What's new in CLZ Games? (page 3)

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 (= Storage Box for comics), Owner, Purchase Date/Store/Price, etc…

This Pre-fill screen was introduced in Dec 2020, with a fixed set of fields. Then a year later, in March 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 movie (e.g. Purchase Price or Quantity), then forget to CLEAR it for the next items they add. Causing lots of items to be added with that same field set incorrectly.

So today, we are making another tweak to the Pre-fill screen:

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key pre-fill

A lot of the questions we get about CLZ Games can usually be answered with:

“Just use Manage Pick Lists”

Renaming Locations, Merging duplicate genres, fixing platform sort problems, fixing typos in formats, 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.

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key manage pick lists

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 Completeness, 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 game (e.g. Purchase Price or Quantity), then forget to CLEAR it for the next games they add. Causing lots of games 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.
Android: Values weren’t downloaded for games sometimes.

key pre-fill

The Link with Core screen is a tool in the CLZ Cloud site and the Connect web-based software that is used to link entries with CLZ Core. E.g. items that you added manually, or items that you imported. The Link with Core tool is mostly used by users coming from other software and are switching to CLZ.

Today’s update is a “behind the scenes” update, to make the Link screen faster and to improve search results.

Improved

The search now uses our elastic search engine, giving you better and more meaningful results for your unlinked items.
Better uses of indexes and the elastic engine makes everything much faster too!

On top of that, we’ve improved the search results in the Link with Core screens for some Connect flavours specifically:

Comic: Now takes series popularity into account.
Movie: Now now also digs into our vast library of “alternative” and foreign titles for movies to obtain a result that matches your movie.
Music: Now also uses Discogs for finding results.

What is Linking with Core?

Connect is built around our central online database: Core. All factual data and cover images are used and shown directly from Core. If you have been using the Add screen to catalog your items, then most, if not all of your items will already be linked to Core.

If you’ve added some items “manually” or if you’ve imported a list from CSV (or from somewhere else), there will not be a lot of data in them.

To automagically fill in data for your items, the items need to be linked with Core. If you have unlinked items, you can link them to Core using the Link with Core screen which is found in the menu top left!

key link with Core

Earlier this year, we updated our Connect software to make it fully localizable / translatable. Shortly after, we went live with Dutch and German version of Connect.

Today, after the hard work of three loyal CLZ users, three more language options went live on the site:

French
Spanish
Hungarian

Thank you, Philippe, Rafael and Pető!!

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key language localization translations

New:

Added in-app getting started tips for new users (tap “dismiss” to dismiss)

tips

New:

Added in-app getting started tips for new users (tap “dismiss” to dismiss)

key tips

Fixed:

Fixed: adding items did not work for users that were not logged in

clz account

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-game “Demo Mode” for new users

For new users who just downloaded the app, we introduced a new “Demo Mode” that lets you add 5 games 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.

cloud demo mode key sync

Continuing with our quest to revamp and re-design features and screen of the Connect web-based software. Today we took on the Import from CSV/TXT screen.

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csv import key

Connect and CLZ Cloud users often ask us about printing or exporting only a part of their collection, e.g. “how do I print just my wish list?” or “how do I export a list of just one platform?”.

Now, this was possible, but it took a few steps that were not intuitive for many users. You had to:

Make the selection in the main screen first, e.g. by using folders, the collection status filter or the search box
Checkbox all games in the selection, using the checkboxes in the list
Then use the Print or Export button on the special blue action toolbar above the list

With today’s update, we are making this a lot easier. And while we were at it, we also freshened up the user interface of the Print to PDF and Export to CSV screens.

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export key print selection

Great news for all our German-speaking customers: starting today the Connect web software is also available in German!

Our programmers have been working for months to make the Connect software available in other languages (other than English). This meant:

Make the Connect software translatable, to ensure that all interface texts come from a translation database.
Making a nice and easy translation tool for our translators, so that they can translate all texts efficiently and also maintain the translation when new functionality is added.
And of course, to do the actual translation.

And today we can take the next step: Connect is now available in German!

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german key localization translation

Fixed:

Adding: the app could crash while adding a game

adding games

Fixed:

When using multi-level folders, the folder panel search text would sometimes copy over to the next folder (and not be remembered when going back)
After syncing, the main screen did not always refresh
A crash could occur when entering Selection Mode in Card View if no cards were available
A crash could occur when selecting folders
When switching between collection statuses while in multi-level folders, the app could show a wrong selection of items
The app crashed on devices with iOS13
iPad: The folder panel search did not have an “X” to clear the search

card view folders multilevel folders syncing

Improved:

Add Screen: Loading details panel of a result feels a bit faster now

Fixed:

Shake to Shuffle could cause a crash in some cases
Opening an item, swiping to the next, then edit “in-details-panel” would reset the details to the first item
Backdrops could still show behind the list when switched off in Settings
Add Screen: Scanning a barcode: When the device was rotated, the barcode scanner could stop working
Multi-level folders: When using the “Show sort names” feature, the breadcrumb at the top could show strange sort names for certain folders

adding details panel multilevel folders shake to shuffle

Fixed:

Card View: titles were sometimes displayed wrong.
Fixed a couple of folder labels that were displayed wrongly at the top.
iPad: made the switching between folders appear more smooth.
iPad: breadcrumb wasn’t always displayed correctly when backing out of a folder.

breadcrumb card view folders

A huge update for your CLZ Games mobile app today, which introduces a powerful feature for browsing and filtering your game collection: using multiple levels of folders.

Previously, it was only possible to use one level, so either Platform folders OR Genre folders OR Completeness folders OR Location folders, etc… But starting with this version, you can use nested folders, so for instance, use Platform folders, then within each platform folder have Genre folders.

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folders key multi-level

A nice update for all Connect users who use multiple collections, especially for those who have a LOT of collections.

New in this re-design:

Single row tab-bar. No more lost screen estate caused by multiple rows of tabs.
Got more tabs than fit on screen? Scroll the bar horizontally.
Or use the next/prev buttons on the right to jump page by page.
Alternatively, click the menu icon on the bottom left to pick a collection from a menu.
The menu also provides quick access to the Manage Collections screen.
Drag tabs to change their order.
Double click a tab to rename a collection.

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key multiple collections tab bar

A big project our web-dev team has been focused on the past few months is making our Connect web-based software available into other languages. A huge project that consists of:

Making the software translatable, basically ensuring that ALL UI text is retrieved from a translation database.
Creating a nice and easy web-based CMS tool that translators can log in to and translate text, preview in Connect, etc…
Doing the actual translations of all UI texts.

And today we can finally show the first results: Connect is now available in Dutch!

Yesterday, Youtuber Mystic (over 700 thousand subscribers) featured our CLZ Games app in a video where he is cataloging his games and checking their values.

key mystic pricecharting

New:

Menu now shows last “PriceCharting Values update” date
Menu now shows last “Sync with CLZ Cloud” date
Improved messaging for subscription status

Fixed:

After searching in your own collection by scanning a barcode, the result will now show instantly
Add Game: when scanning a barcode and then add manually, the barcode is now filled in

adding games searching