Category: Desktop App

Light Blue 2022.1 available with new online scheduling features

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Light Blue’s new online scheduling calendars allow your clients to book shoots and appointments directly into your diary. You no longer need to send messages back and forth to find the perfect time, or rely on complicated integrations with third-party tools. 

We’re excited to announce launch of the latest version which is available as a free upgrade for all subscribers.

“Light Blue’s online scheduling automates another task that helps me focus on improving other aspects of my business, and makes the whole experience much more professional and seamless for my clients.” – Michael Love

Streamline enquiry management

Online scheduling simplifies the booking process for your clients whilst providing tight integration with Light Blue’s other powerful features such as contracts, forms, payments, and workflows (including automated emails and text messages), so you have all the important details together in one place.

“I can’t always reply to client’s calls and emails when they want to book me. Now they can check my availability and book without waiting for me to get back to them. It saves so much time for me and is a better experience for the client!” – Jane Jordan

Avoid double bookings

We know that you have to juggle all sorts of commitments so, as well as automatically blocking off times that clash with events in Light Blue, we’ve also made it possible to link your scheduling calendars to Google Calendar or calendar feeds that you can use to stop clients from making bookings that clash with your personal commitments.

Your availability is updated in real-time as you (and your clients!) schedule events in your diary, and it’s easy for you to set up weekly availability as well as ad-hoc availability for specific types of event.

“It’s a really good way to streamline booking in smaller sessions so you have to do very little, but from the client point of view it’s extremely efficient and straightforward. You can also set options to make sure you aren’t overwhelmed and ensure that your client has all the information they need to proceed without having to send a million emails. Plus, when you open Light Blue, everything you need is at your fingertips.” – Angela Ward-Brown

Free upgrade for subscribers

This has been a really popular feature request and something that we’ve been keen to implement for some time, so we are really pleased to have had such positive feedback from our testers and are delighted to offer this feature to our subscribers for no extra cost.

“Having CRM and scheduling in the same program saves a ton of time and money. Plus it saves all the headaches of trying to make two separate systems integrate.” – Julian Austin

Get started by updating to Light Blue 2022.1  and then adding a scheduling calendar via the Preferences window. Learn more about how to set up and use online scheduling calendars in our detailed help article.

You can find out about the many other new features and changes in this release in the Light Blue 2022.1 release notes.

Light Blue 2022.1 release notes

Reading Time: 8 minutes

Light Blue 2022.1 is a major update that introduces an online scheduling tool that allows your clients to book shoots and appointments directly into your diary. You no longer need to send messages back and forth to find the perfect time, or rely on complicated integrations with third-party tools.

Setting up our online scheduling tool is quick and easy, and you can choose which types of shoot or appointment are available online. Your availability is updated in real-time as you (and your clients!) schedule events in your diary, and it’s easy for you to set up regular availability as well as ad-hoc availability for specific types of event.

Our new online scheduling features also give you options to include a customised booking form, contract, and booking fee when a client is scheduling a shoot, making the online booking process easier than ever. It’s also tightly integrated with Light Blue’s automation tools, so the reminder emails, text messages, and tasks from your workflows help you to deliver great a great service for your clients.

Read on for a summary of the other new features and changes included in Light Blue 2022.1…

Continue reading “Light Blue 2022.1 release notes”

Our new online scheduling calendars are available for testing

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We’re delighted to let you know that our next major update is in prerelease testing and includes one of our most popular feature requests: an online scheduling tool that allows your clients to book shoots and appointments directly into your diary. You no longer need to send messages back and forth to find the perfect time, or rely on complicated integrations with third-party tools.

Setting up our online scheduling tool is quick and easy, and you can choose which types of shoot or appointment are available online. Your availability is updated in real-time as you (and your clients!) schedule events in your diary, and it’s easy for you to set up weekly availability as well as ad-hoc availability for specific types of event.

Our new online scheduling features give you the option to include a customised booking form, contract, and booking fee when a client is scheduling a shoot, making the online booking process easier than ever. It’s also tightly integrated with Light Blue’s automation tools, so the reminder emails, text messages, and tasks from your workflows help you to deliver great a great service for your clients.

Want to start using our online scheduling calendars right now?

We’ve opened up testing to any of our subscribers that want to take part. So, if you’d like to start offering online booking to your clients, or you’re interested in replacing a third-party scheduling system with our own, tightly-integrated scheduling system, please get in touch and we’ll let you know how to get involved.

Light Blue 2021.2.3 release notes

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We’ve just released Light Blue 2021.2.3, which is a minor update that adds new features and fixes bugs reported since we launched Light Blue 2021.2. It includes the following changes:

  • Added an “Import Custom Translations” button to the “Template Translations” section of the Preferences window, to allow you to import a set of translations that another Light Blue user has exported and sent to you.
  • Added more mail-merge tags to the “Insert Mail-Merge Tag/Value” feature.
  • Updated the links in the Help menu to match our new online help resources.
  • Fixes a bug that could prevent the “Prices Include Tax” checkbox in the Preferences window from saving properly.

Light Blue 2021.2.2 release notes

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We’ve just released Light Blue 2021.2.2, which is a minor update that adds new features and fixes bugs reported since we launched Light Blue 2021.2. It includes the following changes:

  • Added an Undo command to the Edit menu that can undo changes you’ve made in the field that you’re currently editing.
  • The %ContactFullName% mail-merge tag when used with weddings will now use a bride/groom/partner contact’s name even if either their first or last name is missing.
  • If you open an email window and the screen you’re opening it on isn’t big enough to fit the previous size you opened an email at (e.g. because you’ve unplugged a bigger screen), the position of the email window is now reset.
  • Clicking on an HTML editor now sets the position of the insertion point.
  • Removed unconfirmed and cancelled appointments from the “Today’s Information” report.
  • Fixed a bug where using the macOS emoji picker popup would always place emoji at the end of a TextArea control, instead of at the insertion point.
  • Fixed a bug where using the macOS emoji picker popup could fail to work with our HTML editor.
  • Fixed an error message that could appear when building a query for contacts with linked contacts of a particular age.
  • Fixed a minor positioning glitch for custom text fields that are formatted as comboboxes on Windows.

Light Blue is compatible with major iOS, macOS, and Windows updates that are coming soon

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We’re entering a bumper season for major OS updates: iOS 15 is due to be released next week, Windows 11 is coming in October, and macOS 12 will probably be arriving in October or November.

We’ve been testing the current version of Light Blue with the beta versions of these major OS updates and it seems to be working well. However, please read on for our usual health warning about the dangers of installing a major operating system update as soon as it’s available!

Health warning

As with all major operating system updates, it is a very sensible idea to be cautious about updating your computers or mobile devices until Apple and Microsoft have had a chance to fix some of the bugs that will inevitably be present in the next versions of iOS, macOS, and Windows. Although our testing with their betas has been positive so far, there is every chance that Apple or Microsoft could change something that breaks compatibility or that we’ve missed something because we can’t test every conceivable combination of devices and settings.

If you rely on Light Blue to run your business, we would therefore recommend holding off from updating your operating system as soon as the new versions of macOS or Windows are available. At the very least, if you really really want to update on day one, make sure that you have at least one computer on the ‘old’ operating system until you’ve had a chance to test that all of the features that you depend on are fully functional.

Also, please note that our testing has been has been focussed on the latest version of our desktop app. The vast majority of our customers are already using Light Blue 2021.2, and if you’re using older version of our desktop then please update to the latest version to ensure that you’re able to take advantage of all of the new features and bug fixes that we’ve been adding. You can update the desktop app by using the ‘Check for updates’ command (in the ‘Light Blue’ menu if you’re on a Mac, or in the ‘Help’ menu if you’re using it on Windows).

Light Blue 2021.2.1 release notes

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We’ve just released Light Blue 2021.2.1, which is a minor update that adds new features and fixes bugs reported since we launched Light Blue 2021.2. It includes the following changes:

  • Added “Reload Base URL” and “Open in Default Web Browser” commands to web viewer widget options menu.
  • Changed the name of the “Default” Home screen layout to “General Overview”.
  • When creating enquiry from email, if From address belongs to a member of staff or is in the “Other Email Addresses To Filter” list, the app now uses the first recipient as the “sender”. This improves the way that the app works with emails where you reply to an enquiry and CC or BCC it to your unique email address so that it’s available to import as a new enquiry.
  • Added a “Reset Window Size & Position” command to the Window menu.
  • Made using one-time passwords in the “account” section of Preferences more obvious.
  • Added a link to a help article to the Query dialog.
  • On Windows, the Activity panel is no longer loaded asynchronously because slow redraw could make this appear to load more slowly than using synchronous loading.
  • Fixed missing year labels from profit series in charts.
  • Fixed a bug where the “promote attachment to Activity panel” button was visible for emails viewed from the Inbox: it should only be visible for emails opened from an Activity panel.
  • Fixed a bug where the “Query Totals” widget “Quote/Sale Net Total” option shows the undiscounted net total of the sale, rather than the discounted net total.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause the “Add Link” button in our HTML editor to open two copies of the link editing dialog.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented the “Import Shoots & Contacts From CSV” command from importing contact full names.
  • Fixed a bug where importing incoming data via the “Preview” function in the Inbox didn’t take you to the imported record upon completion.
  • Fixed a rare bug that could cause the app to hang after the initial data download.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when loading the details of a sale item on Windows.
  • Fixed a bug that could make a form template item look like it’s set to be required when it isn’t.

Light Blue 2021.2 – see your business your way with the new Home screen

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We’re delighted to announce the release of the latest version of our time-saving business software for photographers, which brings some some big improvements to Light Blue’s Home screen. Light Blue is used by a wide range of photography businesses, so in Light Blue 2021.2 we’ve built on our strong customisation options to help you to run your business the way that you want.

The tasks you do every day just got a little faster; you can see at a glance what the day, week, or month ahead holds in store; and you can do all of this while keeping an eye on the bigger picture and your long-term goals.

Continue reading “Light Blue 2021.2 – see your business your way with the new Home screen”

Light Blue 2021.2 release notes

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Welcome to your new Home screen

Light Blue’s new Home screen lets you see your business in a completely new way. You can now customise the Home screen by choosing a selection of widgets that give you unique and powerful ways of looking at your business as well as customising the look of Light Blue.

Widgets include the classic “Current Events”, “Enquiries”, and “Task Manager” widgets from previous versions of Light Blue, plus exciting new options including customisable charts, inbox, lists, stats, or embedded web pages.

Sets of widgets are grouped together as Home screen layouts and you can customise their appearance with colour themes. We’ve provided a set of example layouts and colour themes that you can choose from by clicking the options button in the top right corner of the Home screen, and you can use any of these samples as a starting point to create your own!

Continue reading “Light Blue 2021.2 release notes”

Public beta for new Home screen features

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We’re really excited to announce that we’ve given all of our beta testers access to a major update that brings some big improvements to Light Blue’s Home screen.

Light Blue’s new Home screen lets you see your business in a completely new way. You can now customise the Home screen by choosing a selection of widgets that give you unique and powerful ways of looking at your business as well as customising the look of Light Blue.

We’ll be sharing more information about Light Blue 2021.2’s new features when it becomes generally available. If you’re a Light Blue subscriber and would like to join the beta so that you can start using the new features, please send us an email!