Studio Manager 9.0 New Features

Released December 19, 2007

Requires FileMaker Pro 9

Here's the first version of the SM9 New Features Manual. Control- or right-click and save the file to download it right now. We will be expanding the new features manual. Then we will integrate new features into the full Studio Manager User Manual. Due to formatting issues, that may take a few days to accomplish.

Before you leave this page, be sure to scroll down. We cover a lot of Studio Manager 9's new features with screenshots below the highlights section.

Studio Manager 9 Highlights

• Conditional Formatting. We deployed this new FileMaker Pro 9 feature in many ways to make it easier to see critical issues or opportunities like spotting overdue tasks and outstanding estimates that haven't been submitted to the customer.
• Address Book Integration. Now you can enter or change a contact and press a button to add it to your OS X Address Book or to modify an existing Address Book entry.
• Job Thumbnails. By popular demand, you can now put in a graphic thumbnail as a visual signature for your jobs. These print on the Job Ticket and the field can be copy and pasted elsewhere if you want to get into putting them on invoices.
• Summary Estimates. Sometimes you blurt out an estimate to the prospective customer without doing your homework first. You are committed, and maybe the stakes aren't that high to justify an itemized estimate. Now you can put in a brief description of the creative fee portion (e.g. "Creative fee") and a brief description of expenses (e.g. "Expenses") and a couple of numbers and print. Done. We even did the extra work to gracefully convert those summary estimates into invoices when the time comes for that.
• Employee Task Views. We used to give an employee a long scrollable list of his or her tasks to look at every day. The problem was that it was all tasks due now and in the future. It was too much. Now you can see a Today view (plus anything overdue from prior days), a 3-day view which looks ahead a couple days, an Overdue view and an All unfinished view. You can print these different views in case you like taking a piece of paper around with you.
• Stripping Out Old Address Formatting.These days we often copy information from web pages to get address and related information. Sometimes in the moment, our employees modify data permanently to be in big red letters to grab someone's attention in a special circumstance. In either case, when you try to print that information later in FileMaker, it looks really bad because that formatting is still there. Yuck! Not anymore. Now you just press a button to remove formatting from an entire contact record or remove formatting from a whole set of Contacts. Instantly.

We are just starting on this page. There's lots more new stuff in the product we haven't written up yet. Please come back for more details and our new demo which should be available Tuesday night or Wednesday this week. Meanwhile, have a look at some of the new features.

Conditional Formatting

Here are three of the places we use conditional formatting in Studio Manager 9. There are more and you can add your own without breaking a sweat. Designers: you can pop-out a color wheel to easily modify color, and select the style and background color to get the effect and color scheme you want.

In Task Views

In the employee task views, conditional formatting colorizes the due date based on its status relative to today's date to make it easier to see the status of the tasks on your plate.

In Timesheets

In the above example, our user has accidentally skipped over the Job number and billing code fields. Studio Manager 9 dutifully lights up the skipped over fields, to help the user (or his manager) to more easily spot and correct the omission.

In Expense Entry

Here, the Job ID entered doesn't match an existing job so the Job Title field is lit up in green.

Address Book Integration

In Studio Manager 9 Before

Just click the link on the screen to add to your Address Book or update it. You also get a v-card for that person on your desktop to use as you wish.

Address Book after the click

Job Thumbnails

On the entry screen

On the Job Ticket

Summary Estimates

Summary Estimate tab

We've included a field for budgeted hours and cost so that your staff have numbers to work against when doing the work. These are optional but give you what you need to do a nice job status report.

Flat Fee Estimate tab

You can see above that we have a new Flat Fee estimate tab as well. OK, I'll show you here. You get line items for the expenses piece and summarize with a description short or long for the fee portion. You have the option of first itemizing estimated services and then summarizing on the flat fee tab. Sometimes details just complicate things.

Employee Task Views

4 Views to Simplify Things

Job Summary Report

Supports Component Jobs Fully now

Subjobs are indented. Totals are shown accurately for the parent job so you can see overall performance. Subjob totals are shown in gray using conditional formatting to denote that those totals will not get double-counted in the grand total at the bottom. This should become your favorite report in Studio Manager.