Uncategorized
October 9th, 2015 by ShowMgr

We’ve Added More to Our Media Billing Software

We’ve Improved Our Film Budgeting Software

The advantage of the cloud is upgrades and deployments can be done with little interruption to users. We’ve just introduced new features to our ERP file production software on September 21st. The biggest changes were to our order summary and bid updates, but we’ve made other changes that will make it easier for our customer’s film crew management and TV budgeting. Many of these features are from our customer feedback. And we did all of this while we supported our team and created an incredible paintball team!

New Order Summary

A business can never have enough charts and graphs to help make educated decisions. We’ve expanded our order summary section to include better drill-down information and grouped data. We also allow customers to save their views. Project managers can send reporting details through email messages.

We’ve redesigned the order summary section to include resource assignments and crewing status. We’ve also improved readability and reliability of individual fields, and we’ve moved the document section to a tab of its own.

The new summary screen is separated into several sections. The master project and bids section gives you a quick view of the master project name and the bids associated with it. The start and end dates and times are listed right under the project name, and the administrator can get a quick view of project attributes.

The biggest feature change is the way administrators can make changes by highlighting the mouse over a specific data object and clicking it to make changes. We also have an overview chart that can be toggled for different information, so you can see aggregate information in a visual image to make it easier to understand. After you make any changes, they are added to an audit log that you can view at any time to review recent changes to your records.

Added Header Status for Project and Order Names

We’ve added a better user experience for our project screens. Now, users can simply click a project or order name and edit its title. We’ve also added the project and order names to the screen’s header. These additions make it much easier to get an idea about certain projects without clicking through to the details section. You can also change the status directly in the overview screen.

New Document Tab

We’ve moved documents from the right panel to its own tab. Our goal is to make the user experience as simple and easy as possible for our customers. That’s why we added a new document tab, so you can more easily manage uploaded documents. We also have a screen where you can edit document meta data.

The document tab is specific for documents added to projects and orders. Users can have a quick look at each document, edit its meta data, add new documents and download existing ones.

To create a new document, click the plus button in the document tab window, specify the location of the document, and input the meta data. We also support web related links, so you can link to cloud services such as Google Docs.

Email Ingesting

We want communication through the cloud to be as easy as possible. Now, we handle email ingesting. Users can send messages to inbox@showmgr.com and the system automatically matches the email to the right project or order. When a message is received, you’ll see a small envelope icon in the top-right corner of your screen. You can then use this icon to open the email and read it. It’s also mapped to the documents tab associated with the project or order. We’ve added this feature to improve your workflow.

To view our new email interface, click the email icon located next to your user name in the top-right corner. You can then view a list of email messages sent to you including any attachments. We host the email and scan it for any viruses before you receive it, so you don’t need to worry about malware sent to your ShowMgr account.

For instance, if you need to sign a form — receive the mapped email, assign it to a project, and open your form to sign and resend to the sender. This feature makes it much easier to manage communication with your clients.

Bidding Enhancements

We’ve had a bid feature in ShowMgr and we continue to improve its features. We’ve added new functionality with new schedule views and a new create order interface. Now, instead of creating a new order, you can clone a previous order and create patterned schedules. The process makes workflow much more efficient and streamlined for our customers.

Fringes and Fees

We added new itemized content in the Bid section. We now show fringes and fees. Fringes include taxes and added costs associated with each resource. This new feature makes your bids even more accurate, and it adds to your budget tracking. You’ll find this new information in the FF column in the Bid section.

For instance, take a look at a bid and you can see that we’ve created the standard calculator that takes units, bids, uses a multiplier and displays the total bid amount. We now let you add a fringe and fee in that total amount. For instance, add a social security tax to a facility fee to include it in your total bid amount. You can set a percentage or a flat rate and specify if it affects cost or revenue.

Build Schedule

Our build schedule is a new way to create orders in ShowMgr. It uses the bid as a starting point to create orders. You can filter bids in case you’re working with several large amounts of bids. Each bid item has its own element, and you can use these items to build a schedule. You can toggle your views to review availability and create orders for your entire crew.

What’s most efficient for our customers is the create order feature. Directly from the build schedule screen, you can open a new order screen where you can assign your crew members to the order, set a start and end date, give the order a name, and even review the unit costs. Once you create the order, it’s automatically added to the build schedule manager with the associated crew member.

After you create an order, you can even clone it to make it much easier to duplicate identical orders. Right-click an order, and select the clone option. Choose new dates for the repeat order and even set up multiple clones at once for each day of the week or month. This feature saves you time when you need to create multiple orders for the same crew members for several days of the week.

When you need to create bookings, you can also review certain crew members and their associated rates along with available resources for each day of the week. You don’t need to match bookings and bids. ShowMgr associates them along with orders automatically to reduce administrative overhead and avoid costly errors. You go from timely bookings and orders tasks to several clicks that only take a few minutes of your time.

Crew Portal App

Did you know that ShowMgr has an iOS app? You can download it from the Apple Store. We have an app that helps you manage your crews faster, more efficiently, and from anywhere in the world. If you’re an Android user, we have plans to release an Android app shortly for our Google users.

With our app, you can get a quick view of crew members assigned at specific project locations. You can view start and end dates, shoot dates, delivery dates, and the name of the project assigned to these crew members. The ShowMgr app includes comments associated with each crew member and booking, so you can review any comments that could change scheduling and staff last minute.

We also show you a list of bookings linked to your desktop version of ShowMgr. You can view scheduled appointments and bookings associated with a project, so you never miss a deadline again. These comments are automatically assigned to the contact and booking, so you don’t need to manually file communication.

Tap the document icon to view documents associated with the project. Read, comment and return documents directly from your iPhone or iPad.

We Leverage the Power of AWS

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a powerful cloud solution that we leverage for ShowMgr. The cloud offers several advantages over private server hosting. We have better deployment tools for rapid updates across all data centers. Our customers see faster response times and performance from the platform, and Amazon is one of the leading cloud hosting companies on the market. This gives us excellent support services 24/7, and uptime is guaranteed.

Improved Australian User Performance

In addition to the benefits we mentioned above, AWS offers servers across multiple data centers. This means that our Australian customers see better performance and less network latency when connecting to ShowMgr. Data centers across the globe distribute site content based on geo-location of our customers. This means better performance regardless of your location.

These are a few highlights of our ShowMgr addition, but we encourage our customers to leave us feedback so that we can continue to make your production management experience easier. We continue to brainstorm new ideas and solutions to make our customers a success, because when our customers are a success, we are too. Please feel free to send us feedback on our features – both old and new – so we can focus on improving your workflows and efficiency.

Uncategorized
October 9th, 2015 by ShowMgr

The New Crew Portal

If you have recently worked with CBS Sports. As you may know, there was a portal for you to view work assignments which was CrewMgr. This has been updated and is now Crew Portal which is part of ShowMgr.com . With this new Crew Portal, you will need to go through a new user login process just once following the directions. Once you have logged in for the first time, you will not have to go through the authorization process again. Please read below or watch to learn about how you can login and all the exciting features. If you have any questions, please email us at Support@ShowMgr.com.

Want to learn more?  Please watch the video demonstration provided below.

 

To login, you will go to CBSSports.ShowMgr.com and login with an approved partner. These include Yahoo, Gmail, Facebook, Hotmail, AOL and LinkedIn. This login will replace your current ShowMgr login. If you do not already have one of these accounts, you can set one up with them for free through their individual websites before you begin!

Here is some information about the new Crew Portal

View your schedule in a variety of views which includes a month view, a day view, a week view, a 2 week view, and a list view, your choice!


View details for work assignments and make appointment requests to let someone know you will be unavailable.

If you are a freelancer, you wont have a time away policy to worry about, but you can still put in any dates you are unavailable to avoid being booked when you know you will be on vacation or unavailable. If this is the case, you can ignore the balance and forecast information.

View your work history

What functionality has been changed?

We focused on keeping the most important information in an easy to view format in the new Crew Portal and removed what we thought you were not using. Below is a list of what has been removed.

* No need to enter in your positions and union affiliations, CBS tracks that information for you.
* Travel Preferences are stored in your resource profile which is managed by CBS. If you have any preferences, please let them know directly.
* Job Postings are no longer an option, no broadcaster was using that anyways, so we didn’t think you would miss it.
* You don’t have to navigate to a new page to see your work details, now you have that detail on your desktop which is even better!

If you have any questions at all, please let us know at Support@ShowMgr.com