What's new in CLZ Music? (page 9)

A cool user interface update for your Music Connect software today, in which we makes it easier to select albums and easier to perform batch actions on the selected albums.

Select using checkboxes

To select albums, just click the checkboxes on the left of each album entry in the list. Checkboxes are also available in Card View and Images View, just hover your mouse over an item.

No more need to go into “Select Mode” first. The Select Mode is automatically activated as soon as you checkbox the first album, clearly indicated by the blue Batch Action Bar that replace the regular toolbar.

Batch Action Bar

While in Select Mode, the blue Batch Action Bar is visible, always showing you the number of selected albums. Also:

• Use the “Select all” checkbox to select all albums in the current list in one go
• Use the “x Cancel” button on the right to leave Select Mode
• And of course, use any of the action buttons (Edit, Delete, Print, Export, Duplicate and Loan) to perform an action on the selection albums

You can now loan albums in Music Connect: just find and select an album (or select multiple with the Select tool), and click the “Loan” button at the top!

Loan Manager

Click the menu top left, and then Loan Manager to access the new Loan Manager where you can see all your loaned out items, and directly return them. Alternatively you can also use CLZ Barry to scan a barcode of an album, find it in your outstanding loans, and return it.

In the Loan Manager, you can click on a loaned item to modify the loan date, due date, return date, loaner and notes about the loan.

Print current loans to PDF

You can print out all your current loans to a PDF file by clicking the Print to PDF button in the Loan Manager screen.

Alternatively, you can select a loaner from the dropdown menu there, and only print out his/her current loans to a PDF file!

New:

• Loan albums by selecting a couple in your list, or by viewing the details of an album, and then click “Loan” at the top.
• Return albums straight from the loan manager or by scanning their barcodes with CLZ Barry.
• Check outstanding loans and loan history in the Loan Manager.
• Edit outstanding or returned loans by clicking on them.
• Print out current loans to a PDF file

Coming up:

We will be adding the syncing of loan information to Music Collector for Windows and macOS, and CLZ Music for iOS and Android.

New for the Add Albums screen:

• Add button is now bigger and easier to spot (some new users missed the little round “+”).
• Add button now “remembers” your collection vs. wish list selection. No need to pick from the Collection/Wish List popup menu every time you add anymore.
• Remove from queue button is now bigger and easier to spot. Tap and hold on a barcode in the queue to select barcodes you want to remove.

Fixed:

• Accented characters in sortnames/titles were sorted incorrectly.
• Main screen: the over-sensitive quickscroll bar in the thumbnail view has been fixed.
• Edit: ‘Done’- button doest not scroll from screen on manual scroll.
• Edit: New ‘Unsaved changes’ dialog.
• Cloud sync: Sync reporting ‘invalid xml’ in rare cases.

If you’re a new user or thinking of moving your collection from the program “CATraxx” to Music Connect, good news: we’ve just added a new “CATraxx” import tool in Music Connect!

You can find the “CATraxx” import tool under the menu top left, then choose “Import Data”.

If you’re a new user or thinking of moving your collection from the program “Delicious Library” to Connect, good news: we’ve just added a new “Delicious Library” import tool in Connect!

You can find the “Delicious Library” import tool under the menu top left, then choose “Import Data”.

New for the Add Albums screen:

• Add button is now bigger and easier to spot (some new users missed the little round “+”).
• Add button now “remembers” your collection vs. wish list selection. No need to pick from the Collection/Wish List popup menu every time you add anymore.

Fixed:

• Crash when adding or syncing on devices running iOS 9 or lower.

We’ve added new fields to sort on to change the order in which your albums are displayed in your list. Your album list will adapt to sort and show the field you’re sorting on. On top of that we’ve redesigned the Select Sort Order screen to make it more clear what you’re choosing.

Open the Select Sort Order screen by tapping the menu top right, then tap “Sort order”.

All available sort fields:

• Artist, then Year (Desc) (New!)
• Artist, then Year (Asc)
• Artist, then Title
• Album Title
• Release Date
• Nr. of Tracks (New!)
• Length (New!)
• Order of Entry (New!)
• My Rating (New!)
• Purchase Date (New!)
• Purchase Price (New!)
• Current Value (New!)
• Quantity (New!)
• Index

All fields can be sorted either ascending or descending. Tap the field you wish to sort on, then tap “Apply” to confirm.

A small user interface tweak today:
The Add Albums screen is now a pop-up screen that lays over your album list.
(previously it was a separate full screen page)

Looks cooler, feels more “snappy” and while adding albums, you can actually see the new additions appear in your music list in the background!

If you’re a new user or thinking of moving your collection from the program “Music Label” to Music Connect, good news: we’ve just added a new Music Label import tool in Music Connect!

You can find the Music Label import tool under the menu top left, then choose “Import Data”.

Import from Music Label:

Persistent barcode queue

Barcodes scanned on the add page are now remembered! This means you can scan your barcodes into the add queue, leave the page, return later and still add the barcodes you scanned.

If you wish to remove barcodes from your queue, use the Edit button top right of the list of barcodes!

If you’re a new user or thinking of moving your collection from Discogs to Music Connect, good news: we’ve just added a new import from Discogs screen for Music Connect!

You can find the Discogs import under the menu top left, then choose “Import Data”.

Import from Discogs:

Last week we updated the field selection popup for Connect and CLZ Cloud, and this week we bring that same field selection popup to your “Export to Text” and “Print to PDF” pages.

The update also includes an update Preview box for Export to Text, and an updated way for dragging/dropping fields for your columns or sort order.

Open up your Export to Text or Print to PDF screen via the menu top left in Connect.

New field selection popup:

Updated “Export to Text” page:

With new preview panel:

Updated “Print to PDF” page:

The ability to select your own Columns for the List View is an important customization feature of Music Connect. The same holds for selecting the Sort Order fields.

However, the “field selection” screens for doing these customizations were a bit outdated and finding a field could be tricky. So we decided to re-imagine the field selection screens to make them easier to understand, easier to use and better to use on mobile devices too.

Redesigned Field Selection screen:

• Available fields are now grouped, like the tabs in the Edit screen.
• Easily find the field you want with the search box top left.
• Use checkboxes on the left to select fields.
• Use the “x” button on the right to remove fields.
• Drag and drop fields on the right side to change the order.
• For sorting: use the ASC/DESC button to change the sort direction of that particular field.
• Works great on both your desktop and mobile browsers!

Select Columns screen:

Select Sort Order screen:

Fixed:

• Composer name could appear multiple times in the list cell.
• Index/Collection status was not shown in the list cells when ‘Order of entry’ sorting was enabled.
• Import from Music Collector was broken.

We’ve added new fields to sort on to change the order in which your albums are displayed in your list. Your album list will adapt to sort and show the field you’re sorting on. On top of that we’ve redesigned the Select Sort Order screen to make it more clear what you’re choosing.

Open the Select Sort Order screen by tapping the menu top right, then tap “Sort order”.

All available sort fields:

• Artist, then Year
• Artist, then Title
• Album Title
• Release Date
• Nr. of Tracks (New!)
• Length (New!)
• Order of Entry (New!)
• My Rating (New!)
• Purchase Date (New!)
• Purchase Price (New!)
• Current Value (New!)
• Quantity (New!)
• Index

All fields can be sorted either ascending or descending. Tap the field you wish to sort on, then tap “Apply” to confirm.

What’s new in the Add Albums screen?

• Single Search Box: Just one box for search (e.g. like Google or Amazon). No more separate Artist and Title boxes. Just enter (part of) the artist’s name and (part of) the title and you will get the best matching results. (see the screen shot below with “metallica justice” results”)

What’s new in the Add Albums screen?

• Single Search Box: Just one box for search (e.g. like Google or Amazon). No more separate Artist and Title boxes. Just enter (part of) the artist’s name and (part of) the title and you will get the best matching results. (see the screen shot below with “metallica justice” results”)

Fixed:

• The app did not open the details page when a search result was selected in the quick search box while the [All Albums] folder was active in phone mode.

We had several reports from users about a crash when searching for an item in the collection. This crash has been reproduced and now fixed in the latest build!

Fixed:

• Crash during a search in the device’s database.

Quick Search: Search-As-You-Type suggestions

Instantly find and select a particular album in your local database:

• In the Quick Search box, just start typing the first few letters of the artist or title you are looking for.
• While typing, a drop-down list will appear, showing the first five matching albums.
  (for most albums, it only takes 2 or 3 letters before it shows up.)
• Once you see the album you were looking for, tap it to bring up its detail page
• TIP: Tap the search button on the keyboard or tap “View All Results” to perform the normal search.

Quick Search now searches more fields

Now also searches in:

• Notes
• Tags

Full list of fields that are now searched:

• Title
• Barcode
• Album Artist
• Album Composer
• Track Title
• Track Artist
• Notes
• Tags

Fixed:

• Faster loading of details screen.
• Albums with multiple discs could sometimes lose discs if they are edited immediately after adding them.
• Crash within a few seconds of opening the app.
• Crash when pressing ‘Change account info’ in the sync screen.

Live today in your Music Connect software: a completely re-designed Edit Album screen with an improved look, layout and usability!

New look and layout

We’ve moved some fields around and to have them grouped and placed more logically. You’ll notice that we’ve also updated the look of certain buttons so it’s all easier on the eye, and there’s only one big blue important “OK” button to save your changes.

Updated dropdown and pick list fields

The pick list fields have been updated so they’ll only show options from your own collection instead of all available options in our online database. This makes it a lot faster to quickly pick something from a pick list that you used before!

You can just start typing to filter to the pick list entry you want to use, or open up the dropdown to scroll and pick.

Multi value pick list fields such as the Artist field, have a blue plus button to pick an artist from your artist list. Click it, and either start typing or just pick an artist from the list.

New Pick List fields

We’ve updated the following fields from plain text fields to “pick list” fields. This means that those fields now have a dropdown which you can click to quickly pick an existing pick list entry for that field.

The following fields haven been updated from plain text to pick list fields:

• Purchase Store
• Location
• Condition
• Owner

These field now all have a dropdown to pick an entry. You can also type into them to search or create a new entry for that field.

Panel with personal fields on all tabs

At the bottom of the edit screen we added a “sticky” panel that you can see on all edit tabs. This panel contains some of your most important personal fields so you can always edit them quickly.

New Find Cover pop-up

The Find Cover pop-up has been updated to the latest version we introduced in the Add Screen. Check it out:

Our web-team has been working on this for a long time, but it is now LIVE: a new search engine for Artist/Title searches in our Core online music database and Discogs. An engine that is both better and much, much faster!

And the good news is: these are all “server-side” changes, which means you don’t need to update your Music Collector software, CLZ Music app or Music Connect web-app. Everyone can now instantly enjoy the benefits, no matter which version of the software you have :-).

Read more

Our web-team has been working on this for a long time: a new search engine for Artist/Title searches in our Core online music database and Discogs.

What’s new?

• Faster searches: Artist/Title searches will now give you results instantly, much much faster than before.
• Improved stability: The new search engine is running on a dedicated server that is only doing these searches, resulting in a more stable experience. (in the past few months, there have been performance issues, especially on Saturday and Sunday)
• Better search results: The results are now more focussed, less fuzzy, as it will only show albums containing ALL your search term words (as opposed to the old search that gave you albums that matched ANY or your search term words).
• Single Search Box: Just one box for search (e.g. like Google or Amazon). No more separate Artist and Title boxes. Just enter (part of) the artist’s name and (part of) the title and you will get the best matching results. (see the screen shot above with “metallica justice” results”).

Now live in your Music Connect software, a complete re-design of the Add Albums screen, with a new look, easier interface and new features.

Adding Albums by Artist & Title

Search by artist and title to see a list of matching album results:

Not the right cover image? Use the built-in Find Cover tool to pick the correct one.

Adding Albums by barcode

Scanned barcodes will be automatically added to your queue, with the album information populating instantly. Use the big blue Add to Collection button at the bottom right to add the selected album to your database, OR use the little blue “+” buttons to add straight from the queue.

Adding Albums by Catalog Number

Search by catalog number to see a list of matching album results from Discogs:

New: Adding Multi-Disc Albums

New in the add screen: Add multi-disc albums by selecting multiple results from your search. Just check the boxes next to the results to compile a multi-disc album and add it to your collection straight away:

Adding a Multi-Disc Album by Artist and Title:

Adding a Multi-Disc Album by barcode:

Fixed:

• Secondary artist could not be found in the quick search.
• Album cover thumbnail dimensions were wrong in the search-as-you-type popup
• App shortcut not working in the Android launcher.

You may need to re-add your app shortcut to your launcher screen by tapping/holding the app in your list of apps!