Last week we released the new portals. That's a big release. A couple weeks before that it was the MIurl.cc release. Another big release. But while these were being rolled out over the last few weeks, we still had several platform updates that went out more quietly. Sometimes it's the little things that make all the difference. Here's a highlight of just some of the features we added and changes we made.
Method Mobile
Method Mobile is now "big finger friendly"!
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Selectable rows - Grid rows now make the whole row selectable instead of just a "select" link column. This is much more in line with what you would see in a "native" mobile app. The challenge for us was how to accomplish this generically in Method, since you can design your own grids, and you might have more than one link on a grid. The rule we made was: "If the first column of a mobile grid is a link rather than a field, and there is only one link, then make the whole row clickable and hide the link column." This frees up valuable mobile screen real estate, and makes it much easier to select a row if you have big fingers.
In addition, we made the following screen changes:
- Mobile Estimate (new!) - allows you to make a QuickBooks estimate in the field and email it to your customer.
- Mobile Invoice - has been updated to include an "Email" button that sends your customer a link to view their QuickBooks invoice online.
Designer / Customization
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Section sizing - You can now set the width and alignment of sections from the designer screen. You may have already noticed this applied to the new portal, where each screen is centered with a 940 pixel width. It makes for a cleaner, easier-to-read interface.
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"Auto grow" on grids - Using the grid wizard you can now specify if the grid should expand vertically to fit its contents. As you may have already seen in the new Customers screen, the Activities grid now shows the CRM comments directly in the grid. If the contents are greater than 200 characters it will automatically create a "Show all" / "Show less" link so that you can see the remaining text.
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Pictures can show and hide - As you saw in the new portal with the Pay Balance and Pay Selected buttons, it is now standard practice to use pictures instead of regular buttons. Since many scenarios call for the need to show buttons only when certain conditions are met, we added the ability to show and hide pictures using the Show / Hide Field/Object action.
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Mapping Minimum Accuracy - The Reset Map action now lets you set the minimum level of accuracy of Google maps to "City, State", "Zip/Postal Code", "Street", "Intersection", "Address" or "Premise/Property Name". Previously, the minimum level was always set to "Street".
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Mail Merge currency symbols - To please our users in the UK, the Mail Merge option in the Character Function action now automatically detects the browser's default language & location and whether a field is a Money field type, and if so it applies the appropriate currency symbol.
Users & Email
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Email Server settings per user - Previously, you could only specify one SMTP email server setting under Customize > My Account for all users. You can now go to Customize > Users, edit the user, and in Step 3: Email Setup, override the default settings for each user's SMTP settings individually.
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Easier user invite process - Under Customize > Users, it is now easier to invite more users to sign in. Previously, you had to first increase your total licenses under Customize > My Account, and then come back to add users. Now you can do it all in one shot - don't worry, we still give you a warning about increasing your subscription costs, and only the admin user can increase licenses.
General Changes
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Balances automatically calculate - Now that all open balances are brought into Method, it has become possible to calculate the outstanding balance of a customer as soon as an invoice, payment, charge or credit memo is saved in Method. Previously, Method had to wait for QuickBooks to calculate the new balance. This has become especially important in the new portals since your customers now have the ability to make payments online and will want to see their updated balance immediately after their payment is approved.
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Tables/fields dropdown field hover tip - under Customize > Tables / Fields, you can now easily find out which table and field a dropdown pulls values from by hovering your mouse over the field name.
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Customize > Screens - new icons, display options. After noticing how many of our users were creating screens with names starting in "AA", we knew we had a problem! Custom screens were obviously hard to find in a big list of standard screens. So we added the Show dropdown that lists "All Screens" and "My Screens" (which sort the list alphabetically) as well as "All Recently Modified" and "My Recently Modified" (which sort the list by the last date a screen was modified). There is also now a filter at the top of the list so that you can see all screens by a certain user, certain screen name or certain app. Additionally, we applied a bold font to custom screens to make them stand out. Finally, we added "Copy", "Edit", "View" and "Delete" icons instead of grid columns to clean up the interface so that you have less to look at. Special recognition goes out to Victor, Dave and Richard from the development team for playing a part in reworking this screen.
Keep the feedback coming!
Paul
Method Founder & CEO
About Method_Paul
While studying at Queen's School of Business in 1999, Paul founded Alocet Incorporated, developing 'QXpress', which later became the top rated field service scheduling add-on for QuickBooks.
Alocet Incorporated later went on to create Method Integration - an innovative small business management platform that allows users to create their own web apps for QuickBooks.
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