Dear All, Welcome to the February 2009 newsletter, our regular update on developments at Third Light and news about changes and improvements made to the IMS product. This year, we are switching to bi-monthly newsletters and releases. The features below relate to this month and our next update will be in April. This change will help us to streamline the release processes for new software, but please do keep in touch with us if you have any feedback between releases - simply email features@thirdlight.com. Features mentioned below are free of charge, and will be released on 10 February 2009. Please follow the instructions at the end of this email if you prefer not to receive our newsletters (unsubscribe). February 2009 update (IMS Appliances) The following information relates to IMS Virtual Servers and IMS Appliances only. In the next few days, an update package will be available. If your IMS system is subscribed to the update service, look for a message box to appear in your administration console indicating the availability of an update, and when prompted, click on the link to apply the new software. This update includes new features released in December 2008 such as the enhanced download tool, PDF pagination and custom meta data, as well as those announced in this newsletter. For a reminder of the features added in December, please click here. If your appliance was originally installed by a Third Light engineer on site, and you have a support agreement including remote support, then we will perform this update for you as usual and you do not need to do anything (no alert will be displayed). Outbound FTP Service Enhancements (IMS Premium) IMS provides a high-speed FTP distribution tool, aimed at press and sports photographers distributing images to news desks, or for creating backups, called the Outbound FTP Tool. This facility has been updated to support uploading sub-folders, as well as automatic merging of sub-folders and collision avoidance on existing files in the target FTP account. Details of these changes are provided below, and will be active from 10 February onwards. When creating a new Outbound FTP account (or editing an existing account) from the Tools -> Outbound FTP page, IMS provides additional options which relate to the choice of source album and the target server. The sub-album behaviour has three modes: 1) Do not upload sub-directories (default, as used in existing IMS accounts) 2) Upload sub-directories to the same folder This choice causes IMS to recurse through sub-albums below your source album, uploading all new files, with the common destination of the 'FTP initial directory'. 3) Upload sub-directories, preserving layout This choice causes IMS to recurse through sub-albums, uploading all new files to a folder tree matching the IMS album tree below the album being watched. The tree is created as necessary (if possible). If a directory cannot be created, then that sub-tree fails and the files will not be uploaded. When searching sub-albums for new files, the album parent last changed date is checked. If the sub-album is a new sub-album, its contents are uploaded. There is an chance of filename collisions on the remote server. IMS provides choice of behaviour for existing files on the FTP server, as follows: a) Upload using a different name (a number is added to the filename) b) Do not upload existing files (default) c) Overwrite existing files Lastly, we have implemented a single, centralised Outbound FTP log. This log is accessed via the Reporting -> Outbound FTP Logs menu, or by clicking the 'View Logs' button on the Tools -> Outbound FTP page. The purpose of this new log is to list all outbound FTP transfers from all accounts (including any errors) on a single page, allowing for easier review and management of this facility. RSS Feed of Events From 10 February, IMS will allow you to offer an RSS feed of events, for example to encourage regular clients to return to your site when new photos are uploaded. To enable the events feed, which appears on the front page of your site, switch the option on from the Configuration -> Site Options -> Front Page Options panel. The checkbox is labeled 'Show feed of events'. Feeds are common on the Internet: popular feed types are RSS and Atom (often simply called ‘RSS Feeds’). IMS provides Atom feeds, which are the W3C and IETF standard. These are supported in every popular feed reader (RSS reader) such as IE7, Safari, Google Reader and Bloglines. Refund and Order Management Occasionally, it is desirable to change or refund part or all of an e-Commerce order. From 10 February, options to make adjustments to print orders which have not been processed will be added, and IMS will also provide the option to offer partial or full refunds to processed print or licenced download orders when made through the Third Light card handling facility. These features will be displayed as additional buttons when a specific order is being viewed in the administration console. 1) Canceling print orders Provided an order is blocked, or only contains custom products, it will be possible to cancel the order and issue a full refund to the customer by pressing 'Cancel and refund'. This will prevent the order from being manufactured, and therefore no charge will be made to you for the prints or postage. 2) Adjusting print orders Provided a print order is blocked, or only contains custom products, it will be possible to remove items from the order or adjust the quantity of items downwards. The appropriate amount will be refunded to the customer's card when items are removed. For example, this can be used to remove a blocked item from an order if there are quality issues with the source image. 3) Non-specific refunds (prints and licenced downloads) IMS will allow an amount up to but not exceeding the value of an order to be refunded, even if the order has been completed. In the case of print orders, the cost portion of the order will not be refunded to you as the manufacturing and postage costs have already been incurred. When using features involving part or full refunds to cards, an administration fee of £2 per use is added to the cost of the order, to cover banking and administration charges. This amount is deducted from your turnover. A warning message will be displayed when card handling fees will be incurred. Refund features will not be available if your turnover is insufficient to cover the handling fees. Refund features will not appear on servers not using the Third Light card handling facility. Miscellaneous Changes The following changes will be live on 10 February. 1) Bug fixes and enhancements: The overall performance of the search engine has been tuned to reduce page load times further. The performance of the Controlled Vocabulary tool has been improved, and the Controlled Vocabulary is no longer case sensitive. ZIP files greater than 2GB in size are now supported. Exact searching for picture references now works correctly. Groups can have names longer than 16 characters. 2) The Hide/Show buttons within IMS are now persistent, meaning that if a panel of the user interface is hidden by clicking 'Hide' then it will remain hidden until the 'Show' button is clicked, including when leaving the page and returning later. 3) The PDF documents in the Help menu, such as the Integration Notes and IMS User Guide now open in a new window instead of in the main IMS page. 4) Active Directory groups are now listed in alphabetical order on the System Administration panel (IMS Appliances with LDAP integration enabled). 5) Email contact forms used in unauthenticated pages are now protected by a simple 'CAPTCHA' system to block spam robots which populate forms and cause nuisance emails to be issued to IMS administrators. 6) A new text button labeled 'Download' has been added to the Picture Console. This text button is designed to allow users who are less familiar with IMS and its icons to perform downloads without requiring specific help or documentation. The behaviour of the download facility itself is not affected. This button appears in the latest IMS templates. Web Design Assistance As we focus on the technology and software behind IMS, we do not provide web design or branding services. If you need help implementing a particular look and feel with the IMS templates, then we recommend making contact with Siftware, our web design partners, who will be able to help you. For more details, please see: http://www.siftware.co.uk/services/ims-themes-integration/ Feedback Every feature of IMS is based on your ideas and feedback. We keep a thorough record of all feedback and aim to implement the features that are most requested as part of our development plans. Simply email features@thirdlight.com to send us your comments. For support questions, please use the Help menu support tool, as this allows us to track your queries and answer questions more efficiently. With regards, Third Light Ltd. http://www.thirdlight.com/ 'Third Light' is a trademark of Third Light Ltd.