entire new blogs.
Sort order for event signups, when sorted by follow-up status or follow-up owner, now puts items with no follow-up at the bottom.
Article editing
It is now possible to import Word docuemnts to markdown directly from attached files without having to download the file first.
The console showing import progress has been finalized, so there is no odd flickering anymore. Also, the colors for various elements (especially code snippets) are now more readable.
The web site now handles AI content better.
The web site now shows graphical article headers (when available).
5.125.0.0 - 10/10/2024
Fixed a problem with editable grids and CTRL-C copy operations. This caused problems in the Bad-Request email fixing UI.
Article import directly into markdown has been improved.
AI now looks for literals in text
AI now re-formats code listings and snippet on import for better readability.
Images are now imported into file attachments, rather than the older article files collection.
During import, more information about the progress and what is being imported is displayed in the console.
5.124.0.0 - 10/8/2024
Event signups can now have an additional status we can flag fow follow-ups: Follow-up in progress. This is so we can differentiate between people that need a follow up, people whom we have started to follow up with, and people whom we completed to follow up with. (See also: Events, Conferences, and Training)
Articles can now be directly imported from Word to Markdown.
5.123.0.0 - 10/7/2024
Magazine (publications) editing has been improved
The system now uses improved back-end infrastruture to manage magazines/publications.
Magazines now have additional fields, such as Archived
Magazines can now have articles directly attached to them, rather than just to an issue. This is useful for “sequential” publications, that are not shipped in individual issues, but articles are just published chronoligically (such as an email newsletter).
Improvements to email batch sending
Various improvements to the back-end system has been made to make the process both more robust and also faster/more scalable.
The list of email batches now shows a column for “bad requests”. These are email sending requests that are rejected by the processor (SendGrid), usually because the email address isn't a valid address. The system now detects bad requests and also flags those emails in the names/comm-info tables as invalid emails and archives them.
It is now possible to look at a list of bad requests and fix them either manually, or let an AI fix it. Emails can then either be re-queued for sending, or they are just fixed for future use (this interface also fixes the entries in the names/comm-info tables):
The list of batches now has the ability to show a “histogram”, which shows how many emails we processed and how long it took to process the entire batch.
Names
Names can now be flagged as advertisers.
Name search and name import now support the new Is Advertiser flag.
The layout of the name edit form has been changed to more easily accomodate all the new flags we now support.
The new-name-creation form now supports a variety of flags to make it easy to add a new person to the system with the appropriate flags already set.
5.122.0.3 - 10/2/2024
Improvements to the names system
Names can now be flagged as VIPs, Super Fans, and Applicants (not to be confused with people who have applied for jobs… the new thing is a flag, while the other is applications on file)
The advanced people search now supports searching/filtering on these new flags.
Comm-info (phone, email,...) can now be flagged as default and archived (our version of “deleted”).
Comm info can now be “contacted” directly from the app. Emails will open your email client. Linked-In handles and Twitter handles will open in the web. Phone calls will be dialed if you have a phone app configured in Windows.
Addresses can now be flagged as default and archived (our version of “deleted”)
Name import now supports default flags for VIPs, Super-Fans, and Applicants
Email processing has been improved.
The system is now better at checking for interrupted/stalled email batches.
The system is now processing emails in parallel. In theory, that should mean it should handle sending about 5x as much email in the same time. We will have to see if that is how it works out, or whether there are other bottlenecks somewhere else.
The menu now shows a bubble indicating how many email batches are being processed and it also detects stalled batches and shows a warning. (This is updated about once a minute).
The email batch pane now shows processing batches in green and stalled batches in red.
When email batches are being processed, the email batch pane now updates running batch information every few seconds (a little slower if batches are stalled), meaning the pane should always be up-to-date, even without a manual refresh.
There have been various small improvements to the list of event signups both in display information and usability.
Signup map view now shows more detail (expedt more changes in this area, as this concept is very powerful) and the toolbar offers options to change what is displayed and highlighted on the map.
The map view also supports street view now, so you can "stand right in front of a business' address". (Please do not use this to stalk people!)
All FileService (“file attachments”) related functionality has been re-written to be more eficient both in terms of upload performance and also memory-footprint.
Standard Olympus UI related to file attachments is now using that new feature-set (such as lists of attachments, attachment pages in various UIs, attachment property dialog, ...)
Attachment properties now show attachments linked to multiple items not just with their GUID-key, but also with a more detailed description of what they are attached to (such as the name of the person or the title of an event they go with).
Photos for names
There now is a standard feature to attach “other photos” to names that are not used as employee/author photos.
Autor/employee photo uploading has been modernized. (This is a work in progress. Hold off on uploading staff photos until the next build if at all possible!)
Improvements to the grid control
The grid can now show simple animations for updated cell values.
There were some API changes in the grid to make some standard tasks simpler and to respect more of the default settings in grids and columns for custom rendering.
5.121.0.0 - 9/22/2024
The inquiry pane now supports more divisions, such as Staffing, DevNet, and others.
The event list now shows the number of signups flagged as VIPs (and the percentage of overall signups that are VIPs).
Actual attendance numbers are now available in the list of events
The follow-up column now shows three numbers: open follow-ups assigned to the user, total open follow-ups, and total follow-ups (open or otherwise). When no open follow-ups remain, only the total number is shown.
Admins can manually trigger an update of location information from the event list.
There now is a map-view that shows where the signups came from (when we know).
There now is a chart mode that shows how many signups per day we took leading up to the event.
5.120.0.0 - 9/20/2024
A grid CTRL-Click oddity has been fixed.
Number of processing email batches are now shown in a menu bubble.
Event attendees can now be emailed selectively from the event signup list in the event edit form. (See also: Events, Conferences, and Training)
5.119.0.0 - 9/19/2024
Events can now define who can download slides and samples and whether they are ready for download or not. (See also: Events, Conferences, and Training)
Some outdated VFP Conversion flags have been hidden in the events form, since they are not used anymore.
Signups in the event edit form can now be flagged for follow-up and assigned to a person for that purpose. Also, the first column renders a red or green follow-up flag, depending on whether follow-up is still needed or has been completed.
Signups are now flagged as MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional), RD (Microsoft Regional Director), MCP (Microsoft Certified Professional), Speaker (member of the general speaker circle), and UG (user group leader).
The application menu now shows information about open follow-up items for event signups as well as unhandled customer inquiries. (Note: Each item's tool-tip shows a detailed explanation of what the numbers mean).
5.118.0.0 - 9/18/2024
All grids in Olympus now support incremental search on the sorted column
There now are additional name fields (towards the very right of the list) for the main purpose of supporting sorting on those fields.
A rendering bug for staff records has been fixed.
The signup grid now has a right-click menu for quicker picking of various status flags.
A bug in all tab controls has been fixed, where keypresses inside the tab may have incorrectly switched to other tab pages.
There was a minor bug in drop down button menus with edge-case grouping issues that has now been fixed.
5.117.0.0 - 9/17/2024
The signup list in the event edit form now shows additional information in the name column. (See also: Events, Conferences, and Training)
Names that are assigned to a division within CODE are shown in a colored background indicating the assigned division (red = consulting, green = staffing, blue = training, yellow = magazine)
Bold names with a VIP flag indicate important attendees.
Staff has a Staff flag
There are icons to indicate attendance status (check-mark = attended in-person, globe = attended online, circle with X = cancelled, fille circle with X = no-show).
It is now possible to pick groupings (with counts per group in the group headers) independently of the general grid view.
When changing the grid view, the data is now just refreshed in the new column setup, rather than re-loading all the signup data too.
The toolbar on that page has been cleaned up, and several items have been moved into a drop-down menu to keep the toolbar usable on smaller screen resolutions.
Various Copilot features have been updated
There were some across-the-app updates to our Copilot features, such as better UI. (This is currently a work in progress).
All Copilots feature now are much smarter about detecting the user intent, figuring out what data to search for, and when a search is needed.
The Copilot in the names search pane now has access to mroe data (and up-to-date data) and uses newer models for more powerful (yet faster) answers.
The Copiloty in the article edit form now has access to more data and is better able to answer questions about the current article. (This is still a work in progress).
This version has a first work-in-progress implementation of marketing series.
5.114.0.0 - 8/20/2024
There were several fine-tuning improvements to all our grid controls.
Auto-column resizing changes:
DoubleClick on a column separator now resizes the column to the widest content or header text width, this allowing enough room to show the widest column content OR the widest header text, whichever is greater.
Shift + DoubleClick on a column separator now resizes the column to the widest content, and ignores the width of the header text.
Ctrl + DoubleClick on a column separator now resizes ALL columns of the grid to their widest content.
Ctrl + Shift + DoubleClick on a column separator now resizes ALL columns of the grid to their widest content, and ignores the width of the header text.
Expaniding and collapsing of group headers being less finnicky.
There were some internal API changes.
Fixed a layout problem that has crept in (visible in places such as the AI search in the people search form).
The signup grid in the event edit form now features grouped views (and fine-tuned field lists) for Marketing and Attendance view grids.
There now is a new Location view, which groups signups by location (online, on-site, undecided).
Some refresh inconsistencies have been fixed.
5.113.0.0 - 8/17/2024
In the name import tool, more mapped fields and more default settings are now supported. See also: Importing Names
Grid enhancements (globally, across the entire app)
A bug with click-selection of rows when grids were scrolled left/right, as well as when regions of the grid were collapsed, has been fixed.
All our grids now support SHIFT-Click multi-select.
The session list in the event edit form now color-highlights sessions that have an end time before the start time. (See also: Events, Conferences, and Training)
5.112.0.0 - 8/15/2024
All our grids now support double-clicking the resize marker in the header (the little vertical line that indicates the width of a header and can be dragged to resize the column) to auto-size to the content in the column. (Note: CTRL + Double-Click resizes all columns in the grid).
A new Name Import feature has been added (accessible through the people search pane and the More... menu item in the toolbar). For more information, see also Importing Names.
The event list now shows more columns to provide information about meal options
The event edit form has been somewhat re-arranged to accomodate more settings and group things more logically
The event edit form now shows additional options, such as picking required fields and toggling food-options on and off for signups.
It is not not possible anymore to sign up to events through the name edit form for events with an external signup URL.
5.110.0.0 - 7/21/2024
Updated to the latest CODE Framework AI infrastructure and Gpt-4o models to get the latest AI functionality, and fix some AI scenarios that were unsopported (and often didn't produce results).
5.109.0.0 - 6/28/2024
Olympus Image Composer now exports images (headers, typically) as JPEG rather than PNG files
All AI features have been upgraded to the latest CODE Framework infrastructure and GPT-4o as the model of choice.
5.108.0.0. - 6/19/2024
Added more fields to the email batch processes.
Also fixed a bug related to the last update with this.
Emails to event attendees can now include last name, company name, search name (full name), and title, in addition to first name, which was supported before. (See also: Events, Conferences, and Training)
Manual signups used to have a bug with events that can only be attended on-site. This has been fixed.
Manual signups now can specify a “source” (where the signup came from, such as a specific email, or a referral, or…)
The event panel received some minor visual tweaks for readability
The list of signups in the event form now has a column for signup source
The list of signups in the event form now shows additional information in the headers (number and percentage of first-time attendees, number and percentage of subscribers, number of on-site attendees)
The event edit form now has fields for proper start and end dates and time for the overall event.
Events can now have sessions.
When editing a person's photo, the underlying file can now be deleted, even while Olympus is still open. (The lock that was kept before is now released immediately after assignment).
There now is a new option to fix empty state records of US addresses that have a ZIP code assigned.
When sending emails, style information is now inlined when sending emails (although not in the preview, which should not matter)
There now is a new Ad Contracts pane to search for ad contracts:
There now is a new UI to edit ad contracts (including individual insertions). The interface provides not just editing capabilities, but also a lot more guidance for placing ads, sizes, and other factors, by color-coding potential issues and important aspects:
The Issue edit form now has a tab showing ad insertions:
This version has a very first (and rough) implementation of saved queries.
AI queries in the people search pane can now be saved away for later (re)use.
There now is a new search view in the people pane that lists all saved queries the current user has access to.
Promotional email batches now support these saved queries to send email batches to.
File preview in the attachments tab pages can now preview XAML and XML files.
5.101.0.0 - 3/14/2024
The people search pane has received an overhaul and some new AI features:
The toolbar has been cleaned up and consolidated, since it got a bit too “full”.
THere now is a privacy mode that blacks out sensitive data in the display of names information (available in the names search pane as well as the names edit form) which has been introduced so we can demo our app to large groups of people without privacy concerns.
There now is a new “AI Query” mode, that allows running a query (NOT a copilot-style conversation) based on a plain-language prompt. (See also: Editing Names)
Currently, data from Names, Address, CommInfo (phone numbers, email addresses, social media,...), Subscriptions, Invoices, Payments, EventSignups, Events, JobApplications, Positions, Articles, Magazines, Issues, and Inquiries tables can be involved in AI queries.
Events now support a flag for our new State of AI brand.
The events pane now supports more filtering options.
5.100.0.0 - 1/31/2024
The problem with saving articles has been fixed. (This was related to converting different content formats on the fly, which happens behind the scenes, every time an article is saved away.)
There were some related changes across all edit forms in Olympus. The Save and Save and Close buttons now become disabled while a save operation is in progress, preventing multiple overlapping save operations at the same time. The UI also shows more information about whether or not the save operation was a success (such as in the status bar and with message boxes).
In the More... menu in the People pane, there now is a menu item called Fix Common Data Problems, which provides easy access to some of our behind-the-scenes data cleanup features. This is an experimental feature. The UI looks like this:
5.99.0.0 - 1/16/2024
The image generation feature has been fine-tuned to try to create a somewhat better prompt suggestion. (This is def. a work in progress)
Names can now be flagged as board members (and search can be filtered by that and there also is a column in names lists.)
5.98.0.0 - 12/14/2023
The AI image generation UI now works better with smaller monitor sizes
Renewing of individual subscriptions through the subscriptions page/list in the subscriber/name edit form is now supported.
The list of invoices now makes it more obvious when an invoice is unpaid, by highlighting unpaid invoices in a different color.
5.97.1.0 - 11/29/2023
AI image generation has been completed (see also Artwork)
Microsoft has now given us access to the Dall-E 3 AI API, which fully enables our AI image generator dialog:
When double-clicking an image in the list in the above UI, a detailed image dialog now opens up, which provides information about the image and allows for saving the image as a file on disk:
5.97.0.0 - 11/28/2023
A major new feature called Olympus Image Composer has been introduced, which enables the user to create art files specific to our needs. It is a small image editor. Among the more interesting features are the ability to incorporate elements that are very specific to our needs (such as build-in logo support). Also, there is a templating engine that can be used to create sets of images based on our data. Furthermmore, Image Composer is integrated with our ability to create AI art, enabling us to very quickly create sets of art assets associated with many of our data elements, such as articles, events, and more. (For more info see Artwork).
The magazine issue interface has received a considerable overhaul.
The issue list now has a “View Issue Online” button, which opens a browser to show the issue as it appears online.
The standard magazine issue pane now shows more columns, including a thumbnail of the cover image (if applicable). Also note that the issue code column now shows the accent color of the issue (or lack thereof) to quickly identify which issues are lacking the important accent color setting, or have bad accent colors (which may happen when the color is AI-generated on demand):
There now are two alternative display options that show more detail for each issue (including the abstract). Extended view shows the first line of the abstract, as well as a larger cover thumbnail: Detailed view shows the entire abstract of the article and an even larger thumbnail:
The article edit form now has access to the “Generate Art” AI feature, which can be used to generate art assets based on the content of the article. (See also: Artwork)
The event edit form now has access to the “Generate Art” AI feature, which can be used to generate art assets based on the abstract and description of the event. (See also: Artwork)
The event list is now grouped by future and past events.
Event branding is now shown in a more readible and intuitive fashion
Event codes now show a background color, indicating whether the accent color has been set for the event (and what it is).
The event list now has a column indicating whether a YouTube video link has been defined.
There now is a column that indicates whether all the required header images are attached to the event.
The toolbar now has a quick-access button to preview the selected event(s) in the web browser.
Events can now be “private” (in which case they do not show up on the web site unless people know the URL), which can be set in the edit form, and there also is a column in the list for this flag.
There are various little bugfixes, such as the ability to flag an event as not needing address information when people sign up. This was there before, but a bug prevented it from working properly. This has now been fixed.
The following is an example for the current events pane:
Our Blogs have been enhanced
The Generate Art and Generate Abstract AI features are now available in the blog post edit form.
The Blogs pane has received some richer formatting as well as a color coded “slug” to indicate whether an accent color has been set for the post. Also, there is a “View Post Online” feature to quickly see the selected blog post in a browser.
5.96.0.0 - 9/25/2023
The list of events now supports filtering:
File attachments have received a bit of an overhaul
File attachment tabs can now show previews of various file types (images and text files).
It is now possible to link to existing file attachments (this allows sharing of files between different entities, such as using the same slide deck for multiple training classes).
5.95.0.0 - 9/15/2023
Events can now be “cloned” from within the event edit form. This makes it easy to create a new event based on an existing event (such as when a training class is held again, or when setting up another State of .NET event). (See also: Events, Conferences, and Training)
5.94.0.0 - 7/10/2023
Updated to new version of CODE Framework client-side service components (this fixes a major resource leak bug).
Billing history display in invoices is now working again (re-written in C#)
Payment history now uses services to retrieve data (no more business object dependency)
Names can now store an inmate number (for prison inmates). This setting is also searchable and it is output for subscription fulfillments.
Consulting service setup
Consulting services can now define headers and abstracts independently. (If no header is defined, the abstract continues to be used as the header).
Related services can now be sorted specifically to the service they relate to.
The Event Edit Form now has a “Show Event Online” button to open a browser and see the event as it appears there.
The Event Edit Form had a problem showing the signups when the list of signups was relatively small. (In particular, when the list of signups loaded too fast, it sometimes finished loading before the main event info was loaded, and then it didn't show correctly). This has been fixed.
There was a problem that kicked in with all our service calls (due to a recent CODE Framework release) which caused errors on saving large data sets (and also caused a lot more network traffic). This has been fixed.
The service status UI now has additional options to switch each service into a “local” mode (mainly used during development) and also to launch into a Swagger UI (if available).
It is now possible to remove individual signups (without the deleting the entire person record and associated data).
There also was a bug in deleting event signups, which caused signups not to be deleted. This has been fixed.
The list of signups (in the event UI) now shows how much attendees paid (if applicable) and also, how many other events the person has attended (thus providing an easy way to see people who attended a lot of our events).
The events tab in the person page now also shows how much an attendee paid to attend an event (if applicable).
The Name/Categories Statistics UI is now working again. It is available form within the find-people pane, or by typing its name in the search box in the main menu.
It is now more powerful than the previous version, since it can show all the names within a category, using our standard names-display, which also allows to drill into further information:
List of event signups (in the event form) now shows fields such as on-site/online, dietary needs, and special needs correctly.
List of attended events (in the person form) now shows fields such as on-site/online, dietary needs, and special needs correctly.
There now is a new form that allows signing people up manually for events (launched from within the person form's event page!).
5.89.0.0 - 5/25/2023
Markdown editing has been enhanced
Most markdown edit forms now feature an “Insert Attachments” menu that allows inserting attachments that are associated with the same general item (such as event attachments in the event description).
The system inserts image attachments as image tags, while other attachments are inserted as trackable download links.
Screens including attachment support now include:
Long and short bio for people.
Notes for people.
New issue notifications (all files attached to the issue are available).
Article content.
Subscription offer promotional text, confirmation email, and renewal confirmation email.
In service offering description, other information, and special offer description.
Open position details.
In press releases.
Marketing blocks have received an overhaul and are now called Text Blocks, since they are now usful for a more general purpose.
Text Blocks now can be categorized by topic to make it easier to keep them organized.
The menu to insert text blocks in various interfaces has been improved to support categories.
Text blocks are now supported in more places. (The list is generally similar to the screens listed above that support attachments).
The “Insert Field” button has been renamed to “Insert Data” button, and is now more generally useful.
The menu under this button is now organized by category.
Fixed a bug for data previewing in new issue notification email editing.
The list of Positions now shows unavailable/archived/old positions as well.
The list of related services in the form to edit our service offerings has been overhauled and shows more information now (and also prevents from linking to the same service multiple times).
The press release editing interface has received further updates.
The UI scaling problem with the logo generator form on some specific screen configurations has been fixed.
Technology Categories (used for things like categorizng articles and other things) can now be edited through Olympus.
The list of categories now shows much more information.
A new edit form for categories has been added.
Categories can now have file attachments.
The Technology Categories edit form now shows a list of articles filed in that category.
5.88.0.0 - 5/20/2023
The Copilot in the article edit form has been improved.
The press release section of the app has been overhauled.
5.87.0.0 - 5/12/2023
Service descriptions now support embedding individual related services, or a list of all related services.
The menu has been cleaned up a little bit.
5.86.0.0 - 5/11/2023
The UI to edit Consulting Services has been overhauled (and also conforms to the latest data structures).
The services pane now shows more information
The edit form now supports all fields needed for the modern setup.
The edit form now supports simplified editing of services (in particular, the insertion of sections as we now routinely use them on our web sites).
Magazine issues now have a field for accent color definition.
More work has been done on the accent color dialog to prevent flickering and improve overall rendering performance and usability.
The customer inquiry pane has been improved. The display shows names and phone numbers. There also are new filter options for various spam settings.
5.81.0.0 - 11/22/2022
The list of subscription offers now shows a column listing all the associated referral codes.
Active and inactive referral codes are shown different
The toolbar now features a button to “highlight” a referral code. When this feature is active, the specified referral code is shown in a highlight color, in the list of codes.
The list of magazines now shows more columns.
Admins can now access the codemag.com cache control interface through the Olympus main menu.
Estimating number of emails to be sent has been improved (async and error handling).
Consulting services have been improved
The edit form now is structured somewhat different (with fields supporting markdown using the editor, and others are plain text fields). New fields have been added.
More fields are exposed in this form.
More fields support markdown.
There now is a sophisticated way to edit the accent color for the artwork associated with a consulting service:
5.80.0.0 - 10/5/2022
Some general fine-tuning to some of the layout elements have been made (especiall tab header spacing and automatic control position layouts).
The “create new contact” dialog now allows to (optionally) specify a default address to be created for the new contact.
New subscriptions can now be added from the list of subscriptions in the subscriber/name form.
5.79.0.0 - 9/18/2022
The coupon system has been enhanced. (See also: Coupons)
The list of coupon batches now shows more information about each batch.
The batch generation UI now allows specifying a subscription offer and referral code the coupons can be used for.
New batches can now be based on existing batches (which is useful for creating more coupons for the same initiative).
Render performance for various components (especially tab controls) has been improved.
The name search pane now shows scrollbars around the search control when needed.
The name edit form has been optimized to resize for smaller screen sizes.
The name edit form, now shows a list of all emails sent to the person. (See also: Edit Names)
5.78.1.0 - 9/8/2022
The coupon generation system/interface now allows linking the coupons to a specific subscription offer (which is generally needed to generate working coupons usable for subscriptions).
The coupon batch pane now shows what the coupon batch is linked to (typically a subscription offer/referral code).
Olympus now has a new interface to search for duplicate names. (See also: Finding Duplicate Names)
This feature is available either through a toolbar button on the search-name pane (contacts pane), or by searching for “duplicate” in the menu.
This UI shows a list of potential duplicate names (by matching first and last names). THe list on the left shows that suspect list as well as a count of potential duplicate items.
When selecting an on the left, Olympus shows all potential duplicate names (including all the same information we also show in the names search/contacts pane).
Names can be opened from this list.
Names can be deleted or merged right from this list.
5.77.1.0 - 9/6/2022
The name search pane now offers the ability to filter by people who have applied to a certain position:
5.76.1.0 - 9/4/2022
The name search pane has been improved.
The search now returns a maximum of 100 names. However, there now is a Load More button that is available whenever more results are available on the server. This button can be clicked until no more additional records are available on the server.
Searches can be restricted to people who have submitted a job application. (Note: Advanced Search needs to be active for this checkbox to be shown in the UI).
For people who have submitted job applications, application information is now displayed in a new column in the result grid.
People who had any of their job applications rated have the application information displayed in green.
People who had any of their job applications flagged as ineligible have the application information displayed in red.
It is now possible to limit results by state.
Some bugs for certain search combinations have been fixed (especially with ZIP code, street, and city searches).
5.75.0.0 - 9/1/2022
The entire People/Names/Contacts/Subscribers interface in Olympus has been overhauled.
The main names UI has been overhauled completely (See also: Edit Names)
There have been several paradigm changes in how this UI works/behaves:
The UI now loads a lot more data (see below).
All data is now loaded through our micro-service infrastructure. Direct connections to the database are not required anymore (meaning: user's IP addresses do not have to be whitelisted anymore to use this part of Olympus).
Data is loaded massively parallel, resulting in much faster load time of the UI, even though much more data is being loaded.
This UI now acts as a “control center” that shows a lot of consolidated data, rather than a data edit form. Therefore, specific data sub-elements are now edited in separate UIs that are launched from this UI, rather than being edited in-place. This makes it clearer what is being edited. It also fixes the problem with incorrect notifications about edited data (when data has in fact not been modified).
There have been numerous changes in the different UI segments of this form. New elements have been added. The most important are:
The top section of the UI now shows a read-only representation of the most important information about the person, including a photo (if available), name, position, title, achievements, and more.
This data can be edited through the Edit Name button in the main toolbar of the form.
Photos (high and low resolution) are now being edited in separate windows through the appropriate buttons in the toolbar.
The Email/Phone/CommInfo has been renamed Contact. The contents load completely asynchronously. The overall UI has been made consistent with other pages (number of items show in the title bar, toolbar within the page is consistent with other pages,… this applies to other pages listed below as well).
Contact information is being edited/added in a popup window, which immediately saves just the contact information in question.
The Addresses page has been made consistent with other pages (async loading, toolbar, editing of items in a popup window).
The Categories page has been added to show all assigned categories for the person (this is to be improved later).
The Subscriptions page has been made consistent with other pages.
The Fulfillment page has been made consistent with other pages.
The Owned Issues page has been made consistent with other pages.
The Invoices page has been made consistent with other pages. It has also been re-written and the behavior changed somewhat. This page now also features buttons to highlight events and subscriptions associated with the invoice in question (if the associated item is found, that page in the UI is activated, and the item in question selected).
The Events page has been added to this UI, showing all the events the person has attended and when. Event detail can be opened from this page. (See also: Events, Conferences, and Training)
The Articles page has been added, showing all the articles the person has authored.
The Bios page replaces the older Author and Employee pages. It shows the long and short bio of the person (if present). Bios can be edited individually in a popup UI.
The Accounts page has been made consistent with other pages.
The Inquiries page has been added, showing all the inquiries the person has placed with us, through our inquiries UI.
The Jobs page has been added, showing all the job applications the person may have submitted.
The Note page replaces the older Comment page. The comment can now include richer formatting (markdown). The comment is edited in a separate popup window.
The Attachments page is now using the latest file attachment features and shows consistent with other pages.
The Downloads page has been added, showing all the files the person may have downloaded from us.
The people search pane has a new button to create a new name/contact (See also: Edit Names)
The file attachments system has been improved
The file storage system has been improved to prevent orphaned files after deletion.
New icons are being used to display the list of file attachments.
The property dialog for each attachment now shows a trackable download link, which is the link we should give out to external people whenever we want to share a file with them.
Also enhanced the issues pane, which now features a Refresh button, and it also auto-refreshes the list contents when an issue is edited in the edit form.
Loading issue covers for display purposes has been optimized.
Issue covers are now displayed in the issues pane (list of “Magazine Issues”)
There is a whole new “Customer Inquiries” menu item (for more information, see Customer Inquiries:
5.73.0.0 - 5/10/2022
The maximum number of returned and displayed names in person search panes has now been increased to 1,000.
A new theme called Colorful has been added (inspired by the latest version of MS Office)
Better display of new issue email notification batches in progress.
The signup page in the events/training form now has a button to see more detailed stats about the people signed up. (See also: Events, Conferences, and Training)
The article search has received a major overhaul (see also: Edit Articles).
The list used to display the article results has been standardized and completely overhauled.
The full-text search now uses the new advanced AI-driven search that is also now used by the CODE web site. The results are displayed in ranked order, with the search-rank being displayed (think of this as a “match percentage”).
There now is a feature to search by category
There now is a feature to see all articles that do not have the article content defined in markdown format.'
The issue edit form now uses the new and standardized article display.
Note: The new article functionality is a work in progress and there will be more related features added in the next version(s). At that point, the documentation for article maintenance will also be updated.
A Kindle export problem has been fixed.
A problem with loading some older panes has been fixed (or at least patched to a reasonable level).
5.71.0.0 - 11/14/2021
Changed login mechanism back to synchronous to avoid various thread-principal related problems, such as email sending terminating without error/result.
5.70.0.0 - 10/28/2021
Added additional defensive code around generating email batches to figure out why they sometimes do not get triggered correctly.
New asynchronous deployment algorithm to improve overall deployment process (“updates”) as well as app startup speed.
5.69.0.0 - 10/20/2021
Fixed an issue importing articles that have tables with code in cells and no style assigned.
Fixed an issue with remembered window positions being off-sreen when the system switches from multi-monitor to single-monitor (or similar scenarios). The systme now corrects this by moving windows into the visible area of the screen.
5.68.0.0 - 10/14/2021
There now is a new menu item called Service Status (which has to be searched for… it's hidden by default), which shows a list of all the services used by Olympus and what their status is.
Additional fail-safe options added to generating email newsletters in an attempt to get that part of the system more stable.
In the email batches pane, one can now see the number of total emails go up as the system queues emails. (One has to manually hit refresh to see an updated number). This means that it is not possible to see the process of queuing emails even before the emails start being sent out one-by-one.
5.67.1.0 - 10/2/2021
Distribution mailings can now be created based on silver-level digital subscriptions. (As a special case, for things like Focus issues).
When distribution mailings are created for expires subscriptions, they are sorted by most recent expiration first. (This matters when the number of records is limited).
Startup performance (especially loading the menu under secure conditions) has been improved.
Subscription offers and referral codes now support file attachments. This is especially useful when one wants to use custom images in emails, which can be served up from the public Azure URL associated with the attachment (which can be seen in the attachment properties).
Some overall font issues between Windows 10 and Windows 11 have been fixed.
The email marketing block editing interface has been cleaned up a bit:
5.64.0.0 - 8/30/2021
The offer code and subscription system has been updated to allow for the definition of custom subscription aand renewal confirmation emails on an offer code level, as well as a referral code level. (See also: Confirmation Emails in Subscription Offers)
5.63.0.0 - 8/25/2021
Updated various package references to fix a markdown problem in the article edit form.
5.62.0.0 - 8/24/2021
The look and feel of the app has been updated a bit to match the style of Windows 11 more closely.
5.61.0.0 - 8/24/2021
The system now allows to assign user roles (security) through an integrated interface in Olympus. (Only available to people with an appropriate security role themselves).
5.60.0.0 - 8/20/2021
New email features have been added (See also: Send Emails)
The email engine now fully supports marketing messages/blocks both in actual sending emails as well as the email preview in the UI.
The email batch pane now allows selecting an email batch and copying the message content to the clipboard by means of a toolbar button.
5.59.0.0 - 8/18/2021
We have the ability to specify generic marketing messages
We have the ability to edit email groups (and group assignments) from within Olympus.
The list of consulting services can now be edited through Olympus.
Our simple survey import has been fixed for now. (Although we need a more sophisticated version in the future).
Retrieval of PDF invoices has been fixed. (This has also been fixed on codemag.com as well).
Olympus now uses the WebView2 browser control (Chromium-based Edge embedded in Olympus) to display HTML content, such as invoices. This eliminates the old dependency on Internet Explorer. It also removed some rendering issues we had with the old control.
HTML display in the app has been improved overall to be more memory-friendly by disposing HTML objects better/sooner.
Async operations have been improved overall to be more fault tolerant.
All file attachments now support the upload/attachment of very large files. (For large files, an upload progress indicator is displayed while the upload is in progress).
Magazine editing has been re-enabled in this build. The new feature also allows editing file attachments. (See also: Editing Magazines)
5.55.0.0 - 6/22/2021
We now support name merging again. (See also: Merging Names)
5.54.0.0 - 6/18/2021
The system now has a re-written capability to perform permanent deletes of names and associated information. (See also: Deleting Names)
The name/subscriber edit form now has a new delete button that uses this feature.
The old Kindle export feature has been removed from the menu
There now is a new “Generate MobiPocket” option on the attachments tab of the issue edit form that can be used to generate MobiPocket files (which is the legacy Kindle format). - See also: Export Content
The overall system now supports a do-not-renew flag for subscriptions. When that flag is set, subscribers will not be asked to renew their subscriptions
The flag shows up in the list of subscriptions in the subscriber edit form.
The subscription list in the subscriber edit form has been re-worked to use services rather than business objects. (Note: This is part of an ongoing effort to remove all “old tech” from the name/subscriber edit form. It makes the system faster. It also means that this works from anywhere, rather than just whitelisted locations. And it gets all the latest functionality, such as a display of this flag.)
The subscription edit form now has a Renewal tab, which allows managing the do-not-renew flag, as well as other things, such as the assigned renewal series. It also shows a complete list of all renewal steps taken.
5.49.0.0 - 4/29/2021
When creating magazine mailing batches (print subscriptions), the system now does not consider an “effective date” anymore, since that caused all kinds of problems.
Editing of photos associated with names (a.k.a. “author photos”) has been re-worked
The feature to attach author/employee photos in the name edit form has been tweaked to default to PNG files (and to support PNG files in the frist place).
Author-photos changed through this UI are now automatically synced to Azure and thus show up on the web site correctly. (Note that it may take several minutes for these photos to show up on the web site, due to performance-related caching of photos).
The article pane now has a Force-Sync all Article and Author Files button, which forces syncronization of files to Azure for display on the web site and in mobile apps. This can be used to force a refresh of potentially outdated files, such as author photos, images in articles, and the like. (See also: Edit Articles)
The search for articles by author now works again. (And author names are retrieved async by this pane now, so it should overall be much faster).
The overall data loading infrasture has been enhanced to catch more overall errors when the user unexpectedly closes forms before data processes complete.
5.48.0.0 - 3/26/2021
Renewals
Renewal steps now have a field to set the minimum interval (in days) from the previous step.
The renewal series edit form now shows a column for minimum interval between steps, in the steps list.
Renewal processing has been optimized server-side to speed up the process a bit. (It still takes a long time to process).
Events can now define additional branding/text to be displayed with event information and with the signup process. (This is to satisfy partner criteria for Microsoft).
Events can now define two opt-ins (getting partner notifications and sharing information with partners) plus associated text (markdown) to be displayed with the opt-in checkboxes.
Email batches that are still being processed are now highlighted in a special color in the email batch pane.
5.45.0.0 - 2/18/2021
The system now has a coupon generation feature. (See also: Coupons)
There is a pane showing all coupon batches and their use:
There now is a dialog that allows triggering coupon generation:
5.44.0.0 - 2/17/2021
The “Magazines and Issues” menu item is now called “Magazine Issues”
The list of articles in the issue edit form now shows more information for each article:
All author names are now shown in the author column, for articles with more than one author.
It is now more obvious when an article doesn't have an assigned author.
The author photo is now displayed (which makes it easier to spot authors with missing photos, or incorrectly assigned authors).
The “assign authors” and “assign issues” functionality in the article edit form are now fully implemented with the new author search UI (customer search UI).
5.43.0.0 - 2/11/2021
The Unassigned Subscriptions pane (showing subscriptions that have not been assigned to renewal series) has been brought forward to the latest technology.
This UI is now launched from within the Magazine Renewals UI (or by searching for it in the menu).
This UI now launches the new subscriber edit form when double-clicking a row in the grid (rather than the outdated one it showed in the old UI).
5.42.0.0 - 2/9/2021
Buttons are now rendered slightly different. This enables us to provide more feedback about button states, such as disabled buttons (which are now more obvious).
The renewal series assignment and process dialog now provides more feedback when assignment or processing is running.
Renewal series assignments now also process subscriptions without addresses and phone numbers.
Subscription offers now define a “Renewal Grace Period” that defines how expires subscriptions are renewed. (see also: Subscription Offers))
The renewal series edit form now shows more fields in the steps page (grid).
The renewal series edit form now maintains selection of steps and rules after a refresh (such as when a step is saved in the steps edit form).
The sender name in the renewal series step edit form now saves correctly.
5.41.0.0 - 1/28/2021
Hamburger menu now shows a better message while user rights are evaluated during logon.
Right-aligned list column headers now render correctly when sorted.
The renewal series pane now shows number of subscriptions currently assigned to the series.
The customer search has been improved further to provide better performance and async loading.
Email, phone numbers, and other comm info are now separate search fields
The subscription count column now shows in green when the customer has an active subscription.
The file attachment properties dialog (see last release) has been enhanced further.
The window is now launched non-modal (other windows can be interacted with, while this dialog is open).
For log entries where the user who downloaded the file is known, the name details can now be opened directly from this dialog.
The magazine issue search pane now shows file download stats for each issue (MobiPocket/Kindle and PDF/Web). Note: Collecting of these stats started in early November 2020.
5.38.0.0 - 1/14/2021
The file attachment property dialog now has an access log table (showing download details) as well as a simple graph showing access log stats.
5.37.0.0 - 1/10/2021
The contact/subscriber search has been further improved
Several search bugs have been fixed
Sorting by clicking column headers has been enabled
The resize behavior of the pane has been enhanced to fit the advanced search more easily, yet take advantage of the available screen real-estate better, in large screens.
Search now happens asynchronously and in separate steps, allowing additional data (additional columns) to “trickle in” as data is retrieved. This improves the overall search performance. The user can already interact with the list while additional data is loaded.
The list now shows photos for people that have a photo on file (also loaded asynchronously)
5.36.0.0 - 1/4/2021
When copying a key from a data edit window to the clipboard (through the status bar), it now only copies the actual data without the word “Key:” in it.
Navigation behavior of the integrated web browser has been improved. The Back/Forward buttons now become enabled mroe reliably when navigation is possible. (Note: there still seem to be some occasional anomalies, but that seems to be due to the EdgeChromium browser control and probably needs to be fixed with subsequent versions of that Microsoft control).
Changes to toolbars:
Toolbar buttons now have a slightly different look to make it more obvious which buttons are enabled/disabled and to more clearly indicate interactions such as mouse-over or mouse-down. Also, default buttons do not have a colored background anymore (to enable toggle buttons… see below).
Toolbar buttons now have more of a square-cornered look.
There now is a new toggle-button style (which is used in places such as for selecting the view-mode of the contact list/subscriber search).
Contact/Subscriber search has been re-worked majorly
The toolbar has changed and now provides a more logical way to switch between display modes for the list.
The toolbar now has toggle buttons to switch between “starts with”, “contains”, and “exact match” search modes.
The toolbar now also features an Advanced toggle button that shows advanced search fields when activated.
There are now many additional ways to search for people.
The search for communication information (such as phone, email, ...) is now “canonicalized”, meaning that phone numbers are now found regardless of their formatting. (So searching for 5555555555 will find a phone number stored as (555) 555-5555 for instance).
The result list now shows many additional fields of information.
The search is now done multi-threaded, meaning the UI doesn't freeze while the search is ongoing. (Note: The search is now much more complex, and can thus be slower than before, depending on the exact search criteria). It is also much more obvious when a search is in progress and when it completes.
The search UI now comes up remembering the settings for display mode, search mode, and whether or not advanced search is visible.
The comm-info search field (phone, email, web…) now allows entering multiple search expressions separated by ;.
5.35.0.0 - 12/26/2020
Tabs in the main screen can now be undocked and floated around the screen (including multiple screens):
There now is a new login dialog (with a new associated security model):
Olympus uses the same accounts (and therefore the same user name and password) as codemag.com.
All such accounts are fundamentally eligible to log in to Olympus. However, these accounts have to be assigned appropriate rights to get into Olympus.
The new model uses role-based security. Users who aren't in required roles will not see certain menu items. Therefore, many users will now see fewer menu items than before.
The app now shows the logged in user name in the status bar.
The user name in the status bar can be clicked on to see more detail about the user.
5.34.1.0 - 12/22/2020
There have been various cosmetic changes throughout the system, replacing previously incorrect icons.
There now is a separate subscription offer referral code edit form (see also: Subscription Offers).
5.34.0.0 - 12/21/2020
Subscription offer editing is now available in the new version (see also: Subscription Offers).
5.33.2.0 - 12/17/2020
The save behavior of new renewal series has been improved.
Creating new steps and rules in renewal series can now only been done after a new series has been saved the first time.
Open renewal series panes (lists) now refresh when series are edited and saved.
The new-item behavior has been improved throughout the app.
5.33.1.0 - 12/14/2020
The people search pane now makes it more obvious when a query returned no results.
Improvements to the renewal series step edit form
The email and print definition preview can now show offer grids (showing live data from the selected offer and it tries to pick the correct region based on associated rules, where possible).
The preview can now show the real advertised offer price.
The preview can now show the real advertised offer discount.
Advertised discount is now a new field that can be embedded.
The default styles have been enhanced to add some styles specific to the content of renewal emails and print-outs.
The current issue cover can now be inserted from the drop-down menu.
The preview refreshes when a different offer or referral code is picked, or when the action changes (such as from email to print).
The renewal series step edit form now allows sending test emails for steps with an email action.
The renewal series step edit form now allows generating a test PDF for mail action steps.
Mailed (PDF printed) renewal series steps are now processed properly server-side and are thus considered valid and supported step actions.
5.32.0.0 - 11/25/2020
Renewal series steps and renewal series rules can now be deleted.
Addresses in the contact edit form can now be merged. (Note that there remain technical challenges and the form should be closed without saving immediately after the merge operation).
Comm infos (such as phone numbers) in the contact edit form can now be merged. (Note that there remain technical challenges and the form should be closed without saving immediately after the merge operation).
5.31.0.0 - 11/24/2020
Further cleaned up the menu
There now is an integrated web browser experience.
Documentation, change logs, wish-list, as well as web sites such as codemag.com and eps-office.com can now be accessed from within Olympus.
5.30.0.0 - 11/23/2020
The menu has been cleaned up a bit (and search reveals more menu items than are currently there)
The entire area related to renewals (with renewal series, steps, rules, and the rule debugger) has been replaced. (For more information, see Subscription Renewals)
5.29.0.0 - 11/10/2020
Invoices are now showing the name in the address block.
Invoices can be retrieved as PDF through Olympus again.
The “default button” on panes in the main form works again when hitting enter (such as typing the name on the subscriber search pane, and hitting enter to trigger the search).
All our grids/lists now support copy & paste for all our selected rows. This works especially well when pasting into apps like Excel. Note that depending on the list, this feature will generate results of different levels of usefulness. For instance, it works very well on the list of events, or on the list of accounts a user has. It does not work so well on the list of file attachments, due to its highly customized formatting.
5.28.0.0 - 11/9/2020
Our system now keeps track of file downloads. Simple download numbers can now be seen through Olympus in all file attachment grids and all file property dialogs. (This feature has been implemented especially for digital magazine downloads as well as event-attachment downloads). Note that some older files do have their downloads tracked already, but in general, this number is only accurate from 11/9/2020 on.
When a file has a download count greater than zero, the download count is shown in the file list:
The file property dialog launched from the above list now always shows a download count:
5.27.0.0 - 11/7/2020
The main application window now supports opening multiple panes at once in a tabbed form.
Theme switching has been improved and now works without restarting the app.
Legacy UI components now integrate a little better (although some still have odd colors and some even have trouble accessing data).
Email markdown editors now do a better job at refreshing the preview immediately after a field is inserted. (Used to require a click on the editor in some scenarios before).
Added some more defensive code to avoid spaces in user names and other account fields.
Default styles snippet that can be inserted into emails has been updated.
5.26.0.0 - 11/4/2020
The preview of the email newsletter UI now shows a preview that is a better approximation of what the email really looks like for people. (Note that results can still vary widely as people use different email clients) .
The preview of the article markdown edit UI now shows a preview that is a better approximation of what articles on our web site really look like. See also: Article Editing
Inline code (in paragraphs) is now rendered in an exaggerated way in the preview of the article edit experience, to make it easier to spot these text segments. See also: Article Editing
The signup export in the event edit form now also exports a column showing the number of active subscriptions the signed up person owns. (See also: Events, Conferences, and Training)
5.25.0.1 - 10/12/2020
Communication information in the contact edit form (especially email) now shows whether it is verified, valid, and if it is invalid, the reason for it being invalid (in the notes column).
The Email Batches pane now shows batches grouped by month. It also shows the total number of emails sent in each month (which is very useful in knowning when we are over the total number of emails we can send through SendGrid). See also: Sending Emails
It is now possible to double-click a signup row to open the customer detail.
The list of attendees now has a column that shows whether the attendee is an active magazine subscriber (and if so, how many subscriptions are active).
There now is a new button to trigger assigning subscriptions to people signed up for an event, which launches into the new “assign subscription” feature for event attendees.
The comm-info edit dialog can now edit Verified and Invalid and edit the note associated with comm info (typically used to explain why it is flagged as invalid.)
5.24.1.0 - 10/9/2020
Fixed a display problem with generating schedules for magazine issues.
5.24.0.0 - 10/6/2020
The contact edit form (“subscriber edit form”) now shows in the comm-info grid whether the information is verified, invalid, and what the reason might be something is flagged as invalid. (All this is especially useful for emails, but can also be used for other types of communication information.)
The email sending sub-system has been further enhanced (see also: Sending Emails)
There now is a toolbar in the interface that now has the “Generate Batch” button, rather than it being a regular button at the bottom.
There now is a button that provides an estimate as to how many recipients will be included in a batch. (Which works different for email newsletters, new issue notifications, and event promotions, but is supported in all these scenarios).
There now is a button that allows sending a test email (usually to oneself)
The interface for sending event promotions has been enhanced to support embedded event fields better (including the preview). (See also: Events, Conferences, and Training)
Last used email text is now preserved and loaded the next time the same email UI is opened again (separate for newsletters, event promotions, and new issue notifications) (See also: Events, Conferences, and Training)
5.23.0.0 - 9/25/2020
The article edit system has been improved (see also: Edit Articles)
The XML to markdown automatic conversion mechanism has been improved to fix many special characters and also recognize certain patterns (RegEx) to create better formatting out of the box.
The article edit interface now shows “New” in the Markdown tab when the markdown was just auto-generated. It can also be cleaned out and saved from this UI now in order to force re-generation on the next open of the form. (Note: If the markdown was previously saved away instead of it being auto-generated, it shows “Yes” as before).
5.22.0.0 - 9/23/2020
The automatic save system when closing windows has been overhauled to fix some threading bugs that caused some fields (especially multi-line text fields) to be cleared out incorrectly before their contents got saved.
Enhancements to the email sending system.
5.21.0.1 - 8/20/2020
There now is a new banner editing experience, including a list of banners and a banner edit form.
5.20.0.0 - 8/14/2020
Events now show a list of signups right in the event UI. Data can be exported to Excel from this interface and individual customer information can be opened from there.
There now is a new Email Batches pane that shows all email batches sent by the system (including email newsletters, event promos, new issue notifications,...). This can be used to monitor the progress of the most recent 100 email batches. This pane also allows for the creation of new email newsletters.
There now is a new email newsletters interface (launched from the above pane). It works much like all our other email sending interfaces. However, this is specific to people signed up for email newsletters. (Note that this UI shows an estimate of the number of people invluded in the email newsletters. This is just an estimates as things like blocked emails, or de-duplicating lists can change the final numbers):
5.19.0.0 - 6/18/2020
Article Markdown editing (and associated display on the web page and other formats) has been improved. See also: Article Editing
5.18.0.0 - 6/9/2020
The event edit form now has a feature to send promitional emails right from within that interface.
The event edit form uses a similar email notification UI as the notification batches for magazine issues. This is currently still a work in progress, although it is already workably functional.
The event management system now allows for the setup of a YouTube email ID, which identifies stored recordings on our YouTube channel, linked to the event.
The event edit form now allows for the definition of a webinar URL. If that is set, users joining through our new live signup URL (codemag.com/events/live/xxx) will be forwarded to that webinar URL (presumably on YouTube, but it could be elsewhere).
The event edit form now allows for file attachments. Attachments can be anything. In future versions, some file attachment types will play special roles (like slide downloads for people signed up for the event).
5.17.0.0 - 5/19/2020
The Issue Edit Form now has a tab that shows Email Notification Batches, which are batches of emails we send to subscribers to let them know a new issue is available. The UI shows the batches, how many emails were included in the batch, how many of those have already been processed (processing large batches runs on the server and may take a long time), how many emails were actually sent vs how many were blocked by our system, and more:
There now is a new interface that allows queueing email notification batches. Usually, we send those to digital subscribers, but print subscribers can be included as well. This interface can be used to create a Markdown-based email, with embedded fields (can be added through a toolbar button). The preview on the right shows an approximation of what the email will look like in differnet email clients (including values for embedded fields). When the generate-button is clicked, the batch of emails is scheduled to be processed in the Cloud and the user can close this UI.
5.16.0.1 - 5/11/2020
The subscriber edit form account tab now has a new Get Temporary Password button. When this button is clicked, a temporary password is copied to the clipboard. One can then go to the codemag.com web site, enter the account username and the temporary password to impersonate the user for a limited amount of time. This is useful for seeing the data on the site the way the user sees it.
The new event edit interface, while still a work in progress, supports the most important features now: Note that many text fields now support Markdown formatting (as is apparent when a Markdown editing interface is displayed):
The article editing interface has been completed further. (It is still a work in progress, but it is much more complete now and can edit most of the information neded to maintain articles). See also: Article Editing
The main article information can now be edited properly (and saved correctly) through the main interface.
Editing of article content is now mainly done through the new Markdown interface.
The older XML version is still there, but used by fewer and fewer formats. It should be considered “legacy” at this point and will only be used in the future when the Markdown version is not provided.
HTML previews have been removed from the main form. Individual HTML previews for both the Markdown and the XML versions can be launched from those tabs.
Authors and issues can be assigned. However, these interfaces are still a work in progress and are lacking features such as removing authors and issues.
5.14.0.1 - 4/14/2020
This version includes a new (beta) version of our new event editing interface. Rudimentary event editing is now supported, although not all fields are properly handled and saved yet. (See also: Events, Conferences, and Training)
5.13.0.0 - 4/13/2020
The press release edit form now supports full Markdown editing with preview:
The article edit form now features full-featured editors for article Markdown (in preview… not actually used yet!), XML, and HTML. See also: Article Editing
5.12.0.4 - 3/29/2020
The database has been moved to its final Azure location. This new version is required to work with the new database!
5.12.0.0 - 3/25/2020
Press release editing has been brought forward and works again.
List of press releases:
Press release editing:
The actual press release text now supports simplified editing in Markdown as seen in this screen-shot:
All new-style edit forms now show the key of the item being edited in the status bar. The icon next to it allows copying the key to the clipboard:
5.11.0.2 - 3/24/2020
MobiPocket (Kindle) export has been activated again, and is mostly functional.
5.11.0.1 - 3/15/2020
There now is a new Article Control Center. See also: Article Editing
There now is a new Article Edit Form
The Issue Edit Form has been enhanced
Articles can now be edited/launched from the issue edit form by double-clicking an article in the grid.
The subscription/renewal import form now has a feature that allows creating an empty CSV file that can be used as a starting point to fill in new data. (It is handy because it shows all the available fields).
5.10.0.0 - 3/3/2020
The subscription edit form now allows picking fulfillment and billing addresses. (Note that the actual editing of addresses is done in the subscriber edit form rather than the subscription edit form):
The subscription edit form now shows a list of all magazine issues included in the subscription. Only released magazine issues are included:
The subsriber edit form now shows a list of all issues owned by the subscriber (across all subscriptions). Only released magazines are included in the list.
5.9.0.1 - 3/2/2020
The duplicate subscription form now launches the correct name edit form.
5.9.0.0 - 3/1/2020
Contact Control Center
The New Subscriber button does no longer incorrectly launch a subscription edit form.
There now is a new Subscription Import/Quick-Entry button (see below).
Subscriber Edit Form
Double-clicking a subscription now opens the subscription edit form (formerly it used to open the subscription overview form).
Cancelling subscriptions now works without an error being displayed.
Subscription Edit Form
This form now sorts the display of fulfillment records correctly (with the newest fulfillment first).
There now is a new Subscription Import Form (launched from the Contact Control Center… see above)
5.8.0.0 - 2/11/2020
A screen resolution problem related to the menu has been fixed.
The menu now has a search textbox at the top that allows filtering of the menu:
It is now possible to edit subscriptions associated with subscribers (with the exception of address editing, which is currently a work in progress). The subscription edit screen now focusses entirely on editing of existing subscriptions:
The subscription edit form now has become more of a “subscription control center”, showing additional information, such as fulfillment history (which is specific to the subscription in question, in contrast to the fulfillment history shown in the subscriber edit form, which shows all fulfillments across all subscriptions):
...and invoices (also associated with the current subscription only, contrary to the subscriber edit form, which shows all invoices associated with a person):
...and the subscription's history (with lots of additional data that wasn't available before, showing a snapshot of the subscription as it was at the time the change happened):
5.7.0.0 - 2/3/2020
The Mailings tab of the issue edit form now allows for the creation of new fulfillment batches.
There now is a completely re-written fulfillment batch creation UI (and associated back-end logic).
The dates page of the issue edit form has been re-designed to work on smaller monitors.
5.6.0.0 - 1/26/2020
The issue edit form has been completely replaced with a new one. This new form is much more powerful and acts as a control-center for everything related to an issue. Including articles in an issue, mailings, and more.
The entire issue editing experience (from the issue list to the issue edit form) is now entirely based on service calls. This means that no VPN access is required to use these features, and no IP addresses have to be white-listed on the datagbase for these features. This also means that this form should work more efficiently in remote-access scenarios.
The first page of the issue edit form has been changed slightly from the previous version:
The production-dates page of the issue edit form has been changed slightly from the previous version:
The sales-information page of the issue edit form has changed slightly:
There now is a new mailings-page in the issue edit form. It shows all mail batches created for this issue, with information about how many individual packages were sent, and how many total copies (the two numbers could be different if multi-copy subscribers were included in the batch). The headers also show the totals for all batches.
There now is a new articles-page that shows all articles in the issue:
The attachments-page has been modernized and uses our new standardized file-attachments page:
A bug that caused the font within the drop-down calendars throughout the system to appear too large and be cut off, making the days unreadable, has been fixed.
5.5.0.0 - 1/18/2020
File attachment logic throughout the app has been updated to use the latest file services (with access of files stored on Azure)
All file attachment grids have been re-worked to work with this new mechanism. The look has also been cleaned up:
The file attachment property dialog has been updated and enhanced (especially the support for categories and for Azure files has been improved):
The file attachment upload dialog has been cleaned up and enhanced (especially the support for categories and for Azure files has been improved):
5.4.0.0 - 1/15/2020
Issue editing is back online at least in a rudimentary fashion.
A new version of the magazine issue list has been implemented:
5.3.0.1 - 12/13/2019
The app now uses an updated invoice display. (Note: We are aware of the rendering issue at the top-right side of the invoice, but this is an Internet Explorer related issue that won't be fixed for now. We are moving to Chromium anyway, which will display that detail correctly):
The app can now create a PDF version of an invoice by clicking the Get PDF Version button in the invoice display:
5.2.1.0 - 12/10/2019
Fixed a problem related to author information when saving names that weren't authors.
5.2.0.17 - 12/06/2019
The refresh algorithm in the contact edit form has been improved to refresh the content of different tabs correctly in more different scenarios.
The application auto-update mechanism has been improved to provide more sophisticated update checking and downloading, as well as showing this change log whenever the application has been updated. (This will come into effect for all updates from here on forward).
The application now has a new status bar, showing the status, the current application version, and providing a way to switch the color theme:
5.1.0.1 - 12/04/2019
Re-enabled additional address editing options. The new address UI exposes all fields individually (including the state field even for countries that do not have states, so incorrectly filled state information can be cleared out). It also provides a preview of how the address will be formated in the country in question. Plus, if the address is in the US, it can be verified with the USPS right through this interface:
Subscription display is back in, allowing a view of all subscriptione settings at a glance:
Invoice display is back in, showing a preview rendering of an invoice:
Payment history can be displayed from the invoice dialog:
Billing history can be displayed from the invoice dialog. The UI style is still the old style.
5.0.0.0 - 12/01/2019
First officially deployed new version of the re-written Olympus application.
Olympus has been given a new (more modern) look. It supports simple color themes. And it has been optimized to support larger screens better. Here is a general screen shot that provides an overall idea:
The former “subscriber edit form” has been re-worked into a new “Contact Control Center” that provides a much richer feature-set for editing contact information with all the related data:
