What's new in CLZ Books Mobile? 2023
A lot of the questions we get about CLZ Books can usually be answered with:
“Just use Manage Pick Lists”
Renaming Locations, Merging duplicate genres, fixing author sort problems, fixing typos in author names, etc… it is all done in the Manage Pick Lists screen. An important and powerful screen, but… not so easy to find if you don’t know where to look or don’t even know what to look for.
With this update, we are trying to fix all that. We have made the screen much more accessible / discoverable AND we have made several improvements to the MPL screen itself.
This update is all about the Pre-fill screen, you know, the screen that appears when adding items and lets you pre-fill fields while adding, like Location, Owner, Purchase Date/Store/Price, etc…
This Pre-fill screen was introduced in Jan 2021, with a fixed set of fields. Then a year later, in Jan 2022, it was made completely user configurable, so that *you* could choose which fields appeared on the screen.
This screen turned out to be a popular tool, but we’ve seen one problem with it:
Sometimes, users pre-fill a field for a specific book (e.g. Purchase Price or Quantity), then forget to CLEAR it for the next books they add. Causing lots of books to be added with that same field set incorrectly.
So today, we are making another tweak to the Pre-fill screen:
- The Pre-fill screen now highlights filled fields in orange, so that they stand out more.
- Also, we added a “Clear” button, to quickly clear all Pre-fill fields.
Fixed
- iOS: iPad: Year folders: the wrong year folder could be selected sometimes.
New:
- Added in-app getting started tips for new users (tap “dismiss” to dismiss)
In this update, we try to tackle a problem that we often see in our support system:
Users changing phones without updating their CLZ Cloud first. Or even worse, without even having a CLZ Account yet.
Which of course cause data loss (and a lot of sadness).
So in this version, we are trying to create more awareness of:
- The importance of creating a CLZ Account, so that you can Sync with CLZ Cloud.
- The importance of keeping your CLZ Cloud up-to-date by actually Syncing with CLZ Cloud.
New Sync button in main screen
When not in sync with CLZ Cloud, a new Sync button will appear on the main screen, above the Add button. This way you will always know if there are still items to sync up to CLZ Cloud or down from CLZ Cloud (even when you use auto-sync).
(Don’t like this button? In the Settings screen, switch OFF the setting that says “Show on-screen sync button”)
New “Sync with Cloud!” bar when not logged in
When using the app while not logged in to a CLZ Account, a new bar will appear at the bottom of the main screen that says “Sync to CLZ Cloud for an online backup”.
Hopefully that will help prevent future data loss.
(Don’t like this bar? In the Settings screen, switch OFF the setting that says “Show backup suggestion bar”)
New 5-book “Demo Mode” for new users
For new users who just downloaded the app, we introduced a new “Demo Mode” that lets you add 5 books before committing to the actual 7-day free trial subscription.
Fixed on Android:
- Edit Comic: When you’ve edited something, and you tapped “Next”, it would skip an item.
A huge update for your CLZ Books mobile app today, which introduces a powerful feature for browsing and filtering your book collection: using multiple levels of folders.
Previously, it was only possible to use one level, so either Author folders OR Publisher folders OR Subject folders OR Location folders, etc… But starting with this version, you can combine folder options, so for instance, use Publisher folders, then within each publisher folder have Author folders.
Here it is, the big 8.0 release of your CLZ Books app, in which we add SEVEN new data fields.
All fields were added based on feedback from you all, the users of the app.
Four of these fields were already available in the Book Collector desktop software and can now finally be synced through the CLZ Cloud to the CLZ Books mobile app (Cover Artist, Foreword Author, Ghostwriter and Box Set).
The other three fields are completely new to all 3 of our book cataloging solutions (Signed By, Dust Jacket and Number Line).
BTW: similar updates have also been released for the Book Collector desktop software and the Book Connect web-based software, so all 7 fields now nicely sync between all of them.