Issue Tracker provides a mechanism, called workflow, which allows you to create project stages and corresponding transitions, add and modify issues, and forward them from one user to another, notifying him/her each time an issue is received. Workflow helps you automate your business process: you can track issues from start to completion and access issue history at anytime. Custom diagrams are available to visualize the corresponding workflow from beginning to end.

This kind of workflow automation can be helpful in a project of any scale: it may be as simple as writing and publishing a marketing article, or as complicated as managing an engineering project involving various levels of details.

Creating a workflow
Below is an article writing example, presented as a “Marketing Flyer” task within a “Marketing Project” run by “ABC Company”. There are three employees involved in the task: John specifies the assignments and assignees and prepares the workflow, Ann is the author and Jeff is the publisher. The task can be split into 2 main stages: writing a flyer (Authoring stage) and publishing it (Publishing stage).
These stages are shown on the picture below:

Adding details to the workflow
The stages would not be descriptive enough without allowing transitions from one stage to another. The simplest stage transition is Authoring -> Publishing; i.e. John “issues” the assignment and forwards it to Ann. Ann writes an article, and when it is ready, Jeff publishes it. In reality, article writing process involves more transitions. For example, Ann writes the draft and sends it to Jeff. Before publishing, Jeff may read the draft over and send it back to Ann with his notes and revisions. When the final draft is ready, it is sent back to Jeff for publishing. The picture of the diagram below depicts stages, all the possible transitions, and the “Complete” stage, indicating that the task is finished.

Adding issues, assignees and other details
Once there is a diagram ready, John can follow it create and add issues; i.e. specify assignment which should be done at each stage of the task and assign individuals involved. The sample below shows the possible list of issues with all necessary details:

Viewing issue history
At any time you can also access an issue history. In the picture below you can see that the issue “Write the draft” was issued by John and assigned to Ann, including attached file “Flyer description”. When Ann finished writing a draft she forwarded the issue to Jeff with her comments and attached draft. Jeff will be notified immediately:

Customizing workflow for additional complexity
Depending upon the complexity of a project and number of people involved, workflow can include more details. To extend the article writing example, imagine the situation where article writing and publishing goes thru the following stages: Authoring -> Approval -> Publishing -> Testing. The author writes an article and forwards it for approval. Publishing is done only after the final draft is approved. Once an article is published it enters the testing stage. Only after successful test results is a task complete. The picture below shows the workflow diagram that was built on our marketing flyer workflow diagram (it was saved as a template) to include all necessary details for the “Writing and publishing white paper” task:

Try using workflow to create, customize, and track projects of any size and complexity with Issue Tracker. Learn more: http://www.webasyst.net/issue-tracking.htm

Introducing two new skin templates for Shop-Script PREMIUM: Sci and Computer Store.

If you are a merchant running Shop-Script PREMIUM based shopping cart, feel free to utilize any of these templates for your online store. Download latest Shop-Script PREMIUM update from your WebAsyst Customer Center account or download directly from here.

(click thumbnail to enlarge)

View all available Shop-Script storefront templates.

Recently one of our customers, Martin Focazio, has sent us a video demonstration of the problem he had experienced with WebAsyst: using a long name (more than 20 characters) as WebAsyst User ID.

We were impressed by the way Martin has reported this issue. Thank you, Martin! Video with verbal comments is a perfect way to explain a somewhat complicated case. Usually our customers simply send us text messages or (rarely) screenshots. We encourage everybody to use a video clip, whenever possible, to report complex issues which are not easy to explain otherwise.

As for the reported problem: allowing at most 20 characters long user names is a known WebAsyst limitation. We consider this reasonable as it is much easier to remember (and type) something like John or Sue rather than MyIDtoLoginWebAsystAccount.

It often happens that working with large number of documents becomes difficult, confusing and time-consuming without a way to control, organize and share documents. One of the features of Document Depot is document access control – the system that assigns access level to documents for individual users and user groups. Document Depot offers an easy and comprehensive way to control and share documents without a chance of any accidental and unauthorized access!

Organizing files into folders
Suppose you are a user with administrative privileges and you want to organize folders to store financial and marketing documents. You, as an account administrator, will have full access to the two folders that you create: Finance and Marketing. The file tree structure in your system will look like this:

Creating user groups
In order to allow employees from financial and marketing departments access the corresponding file folders you can create two user groups: Financial Dept and Marketing Dept. You can then add as many users as you would like to the groups. The picture below shows some members of the Financial Dept user groups:

Marketing Dept user group is populated in a similar way:

Controlled folder access
It is most likely that users from Financial Dept group will require full access to the files and folders in “Finance” folder, while the content of the “Marketing” folder will be unnecessary and will need none or limited access level. The reverse applies to the Marketing Dept user group: users from the Marketing Dept need to access “Marketing” folder, but not the “Finance”. An account administrator can set the access level for each user group to the required folders.

The picture below shows access level for the Financial Dept group, which is given full access rights to the folder “Finance” and its subfolders – checkboxes corresponding to each access level are enabled. At the same time no checkboxes are turned on for the “Marketing” folder and its subfolders, which Finance Dept users cannot access.

In a similar way access level will be set for the Marketing Dept user group:

What do users see in Document Depot
After logging in to Document Depot users will be able to see only the folders, to which they are given limited or full access. The users of Financial Dept group will see “Finance” folder and its content, while “Marketing” folder and its content will not be displayed in their account.

On the other hand Marketing Dept users will see “Marketing” folder but not the “Finance” as shown on the picture below:

Possible access rights
In the example described each user group was given full access to their corresponding folders; however you can assign one of the possible access rights:

• Read – read-only access, users can view files in this folder
• Write – users can modify files in this folder
• Folder (or Full) – users can add/edit/delete files in this folder, create subfolders and modify folder properties.

Try using user groups to manage your documents and learn about other Document Depot features: http://www.webasyst.net/document-depot.htm

We are glad to announce a special discount offer:
10% off on Shop-Script PREMIUM

This is a short-term time limited offer, which will be removed without an additional notice (there is no fixed expiration date).

Discount applies for the first license purchase only. It does not apply for the purchase of additional Shop-Script PREMIUM licenses (which are fixed 50% off the base price) or Shop-Script PRO->PREMIUM upgrade.

Buy Shop-Script PREMIUM now

Anyone who maintains a contact database appreciates the importance of a well designed entry form with the exact information needed. Contact Manager™ default contact entry form includes a number of sections (e.g. Name, Phones, Business, etc.) and corresponding fields. Some fields are optional, as they may be unnecessary for some users. On the other hand, you might like to use additional fields to store information specific to your business. The solution is quite simple – field customization.

Contact Manager’s contact entry form is fully customizable – you can remove unnecessary fields or whole sections from the form, or create sections and fields tailored to your needs. Here are some examples:

Collecting subscribers
You want to place a Sign Up Form on your website to collect subscribers into your contact database. In most cases, this does not require too many fields – name and e-mail information are usually enough.

Employee records
Employee records can vary greatly from one business to another. If you intend to use contact entry form to enter employee information, your choices are unlimited. Add fields like “Date of Hire”, “Previous Employer”, etc. You can even create a section called “Contract” with fields “Contract Start Date”, “Contract Length”, “Annual Salary” and “Benefits” as shown in the picture below:

How is field customization done?
The Contact Manager Constructor makes field customization easy. With just few clicks, you can delete unnecessary sections and fields or add new ones. New fields and sections can be placed anywhere in a form, or you can rearrange locations of existing ones. Furthermore, every field can be set as “optional” or “required” when entering data, and “unique” or “allowed to be duplicated”.

You also have a choice of type of field – Text (e.g. First Name or Company Name), Date (e.g. Date of Birth), URL Address (Web Site), Numeric (Phone Number), etc. You can create a field of Image type – this field can be used to store recent photo or scanned copy of a document (driver license, passport, birth certificate, etc.). As an example of employee record described above, a “Contract Image” field can be added to store scanned copy of an employee contract.

Learn more: http://www.webasyst.net/contact-manager.htm

I believe almost every merchant who accepts credit card payments on her website has faced credit card fraud at least once - the kind of fraud where merchants are tricked by carders (criminals who use stolen credit card numbers to make purchases over the Internet).

The kind of business we do is highly attractive to carders – we sell software products, which are shipped over the Internet in a matter of seconds (there is no hard media shipping). Carders are likely to purchase stuff which they will receive instantly, before a transaction had been recognized as a fraud. That is why the whole industry of online sales related to online products delivery (e.g. software, music, electronic books, website templates and many more) is influenced by credit card fraud. 

However, no matter what kind of online business you are in, if you accept credit card payments on your website, it means that sooner or later you will have to face credit card fraud. This kind of activity has really high volumes nowadays.

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WebAsyst Mail Master allows you to personalize your outgoing e-mails by inserting recipients’ individual information (his/her names and other details) in messages addressed specifically to them. Message personalization means that you develop a custom letter by composing one message and sending it out to any number of recipients as if it were written only to each individual.

How does it work?
WebAsyst Mail Master software lets you personalize your messages by substituting information related to each recipient with a placeholder, called a variable. At the time a message is sent out, variables are dynamically replaced by the actual values stored in your contact database.

Look at this example:

What kind of individual info can I include in a message?
Any existing field of your contact database (e.g. name, address, company name, birthday, etc) can be used to personalize your message. You can even create a custom field and insert it in a message as well (e.g. hobby, last purchase, etc).

What kind of letters can I personalize?
The list of letters you can personalize by including individual details stored in your database is endless. Just a few examples are:

• holiday greetings
• newsletters
• birthday invitations
• promotion flyers
  and many more…

Why personalize messages?
Whether you are conducting an e-mail marketing campaign, distributing newsletters, or sending out greetings, message personalization can help you reach out to thousands of current and potential clients. An e-mail addressed to a recipient’s first name and containing other specific details directs your message to him/her personally, makes a recipient feel special, and adds a “human touch” to message content.

If you are looking for an easy way to manage your subscription process, try putting subscription information right on your website. You will find it to be a simple and efficient way to get more subscribers, whose contact information will be stored in your contact management database.

WebAsyst™ Contact Manager includes subscription software which allows you to create Sign-Up form, place it on your website or blog page, and collect your subscribers’ information in secure online database.

Why is it easy?
All you need to do is to let visitors fill out their contact information directly on your website or blog page. Place text entry fields with “Submit” button and all entered information will be immediately posted into your dedicated database, which is available to you anytime, from anywhere.

How is it done?
This is where Sign-Up Form comes in handy. Create your own custom information entry, known as a contact submit form, place a link on your web page or paste a piece of HTML code, and you will have a Sign-Up Form up and running in a matter of seconds.

Sign-Up Form is fully customizable.
Your form may contain just one field (e.g. E-Mail) or you can place on it as many fields as you like, e.g. First Name, Last Name and E-Mail like in the sample above. You can even create custom fields that would fit your specific purposes (e.g. Subscription Date).

Why is it efficient?
By getting contact information directly from a subscriber, you do not risking losing an email or making a typo. Subscriber information goes directly into your contact database without intervention. The way contact details appear in your database is exactly the way a contact himself/herself has entered it.

Subscribers can be organized in folders
Once your subscribers are in your Contact Manager database you can organize and manage them, i.e. create folders with subscribers and manage them any way you like (edit, copy, move or delete entries).

You may ask confirmation from subscribers
You have an option to create a permission-based subscription - enable Double Opt-In function in your Sign-Up Form. This way a subscriber will receive an email notification with a link to confirm his/her subscription.

Learn more: http://www.webasyst.net/contact-manager.htm

We have fixed a bug in our Contact Manager application.

During copy or move operation on a contact all the fields of “Date” type (e.g. Birthday), that contained dates earlier than January 01, 1970, were forced to being assigned 12/31/1969.

This problem was caused by using timestamp, the number of seconds since 00:00:00 UTC on January 1, 1970.