June 2011 SendMyAd update

Enhancements

• New PDF/X-1a output level flag at the top of each preflight profile.
• Auto-renewal of ad credits. A new publisher setting allows companies using the ad credits system to select a threshold when their ad credits will be automatically renewed by an amount you specify.
• Zoom by 200% option when viewing ads.

Bug Fixes

• Improved how Ad Creator handles line returns; standardizes line return behavior between adding a new template and editing an existing one.
• Fixed error with password reset process in Internet Explorer 8.
• Resolved problems with new single issue per ad feature.
• Improved behavior of back button throughout application.
• Many improvements in multilingual support.

Features & Fixes May 1, 2011

New features included in our May 1st upgrade:

Enhancements

• Introduces SendMyAd Standard, our new low cost, scalable ad portal solution specifically designed for small to medium sized publishers.
• Materials requests can now be merged with existing ads.
• Bleed information can be entered for the publication.
• Improved downloading of large files.

Bug Fixes

• Improved color fidelity between all ad previews and thumbnails.
• Better handling of new materials ID generation when sending an ad to another publication.

Features & Fixes April 2011

New features included in our April upgrade:

Enhancements


New browser support

• FireFox 4
• Internet Explorer 9 (beta: please report any issues found)

Delivery Enhancements

• Delivery locations can be configured to differentiate between a ZIP or PDF final file.
• Manual transfer and automated delivery of zip campaign ads now supported.

Automated bleed box correction

• A new setting in each preflight profile will tell SendMyAd to try to fix incorrect bleed boxes. If a file does not contain a bleed box, one will be added using the dimensions of the ad specification. If there is an existing bleed box, it will be compared to the ad specification's bleed size. If the file’s bleed box falls within the bleed tolerance value set in the preflight profile, it will remain unchanged. If the bleed box falls outside the bleed tolerance value, the bleed box will be adjusted according to the ad specifications. NOTE: This automated fix is simply adding or adjusting the bleed box to match the ad specification. All graphics intended to bleed will need to have enough image data to extend into the new bleed area.

More detailed file processing information

• New message screens show users when a file is taking longer than normal to process, if the file times out during preflighting, or if the file is corrupt and should be re-uploaded.

Other Minor Enhancements

• Publication code returns to former behavior of allowing any code, even if not unique in the system.
• Zip contents viewer added for all digital ad types and zip assets uploaded to any kind of ad.
• New "short label" field on ad spec can be used for a delivery file name or path. It can also be used as part of the material ID.
• Publisher approval interface has been refreshed.

Bug Fixes

• Digital ad preflighting improvements
• Auto-centering always returns to original file dimensions, even if run repeatedly, or after a manual trim
• Digital animation timer fixes
• Improved downloading of all files listed in Assets panel for large file sizes

SendMyAd adds new Portal Status Page

We have updated the SendMyAd website (www.sendmyad.com) with a page to allow our users to check the current status of the SendMyAd Portal. In the case of downtime, users can check this link periodically to see the status of the Portal.

The new page can be found here.

There will also be a link added to the website for access.

Thanks,

The SendMyAd Team

Features and Fixes March 2011

New features included in our March upgrade:

 Enhancements


Better Bleed Detection

• There is now a bleed preflight check which has a tolerance value just like trim. This allows publishers to flag bleed sizes that are too large and to accept bleed sizes that are slightly under your specifications. 

Cross Site Pickups For Publishers Who Are Partners

• If your portal is has partnerships with other SendMyAd publisher sites, advertisers will now be able to pick up and copy ads between all titles regardless of publisher.

Batch pickups

• There is now a way to simply copy multiple ads in a single publication to a new issue.

New Ad Notes System

• A new coordinate based ad notes system has been added. Publishers and advertisers can now draw note boxes on individual ads for tracking specific problematic areas.  

New Reminder Screen For Advertisers

• We have added new reminder screen for advertisers. This screen appears when an advertiser uploads an ad an then closes the details view before it is approved or rejected.

Invitation System Enhancements

•   Existing users will not get emails if re-invited by another user.
•  New report shown immediately after attempting to invite customers listing number of successes, failures, and skipped invitations to existing users. Poorly formed email addresses are shown so they can be corrected.
• Publishers may remove an invitee from their list to prevent duplicate re-invitations from being sent to a customer.

Other Minor Enhancements 

• Publishers may choose to hide pickup details from ad history, XMP metadata and receipts. This is intended primarily for multi-publisher sites and the new universal pickup featured noted above.
• Translation edits no longer require a user to clear their browser cache.
• Usability improvements for users resetting their password.
• Improvements to materials requests when users are assigned late in the process.
• Adds an option to "Ads per issue (by issue)" report to omit hidden and archived ads.
• Help button available when uploading ads. It contains common solutions for users having problems using the uploader.
• More informative display of video tutorial links includes the duration of each video and a description.
• Ad sizes can now all be copied from one publication into another one.
• XMP metadata and digital receipt will show information about the source for copied ads. (Ads that were "sent to other pubs."). 

Bug Fixes

• Resolves issue with ads being offset improperly after trimming (found only in rare cases after the ad was reprocessed).
• Archived ads have only appropriate action options available to them.
• Improved behavior of Manage Ads at lowest supported screen resolution, 1024 x 768.
• Downloading large original files (under "Assets" in the ad details view) will be much more reliable.
• Resolves issue with ad sizes losing their connection to delivery locations.
• Better bleed size preflighting for rotated files.
• Allow users to access repositioning tool to fix over sized bleeds if there are no other errors.

Features and Fixes Jan 2011

Features

• SMA Official Help Manual 1.0 release. To view go to Sma Help area and click manual button. Not all entries are available yet but we are working diligently to complete the manual.
• Publishers can now change the ad contact associated with the ad. This is useful for publishers who upload ads on behalf of their customers and would like the customer to be able to access the SMA ad. This can be found in the left side ad view panel under job ticket.
• Upload Times can now be seen in the ad view file properties panel.
• Ipad ads with both horizontal and vertical previews can now be rotated to see both preview types.
• Ad View left panel resizers. This is particularly helpful for French Canadian language users. In the ad view you can now re-size the left panel by grabbing the resize handle at the top right of the panel. You may also re-size the inputs and label distance by grabbing the space between the label and input. See video here.
• Skype integration. If a user has their skype profile set as public and fill their skype name out in the SMA user profile, the user may be directly contacted via skype from several views.
• The views:
• Chat View
• Customer List View
• User Profile View
• Better GWG integrations
• Incoming GWG ads now make more attempts to connect with the existing SMA users.
• Outgoing files maintain GWG information that is missing from the SendMyAd data.
• Publishers can now change the text displayed when ads reach the revision limit.
• If you are a publisher who is in a group with other SMA publishers, you can now gain the right to see all customers who join the parent publisher's portal.
• Publishers using "publisher approval system" can now enforce materialsId or booking number to be present before approving the final ad.
• SWF ads now show thumbnails in the ad list and thumbview.
• New email notification for when assets are uploaded to an ad.
• New option for managing material ID numbers during pickup: Create an entirely new materialId for a new publication, or keep the same if pub is unchanged.
• Add additional validations to ensure properly formatted and unique publication codes.

Fixes

• Calendars can now be translated to different languages.
• Better user interface for users who are registering with an existing SMA account. This reduces company redundancies.
• Many improvements to translation text support.

Features and Fixes

This update was mostly dedicated to under the hood improvements designed to facilitate the upcoming digital ad portal enhancements. There were a few random improvements of note.

Feature: Publishers can remove relationships with their customers.This can now be done in the customers management area.
There is a new button that says remove relationship with customer.

Feature: New delivery location feature supports sending files directly to a delivery destination upon file upload.
In the delivery destinations setup there is a new drop down entry which allows uploaded files to be directly forwarded to an offsite location. Upon selection of this option a new filter drown appears which asks which type of files you wish to send.

Since this is designed as a backup or forwarding method there are 2 items it does not support.
1. Issues: in this case we do not support multiple delivery of files by issue since there can be more than one issue and we dont want to needlessly deliver the file more than once upon upload.
2. Specification filters: Since this item is filtered already by file type it negates the specification filter option.

Feature: Issue Run Date and Materials Due Date can be managed down to the second.
There is also a new item which informs the user if the issue will run in less than 24 hours.

Large Change: Web Containers (Websites) management has now been moved under the company profile and renamed to "Web Media Profiles".
This was done because most customers will only need one web media profile and the left menu item was overkill.

Feature: New translation manager in place which can allow publishers add possible translatable phrases.

Feature: PDFx1a Compression added. This is an option that must be confirmed through support.
This option maintains 100% quality of the printable PDF while reducing its size using compression. This helps download and delivery speed tremendously.

Feature: Folio Number added to the main ad list view.
This new column is only reflecting the folio data which can be found in the job ticket portion of each ad.