Jetpack CRM: Product Update #5 – Sep 2017

Welcome to our 5th product update. We’ve been continuing to listen to your feedback and it’s been another solid month of updates, core refinements and bug fixes.

We are also looking for feedback on the next three things to add to Jetpack CRM, limited time survey now open. Click here to take the survey (it only takes a minute to fill in).

Jetpack CRM Core

This is our ‘free’ part of the CRM and we work tirelessly on both the free part of the CRM and our extensions. This month has been a month of stability.

We’ve added a lot of stabilising elements to the CRM this month. We cover these below and they put in place a lot of things which will help in the long term for Jetpack CRM.

Translation Ready (really, it is)

In previous releases of the Jetpack CRM core we had a language system in place. While this worked it meant people were having to do things differently than they were used to so that the plugin translated.

Even when they did that, we were getting reports of certain areas of the CRM which were still showing in English. Now our CRM is a lot more stable for our non-english users. This is great as it helps us to help serve other markets with our CRM solution.

Are you using Jetpack CRM and want to help us with translations? We have some translations but we always need more. Please do contact us if you can help with translations.

Private asset stores

Based on your feedback, we’re aware that the file-upload functionality in Jetpack CRM is basic at best. We’re all for brutally-simple functionality, but the current WordPress upload system is not offering something which make sense for asset storage for customer information.

We’ve made a start to a more managed file system this month, in the form of private asset stores. This won’t outwardly show in anyway to your users, but effectively we’ve taken the first step in securing away any file uploaded via Jetpack CRM for later access.

Extension Manager (x2)

We were starting to get support requests come in from users that were running older versions of the extensions they had active. This was a problem for two reasons:-

It was a drain on our time, since we’d fixed this and had to tell them about the update etc.
Our customers may not be getting the experience we intended them to, and secretly be unhappy

So, first up we put in place a License tab. This lets you connect your account to zerobscrm.com and it will keep you up to date about any extensions.

This was a good start, but there were still a couple of issues with the above approach

The admin notice letting users know persisted across all Jetpack screens (impacting experience)
If the notice was dismissible then users could go without knowing about an update
Users didn’t have a way of seeing what was new in the extension

So we introduced some further additions and refinements to the extension manager. Including notices you can dismiss. We’ve also built into the plugins list the usual update notifications

Through clicking the ‘view version x.x details’ it will show you what’s new before you head over to your account and download the update

Additions to the System Status page

We’ve added a few more system status checks to your System Status page (under Jetpack CRM from WordPress admin) – these include some server settings (max_execution_time, memory limit etc.) as well as directory listing for your private asset store. This is an area that’ll certainly grow as we continue to supercharge our humble crm.

Bug Fixes

We’ve also squished another raft of bugs, thanks again to eagle eyed users spotting and reporting these to us

Fixed a bug in the client portal (all pages) which caused some themes footers to overlap the content
Fixed quote acceptance now the quotes are inside the client portal
Fixed a bug where the link to CSV importer lite wasn’t shown (for certain menu types)
Fixed a similar bug which made creating a new quote template difficult if in slimline menu mode
Added helper ‘UX’ boxes in places where it might not be clear to first time users what they need to do

Extension Updates

We’ve made some updates to our existing extensions this month, again coming from user feedback we’ve

Mail Campaigns v1.0

There were some issues where if you tried to send a campaign it would stumble over after sending 10 emails. This bug has now been fixed and we’ve had happy reports from our customers

The good news is I can write you a testimonial stating that since I made the switch to you guys we have generated over $2,500 in sales.

It’s great to hear that by using Jetpack CRM and the Mail Campaigns extension our users are generating $2.5k+ (and that’s just the beginning).

CSV Importer PRO Update: Batch Tagging & Resume functionality

CSV Importer PRO got an update this month, we’re now on v1.3.2 and we’ve added Batch tagging and resuming imports! You can now upload a CSV file which has two columns: ID/Email, and a list of tags. This is a small addition, but super powerful for those who want to sling a bunch of tags into their customer database fast, or to batch edit in a spreadsheet software. Check it out in action below, or see the full docs @ CSV Batch Tagging in the Knowledge base.

… you can even batch ‘untag’ customers!

Large CSV File Imports (Power Users)

When it comes to gigantic files with many customers to import, the old version of CSV Importer Pro just wasn’t built for the task. We’ve started on a whole new version which’ll be released with our exciting new DB optimisations next month, but for now we’ve written a few modifications into v1.3.2 of CSV Importer PRO that’ll help users deal with large file imports.

First up, the extension now checks your server configuration and offers some guidance where you have low-average server settings which might impact long imports.

Secondly, we do our best to force your server to let us use the larger settings, even if you’ve not managed to set them!

Lastly, to cover all bases we’ve added in a solid (but basic) paging routine, which’ll chunk down gigantic (multiple thousand records+) files into pages and process them by the hundred. This should mean complete support for any file up to the server upload limit on your hosting (commonly 64MB+).

EVEN MORE! In the end we also crammed in another quick update to CSV importer, logging error lines and providing you a “could not import” list at the end (if any issues cropped up!)

Main Site Updates

We’ve added a cool new page to our main site. Our Jetpack CRM “Wall of Love” this is where we collect and display and feedback we’ve had about Jetpack CRM.

You can read all of our lovely feedback here and if you want to say something nice (and be included on the wall) contact us through the form here.

Extensions Coming Soon

While we’ve not been able to release any new extensions, we have a couple of extensions coming really soon. These are some big releases (automations is almost here) plus a revamped Mail Campaigns.

Automations

With our Automations system you can set up and manage triggers and actions. This really helps you automate your CRM and save you loads of time.

What might you automate though? When we release the automations extension (included for anyone who has our Entrepreneur’s bundle) we will be including our very own blueprint. Exactly how we are using it and the tools and setup that we have in place.

Make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to be notified when our Automations video guide is live.

Mail Campaigns v2.0

Our current Mail Campaigns extension does a lot, however with Mail Campaigns v2.0 this is taken to the next level. There’s been a major focus on the UX and UI of the extension as well as bringing with it a shedload of new features while also improving the core CRM at the same time for improved emailing capability.

Just like our Automations extension, watch this space. Mail Campaigns v2.0 is coming and we are super excited about it.

Fresh Paint

Pssst. With the release of Mail Campaigns v2.0 and Automation, we’re also trying to roll in a (rather major) performance improvement for the core next month, and UI improvements. You might start seeing little hints at this throughout the CRM as we do our weekly updates. We hope this batch of enhancements will mark a maturation of Jetpack, and as a result we might throw a bit of a launch.

Please do grab a bundle (while it’s at this price), or let us know if you’ve got an audience who’d like to hear about our launch 😉