What's new in CLZ Music?
This is a recommended security update:
- 2FA support: if you have 2FA enabled on your CLZ Account, the app will now ask you for the 2FA authenticator code when you log in to the app
- Several other changes to better secure your account
- New “Change email address” link in the CLZ Account screen
Fixed on Android:
- On startup, the collection tab-bar on startup could be blocked by Android navigation bar
Today we bring you a nice improvement for Adding Albums by Barcode.
Sometimes, when you scan the barcode of a multi-disc album, you only find the discs listed separately in the results. Annoying, because you of course want one album entry, with multiple discs. And now you can!
You can now checkbox the found discs to combine them int a multi-disc album! You can do so by clicking on the little < dropdown icon to "show all the found discs", and checkbox the discs you wish to include in your multi-disc album: Read more
Adding albums by scanning barcodes is THE most important feature of the app, so we will never stop trying to make the barcode scanner better and better 🙂
In today’s 9.5 update, we bring three improvements to the barcode scanner:
- Now reads barcodes much faster and in the entire camera screen!
- New scanning feedback shows where it “sees” a barcode
- New Type Barcode tab for manual barcode entry and support for external USB/BT scanners
A nice update for your CLZ Music Web software today.
We improved the Add Albums screen to make it more compact, better looking and a bit snappier to use.
On top of that, the process for combining discs into multi-disc albums is much better now.
Here’s what’s new:
- Search results now show the number of discs
- The Preview panel on the right has been replaced with a nice and quick “Confirm” popup, that just slides in from the bottom.
- Improved process of combining discs into a multi-disc album
Big changes this week, as we have changed our company name!
We were previously called “Collectorz.com”, but as everyone called us “CLZ”, we figured, let’s go with the flow and officially rename the company to just “CLZ”!
But that’s not all. This week also brings:
- a new company logo and styling
- a completely new website at clz.com (previously www.collectorz.com)
- new names for our web-based software, previously called Connect, now simply CLZ Comics Web, CLZ Movies Web, CLZ Games Web, etc…
- new app icons for all CLZ apps!
A nice update for CLZ Music again, in which we did improvements to several areas of the app.
- Re-design of the Sort Order screen
- New Date and Month folder options for all date fields
- Statistics: new look for Most Recent lists
In today’s update, we improved the behaviour after searching using the search box top right.
Previously, when you selected an album from the “suggestions dropdown”, the software would take you to a separate full screen page showing the details of that album. This behaviour was a bit annoying as it would take you away from the main screen and you needed to click “Back” on the top left to get back to it. Also, the main screen would then show you the full collection again and would be scrolled back at the top again. Meh..
v9.0: Collection tabs, better Add Albums screen, easy people filtering
A big update v9.0 update for your CLZ Music app today, with many new features and improvements!
Here’s the full list of What’s New:
- New collections tab-bar: easily switch between collections using tabs at the bottom
- Improved Add Albums screen:
- Quick “Confirm” pop-ups, instead of full screen Preview pages
- Search results now also show the number of discs, making it easier to spot multi-disc album entries
- Improved process of combining discs into a multi-disc album
- Adding by Barcode: Faster camera scanner for scanning barcodes
- New: tap a person name in details to show all your albums with that person
A big update for your Music Connect web-based software today, which is all about pick list fields.
Pick list fields (and the pick lists behind them) are an important part of your music database. These are the fields in the Edit screen that let you pick from a list of possible values, with that list being fully configurable by you the user.
Examples of pick list fields are Location, Owner, Genres and Tags (both multi value pick list fields), but also Artist and Label.
Now, a lot of the questions we usually get about Music Connect are related to pick list fields and can usually be answered with:
“Just use the Manage Pick Lists screen”
Renaming Locations, Merging duplicate Artists, fixing artist sort problems, fixing typos in musician names, etc… it is all done in the Manage Pick Lists (MPL) screen. An important and powerful screen, but… not so easy to find if you don’t know where to look or don’t even know what to look for.
With today’s Connect update, we are making this a lot easier: We have improved the Manage Pick Lists screen itself AND made it more accessible / discoverable:
In short:
- Improved Manage Pick Lists (MPL) screen
- Easy access to the MPL screen right from the folder panel
- Refreshed Edit Comic screen, with better pick list fields and direct MPL access
Thanks to our translator Peter Stickler, the Connect web-based software is now available in Swedish!
If you are interested in translating Connect to your language, let us know!
The main translations we are looking for at the moment are:
- Norwegian
- Italian
Thanks to our translator Frank Silas Kesia Jensen, the Connect web-based software is now available in Danish!
If you are interested in translating Connect to your language, let us know!
The main translations we are looking for at the moment are:
- Norwegian
- Swedish
- Italian
Here’s the latest results from our endeavour to improve the UI/UX of all Connect features and screens. Today, we made further improvements to both the “Manage Collections” tools and the new Edit Multiple tool.
The Edit Multiple feature is an efficient tool for making changes to multiple (or all) of your database entries in one go. It has been part of the Connect web-based software for many years (since May 2015!). For the CLZ mobile apps, this “batch editing” ability was introduced much later, in July 2020.
However, when we did that, we were forced to completely re-design the feature’s user interface, to make it work well on the small phone screen. And a strange thing happened: the UI/UX we ended up with, turned out be much better than the original Edit Multiple design of the Connect web-based software and the Collector desktop software 🙂
So today, we are bringing that new Edit Multiple setup to the Connect web-based software!
This update is all about the Pre-fill screen, you know, the screen that appears when adding items and lets you pre-fill fields while adding, like Location (= Storage Box for comics), Owner, Purchase Date/Store/Price, etc…
This Pre-fill screen was introduced in Dec 2020, with a fixed set of fields. Then a year later, in March 2022, it was made completely user configurable, so that *you* could choose which fields appeared on the screen.
This screen turned out to be a popular tool, but we’ve seen one problem with it:
Sometimes, users pre-fill a field for a specific movie (e.g. Purchase Price or Quantity), then forget to CLEAR it for the next items they add. Causing lots of items to be added with that same field set incorrectly.
So today, we are making another tweak to the Pre-fill screen:
A lot of the questions we get about CLZ Music can usually be answered with:
“Just use Manage Pick Lists”
Renaming locations, Merging duplicate artists, fixing artist sort problems, fixing typos in labels, etc… it is all done in the Manage Pick Lists screen. An important and powerful screen, but… not so easy to find if you don’t know where to look or don’t even know what to look for.
With this update, we are trying to fix all that. We have made the screen much more accessible / discoverable AND we have made several improvements to the MPL screen itself.
This update is all about the Pre-fill screen, you know, the screen that appears when adding items and lets you pre-fill fields while adding, like Location, Owner, Purchase Date/Store/Price, etc…
This Pre-fill screen was introduced in Jan 2021, with a fixed set of fields. Then a year later, in Jan 2022, it was made completely user configurable, so that *you* could choose which fields appeared on the screen.
This screen turned out to be a popular tool, but we’ve seen one problem with it:
Sometimes, users pre-fill a field for a specific album (e.g. Purchase Price or Quantity), then forget to CLEAR it for the next albums they add. Causing lots of albums to be added with that same field set incorrectly.
So today, we are making another tweak to the Pre-fill screen:
- The Pre-fill screen now highlights filled fields in orange, so that they stand out more.
- Also, we added a “Clear” button, to quickly clear all Pre-fill fields.
Fixed
- iOS: iPad: Year folders: the wrong year folder could be selected sometimes.
The Link with Core screen is a tool in the CLZ Cloud site and the Connect web-based software that is used to link entries with CLZ Core. E.g. items that you added manually, or items that you imported. The Link with Core tool is mostly used by users coming from other software and are switching to CLZ.
Today’s update is a “behind the scenes” update, to make the Link screen faster and to improve search results.
Improved
- The search now uses our elastic search engine, giving you better and more meaningful results for your unlinked items.
- Better uses of indexes and the elastic engine makes everything much faster too!
On top of that, we’ve improved the search results in the Link with Core screens for some Connect flavours specifically:
- Comic: Now takes series popularity into account.
- Movie: Now now also digs into our vast library of “alternative” and foreign titles for movies to obtain a result that matches your movie.
- Music: Now also uses Discogs for finding results.
What is Linking with Core?
Connect is built around our central online database: Core. All factual data and cover images are used and shown directly from Core. If you have been using the Add screen to catalog your items, then most, if not all of your items will already be linked to Core.
If you’ve added some items “manually” or if you’ve imported a list from CSV (or from somewhere else), there will not be a lot of data in them.
To automagically fill in data for your items, the items need to be linked with Core. If you have unlinked items, you can link them to Core using the Link with Core screen which is found in the menu top left!
Earlier this year, we updated our Connect software to make it fully localizable / translatable. Shortly after, we went live with Dutch and German version of Connect.
Today, after the hard work of three loyal CLZ users, three more language options went live on the site:
- French
- Spanish
- Hungarian
Thank you, Philippe, Rafael and Pető!!
In this update, we try to tackle a problem that we often see in our support system:
Users changing phones without updating their CLZ Cloud first. Or even worse, without even having a CLZ Account yet.
Which of course cause data loss (and a lot of sadness).
So in this version, we are trying to create more awareness of:
- The importance of creating a CLZ Account, so that you can Sync with CLZ Cloud.
- The importance of keeping your CLZ Cloud up-to-date by actually Syncing with CLZ Cloud.
New Sync button in main screen
When not in sync with CLZ Cloud, a new Sync button will appear on the main screen, above the Add button. This way you will always know if there are still items to sync up to CLZ Cloud or down from CLZ Cloud (even when you use auto-sync).
(Don’t like this button? In the Settings screen, switch OFF the setting that says “Show on-screen sync button”)
New “Sync with Cloud!” bar when not logged in
When using the app while not logged in to a CLZ Account, a new bar will appear at the bottom of the main screen that says “Sync to CLZ Cloud for an online backup”.
Hopefully that will help prevent future data loss.
(Don’t like this bar? In the Settings screen, switch OFF the setting that says “Show backup suggestion bar”)
New 5-album “Demo Mode” for new users
For new users who just downloaded the app, we introduced a new “Demo Mode” that lets you add 5 albums before committing to the actual 7-day free trial subscription.
Fixed on Android:
- Edit Comic: When you’ve edited something, and you tapped “Next”, it would skip an item.
Continuing with our quest to revamp and re-design features and screen of the Connect web-based software. Today we took on the Import from CSV/TXT screen.
Connect and CLZ Cloud users often ask us about printing or exporting only a part of their collection, e.g. “how do I print just my wish list?” or “how do I export a list of just one artist?”.
Now, this was possible, but it took a few steps that were not intuitive for many users. You had to:
- Make the selection in the main screen first, e.g. by using folders, the collection status filter or the search box
- Checkbox all albums in the selection, using the checkboxes in the list
- Then use the Print or Export button on the special blue action toolbar above the list
With today’s update, we are making this a lot easier. And while we were at it, we also freshened up the user interface of the Print to PDF and Export to CSV screens.
Great news for all our German-speaking customers: starting today the Connect web software is also available in German!
Our programmers have been working for months to make the Connect software available in other languages (other than English). This meant:
- Make the Connect software translatable, to ensure that all interface texts come from a translation database.
- Making a nice and easy translation tool for our translators, so that they can translate all texts efficiently and also maintain the translation when new functionality is added.
- And of course, to do the actual translation.
And today we can take the next step: Connect is now available in German!
A huge update for your CLZ Music mobile app today, which introduces a powerful feature for browsing and filtering your music collection: using multiple levels of folders.
Previously, it was only possible to use one level, so either Artist folders OR Format folders OR Genre folders OR Location folders, etc… But starting with this version, you can use nested folders, so for instance, use Genre folders, then within each genre folder have Artist folders.
A nice update for all Connect users who use multiple collections, especially for those who have a LOT of collections.
New in this re-design:
- Single row tab-bar. No more lost screen estate caused by multiple rows of tabs.
- Got more tabs than fit on screen? Scroll the bar horizontally.
- Or use the next/prev buttons on the right to jump page by page.
- Alternatively, click the menu icon on the bottom left to pick a collection from a menu.
- The menu also provides quick access to the Manage Collections screen.
- Drag tabs to change their order.
- Double click a tab to rename a collection.
A big project our web-dev team has been focused on the past few months is making our Connect web-based software available into other languages. A huge project that consists of:
- Making the software translatable, basically ensuring that ALL UI text is retrieved from a translation database.
- Creating a nice and easy web-based CMS tool that translators can log in to and translate text, preview in Connect, etc…
- Doing the actual translations of all UI texts.
And today we can finally show the first results: Connect is now available in Dutch!