Announcing Light Blue 2.3

Posted on Thursday 9 September 2010

As ever, we've been beavering away here in the secret Light Blue Software bunker, solving life's problems and working hard on Light Blue. Here's a list of what's included in v2.3, which is a free update for all users on v2.x.

Google Calendar publishing

Some of our users have had problems with duplicate events being created when they publish their shoots and meetings to Google Calendar. We've changed the publishing system in Light Blue 2.3 to avoid this. If you've been having trouble with duplicate entries in Google Calendar, you should reset your calendars before re-publishing them from Light Blue:

1) In Google Calendar, delete the calendar dedicated to Light Blue.

2) Create a new calendar and give it a different name.

3) In Light Blue, go to the 'Calendars' panel of the 'Settings' screen. Enter the new calendar name in the 'Publish to Google Calendar' section and then click the 'Reset sync data' button.

4) Click the 'Publish now' button to re-publish your shoots and meetings.

Tables in mail-merge documents

Users of some versions of Word on Windows were experiencing glitches in mail-merge templates that use tables (i.e. quotes, invoices and receipts). We've changed the way that tables are handled in RTF files to fix this.

New grouped shoot lists

Printing from the shoot list view will now ask whether you want to print a grouped list instead of a normal list or labels. The list can be grouped by month, price list or shoot type.

Tracking number field for orders

A tracking number field has been added to the order screen so that you can record and query for courier tracking numbers.

Landline and mobile number mail-merge tags added

Mail-merge tags have been added for contacts' landline and mobile numbers on orders and payments.

Credit total added to contact screen

The contact detail screen now includes a credit total - this is the total amount of payments that have yet to be allocated to orders.

Miscellaneous new features and bug fixes

We've added extra print sizes to the popup menu that appears on price lists and orders.

Staff initials now appear on events in iCal and Google Calendar as well as the built-in calendar view.

When entering mileage, the date defaults to the date of the shoot you're adding mileage to if the shoot date is in the past. Otherwise, it still defaults to today.

The 'Category' field has been added to the Purchase list view.

When you first add a line to a quote, the tax rate set for the shoot is checked against your default tax rate. If it's different, you're warned.

When entering requests onto a shoot, the dialog has been made bigger to accommodate longer requests.

The Google Maps, label & envelope printing buttons have been added to the dialog used to create a new contact.

Negative amounts can now be allocated to orders on the payments screen. This allows you to record refunds to clients.

When printing an order with a negative total, the old "Invoice number" label is replaced with "Credit note label".

Company names are displayed when you're linking an existing address to any type of record.

Company names are updated more quickly in the top half of a contact record when being edited in the address section.

When using the sorting arrows on the price list screen, the list of products is no longer reset to the top of the list.

Multi-day appointments in iCal are no longer truncated.

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