Announcer:
Hey, everyone, welcome to Tom’s Tips Podcast, your place for obscure movie references, cat facts, and everything MagHub related. And now, your host, MagHub Product Manager, Tom Bellen.
Tom:
Hello everyone, and welcome to Tom’s Tips Podcast. I’m your host, Product Manager for Aysling, Tom Bellen. Joined as always by my cohost, Zach Gilbert, Marketing Director for Aysling. Say hello to the podsters, Zach.
Zach:
Hello, podsters.
Tom:
I don’t know. We’ve got to think of a name for them. I don’t know, Magsters…
Zach:
It changes every time.
Tom:
Yeah, I know. We’ve got to think of something that … Maybe we’ll have a poll on what these people would like to be called. I don’t know. We’ll think about that. We’ll call them Jugheads. Is that … I don’t even know.
Zach:
That’s great. It’s from the Archies? Absolutely (interesting fact, Zach’s favorite and pretty much only comic books are Archie and Jughead digests)
Tom:
Yeah. All right. That’s it. Okay, perfect. Hey, welcome Jugheads to Tom’s Tips Podcast. This is going to be a special one because we’re talking about two releases, 9.3 and 9.4, because we haven’t done one for a little bit. It’s also exciting times because it was just after the holiday weekend, celebrating Independence Day and my birthday, so it was a big weekend for the world, probably the most exciting weekend possible. And so, I just want to know, Zach, what did you do to celebrate my birthday and sort of Independence Day?
Zach:
I mean, I wished you happy birthday, so that’s my celebration to you. We bought our first smoker, which was really cool, so my wife and I got that set up. We didn’t smoke any meat yet, but we’ll be doing that this weekend, this upcoming weekend, so we’re excited about that. Went kayaking with some friends, which was nice. I think that’s, for the most part, pretty much it.
Tom:
So, why didn’t you smoke the meat in your smoker over like the main barbecue weekend there is. Is there a reason why you didn’t do that?
Zach:
So, we got the smoker unfortunately a little bit later than we had expected to and we just didn’t have the time to actually dedicate towards it. That is why. Yeah, we got it on like a Sunday so, unfortunately, I couldn’t get around to it on the weekend like we had planned, but we still had good food.
Tom:
So, did you buy the meat already? What is the first smoke going to be?
Zach:
The first smoke is going to be a pulled pork Texas style, from Aaron Franklin. I found it on YouTube, his PBS show that he has, and we watched the old process. So, that will be my first one because I really like pulled pork. I like brisket, I like those type of things, but I think probably we are more of a pork family, I’d say.
Tom:
Yeah, I think the pork is definitely an easy one. I’m a big Aaron Franklin fan. I have the manifesto. I’ve been watching Masterclass a bit, but I’ve seen all his videos already so it’s redundant. So, pork, yeah, a simple one, pretty easy. I think it’s like wrap after … I think it’s like an eight an hour, half an hour one, but you basically just sit it there, I think it was at 250 (it’s actually 275 degrees), and then wrap it at some point. I’ve done the brisket, which, before I had kids, that’s a full day affair. That is a wake up at a 4:00 AM, get done with it at, maybe after dinner time, 15 hours or so. But I’m more of the wood guy, just got to do straight up Texas oak, salt, pepper. That’s good times, but I can’t do it anymore because I don’t have free time. I will one day, maybe.
Tom:
That’s why I got into baking. It’s a lot less likely for me to burn down my house or murder my children with fire by making … Even though I do have a torch at home, a little blowtorch for my brule-ing, and that’s a …
Tom:
But you know, for my birthday, you did give me a gift. I ran into you last night. So my wife, I mean, we were, I was telling my friends I’m considering divorce because she hasn’t seen True Lies. And I was like, “I can’t believe this. How did I marry you? What is our relationship built upon?” And you did help to find that for me, because I tried to find it, on any platform, to rent it. I was willing to rent fricking True Lies. It was nowhere, so I don’t know what’s up with that. I don’t know why.
Tom:
I’m always wondering why is it some movies you can’t rent? Is there a reason? Is that a James Cameron thing? Is it a Arnold Schwarzenegger thing? I don’t know. But anyway, you gave that to me. I haven’t able to watch it yet, but thank you for my birthday gift.
Zach:
Anytime.
Tom:
True Lies, so I definitely look forward to … But what is up with that? Why is True Lies not available?
Zach:
I’m assuming it’s licensing.
Tom:
So, I don’t get it, but you know what one thing is totally available? Is our release, well, at least one of them so far, 9.3 is totally available and 9.4 will not go the route of True Lies because that will be available next week. And there’ll be no … Well, there’s the licensing, you have to have a license to Maghub to get that. But you will all have access to it, and we’re excited about both the 9.3, 9.4 items. It’s, in many ways, our closing of the first part of the digital media items, like sending our kid off to school to learn more things, get out there to get more feedback wasn’t quite ready yet.
Tom:
But in 9.3 it was a transition release. We did a lot of things, started to clean up supports for digital media items. Again, we did some things of adding it to other, some of our screens and different configurations for being able to update slot media products with more flexibility, being able to track inventory through email notifications. We added it to things like the ticket tab and the customer company page. We updated some more labels to make it more consistent with that. We made it easier to pass things over to GAM with more details if you’re using the Google Ad Manager integration. So, we did a lot of those types of things in 9.3.
Tom:
We also made some updates to subscription area, added some more restrictions based on public publisher items. I know one thing that I think has been very helpful, probably the most requested item is being able to get that reset password a lot faster. It’s been an issue and everyone was wondering why it wasn’t working and pretty sure that was the problem of people just clicking too quick to reset password. 9.3 was the transition into…
Tom:
As we get into your 9.4, we’re a little more sexy release features, if you will. I think one of the big things is we’re updating the client portal to support digital media items. It’s going to work very, very similar to how the other ad items work as far as its own proofing details on it. But, for digital media, because you can have multiple ad sizes, potentially, it gives the customer the ability to add their URL with a specific ad size. So, let’s say you have, they want multiple 300 by 250 ads. They can put multiple items on there. Or if you have, again, different banner sizes they can submit, they can submit that in more detail to you.
Tom:
And one of the big things, too, is starting to actually show within the client portal, some of the deliver details directly from Google Ad Manager. To start with this, if you are using that integration, somebody logs in and they see something they bought from you, they can see the total of basically the impressions and clicks that that’s been delivered and it, again, pulls it nightly from GAM. I know a lot of our customers create custom reports, send that off to let people know how it’s going. The idea as we evolve, this is more of the portal should be the place where your customers go to do all that work with you, whether it’s in the proofing, the approval of orders, seeing how the ad’s been running, obviously the payments, all that stuff in that area. So, it’d be great to get feedback on that. We’re looking at other ways we can improve the portal to in the future, try to get more usage out of it because obviously there’s a lot of good things that could be used there to help through customer service.
Tom:
We’ve also added our digital media items to the packages and proposals, so if you do want to create a package that will have those new newsletter items, those impression items, you can do that now. Again, before it was just to the main orders, but now we’re adding there. We’ve also, again, added a way to migrate. If you have, most common way, you can do this with not just newsletters, but the most common thing we found with the slots is people want to move their newsletter sales to slots. But it’s always tricky because, “I’ve had these future sales and invoice and how do I transition?” We’ve had a lot of those different conversations.
Tom:
What we’ve added is a pretty simple where you basically select this pub and this issue and this size, and based on the issue dates, we will be able to map those over to a slot product. And so, that tool is in there so should help a lot of people who are on the fence. I know people have been waiting to see how it all flushes out. I think this is a release where we feel very comfortable with everything. Now, you can start moving your data over and really starting to take advantage of it. So, please obviously reach out if this is something you want to get more into it in the system take advantage of it.
Tom:
But along with that, I mean, we’ve also continued to work on some of the things with the dashboard. Our next release, we’re planning on doing the more flushed out of all the things on the dashboard, it’s a priority. But projects has been something that’s gotten more use, so we actually created a project widget, so if you want to see all the open tasks, milestones, you can see that now using the new dashboard and that widget on that side.
Tom:
We’ve also added the ability to group artwork reminders for people. So, if you have three or four different items out that you’re sending from, whether it’s the production port or digital media production port, you’ll have an option to send a bulk email. It has its own template and it’s going to group everything that one artwork contact will receive instead of getting three or four. They get one with a table listing everything that is due that case.
Tom:
And then, we’ve cleaned up too, some of our admin menu. This has been a pressing item for a while. We’ve updated our menus. We’ve tried to make it more streamlined and clear where things are in the menu. Sometimes it’d be hard to find, but now anything involving the user is in the user section instead of user and organization. It’s also cleaned up some of the permissions because sometimes you’d have to have access to something called billing sales setup to be able to update lead status. So, there’s some of those things in there that are historic that we cleaned up, so it should be easier to use the admin menu.
Tom:
We always know that’s a challenge because, hey, right now, you know exactly where it is. It might not have made sense when you first went there, but you know where it is and now we’ve moved it. I always do recommend that is all in the global search. You can always just type in what you’re looking for. It’ll pop right up and he would go right there. We do think it’s a better process. The permissions should be a lot clearer. We can do more with that in the future. If you’re really annoyed with us, you can always type it in. We’re sorry, we know it’s not … We think it’s a good change in the future, even though it’s sometimes doesn’t seem like it at the moment.
Tom:
And another big change that we’re making and we think we’ll make again, a lot of help right now and down the line, is how we put goals in. Instead of very granular goals, where we’ve had it where you put in a goal, basically, on a individual service or an individual issue. At that level, it rolls up to the publication or the service category, and it can be labor intensive because you had to go in each user, click on the issue, put it in and then go back, go to the next user. What we’re doing and starting this with our product categories is you go to the category, so let’s say newsletters, and then you’ll get a list. If it’s just one category, you’ll just get the numbers and type it in instead of individual services underneath it. If it’s a digital media item, you’ll get a list of all the publications that are underneath that category.
Tom:
So, let’s say again, it’s newsletters and you have four different publications that you run newsletters for. You can enter the goals for each of those pubs on one screen, you could clone those goals to other user, you can bulk update it as well. And then, that will roll up to a category goal and will also show up in a publications goals report as well.
Tom:
Reaching out to some customers who do more weekly based goals, and we’re going to think of how we want to handle it with issues, but it’d be the same idea where we go into more of a monthly amount per pub or per category than as granular as we do. We know you lose some things with the granularity, but I think you get a lot more flexibility and ease of use with this method, so that’s something we’ve started, will be in this release and, yeah.
Tom:
That’s a lot of things that have been going on with 9.3, 9.4, with a lot of items in the digital media world. Zach, I don’t know if there’s anything in particular that really stands out to you on the last couple of releases.
Zach:
That is a lot of stuff, Tom.
Tom:
I’m going to take a break.
Zach:
I would probably say, the quality of life improvements, I really enjoy. Moving around the menu items I think really does help. I also think the password reset is a really nice feature, just making it quick and easy. It just really helps. I jump on live chat on our corporate website and a lot of times people have to wait for it or sometimes they struggle with it, so I think that’s a really big help for them.
Zach:
I am looking more towards the new dashboard. I know it’s available for people to use. I’ve been playing around with it with Metabase, the integration for data warehouse. I think that’s really cool allowing you to jump in the data and the reports without being a computer engineer is nice. You can really create the reports that you need. So, for the marketing role in a meeting, lead statuses, new contacts, stuff like that, it’s really helpful.
Tom:
Zach and I have been working on that a bit, too, of creating some dashboards for particular users. I think once we have some interesting things we can share with those. So, you’re interested in the Metabase, but it gets similar. It’s daunting to get into there. “There’s always tables. How do you make those reports?” We’re going to try and work as a option to create some that we think would make sense for a lot of people. And again, it’s something that, from a development standpoint, it’s a lot easier for us to add things into that structure. There’s some open requests, talking to Zach and looking at our other customers, that we want to do.
Tom:
Might try and do in this release for the data warehouse to expand it because we simply add that. Instead of us having to build or rework entire query, an entire pacing report in our system, which can be daunting sometimes, sometimes it seems real simple, but when you look under the covers, it gets scary. And so, we’re going to do more of that, just try and share, especially as we basically remove the current dashboard and replace it with this one. It just gives us a lot more flexibility, stuff like that.
Tom:
One of the other things we’re doing, and if you were on our webinar or interested in talking to the community, is some of the other clean up usability sides of it, like as Zach said, the daily pains, some UX and UI initiatives we’re looking into doing. We think all of them are valuable, there’s four that we posted, but if you’re interested, we do have a page to get to and share that, maybe, through our community to vote on what we should look into doing next.
Tom:
Again, we think all of them are really good, would really help. We’re really just trying to prioritize some of those items for some of our upcoming releases, which are going to include the dashboard and also looking at the projects a little bit and doing that side of it. So yeah, very exciting, fun things to do over the summer and the summer when you’re supposed to go to the movies and go to summer blockbusters, but you can’t. I don’t even know, Zach, do you remember the last time you’ve been to a movie theater?
Zach:
Good question.
Tom:
Or, thinking of what movie would entice you to go to a movie theater. What upcoming film would you be like, “I would go to the theater and see that”?
Zach:
That’s also a good question. My wife and I are huge into movie theaters. We used to go probably once a week to a movie, her and I, so not doing that has been a unique experience. But safety, security, it’s all more important right now, obviously, so although we do miss it, we wouldn’t really take that risk.
Zach:
Regarding new movies. Oh man, I’m trying to think of new ones that are actually coming out that actually piqued my interest. The Marvel movies coming out look okay. I’m not as into Marvel as some of our coworkers. I know, it’s a shocker. Actually, I am, which is amazing, and anyone that hears this is going to be amazed, is I am very much so looking forward to the new Wonder Woman. You know I am not a DC fan, so make that known. Sorry, Warner Brothers. But I am, without a doubt, a fan of the 80s and this one’s supposed to be all featured around the 80s. Similar to Captain Marvel, it’s all 80s themed and I’m stoked for it. So, I’m on board for that one.
Zach:
And then, I’m trying to think if there’s anything else. I think that’s pretty much it. I’m looking forward to the new season of Stranger Things, honestly. That’s what I want to see the most, and I can watch that from the comfort of my home.
Tom:
Because of the 80s.
Zach:
Oh, absolutely. I mean, that’s the only reason. The soundtrack to every Stranger Things, it’s what always drew me in and they just gripped me.
Tom:
I think, actually, I remember reading something about that time period and one of the reasons why it seems to be happening more, and it’s not just because necessarily nostalgia, but I’d seen that, for people writing films right now and dealing with suspense and all stuff, society changed so much with the cell phone that a lot of those moments where you’re getting chased down by somebody won’t work anymore unless you go and shoot a film in the time before cell phones. Because it’s like, imagine if you’re in a horror film and someone’s chasing you. “Well, I’m just going to pick up my cell phones and call the cops.” So, sometimes you’ll notice some movies where like all of a sudden someone’s phone gets destroyed and things. It’s very convenient that that happens because obviously the 80s make it perfect for that. So, basically, it should be all movies make in the 80s so we can avoid the technology side of it. I did remember reading about that. That’s why it’s a common theme now. You see films in like that time period so they basically write out that stuff.
Tom:
I’m really excited to see Tenet. I’m a huge Christopher Nolan fan, I basically love all his movies. I think they’re forcing that to be in theaters, so that’s the movie I’d probably go in to take a look at. I like all his stuff. I’m sad that Hans Zimmer’s not doing that, and I was reading about that. I think like a lot of people are like, “What happened? What did Christopher Nolan and Hanson Zimmer … Why, why?” Apparently, it’s because he’s doing Dune, so Hans, Zimmer’s doing Dune. I’m not a Dune person, but I can understand why he would want to do that as an Epic film. So. If anyone’s worried about that, Hans Zimmer …
Tom:
I’ve been watching his Masterclass recently, too, on Hans Zimmer. Not that I’m ever going to write movie music, I just find it interesting to hear him, someone talk about it. He’s very good. He’s just talks about the simplicity of it. He’s talking about how he wrote the theme for Interstellar and Christopher Nolan basically didn’t tell him anything about the movie. He just gave him a poem about a father and that’s how the initial small little theme for Interstellar came out.
Zach:
Did you not like Dune, the original Dune, the 1980s Dune?
Tom:
To be honest, I’ve never watched it and I haven’t read. So deal with that, Zach. Just take that up your craw and whatever. Should I read it or should I just watch the movie?
Zach:
Yes, to both.
Tom:
Is that both? Okay. I have-
Zach:
And play the PC games as well, because they really add to the environment.
Tom:
I can’t do that. I have been doing a lot more. I shouldn’t say, reading. I’ve been doing a lot of Audible listening more recently, especially in trying to commute a little bit more, have one more time. I’ve actually started, I finished the first part of the Broken Earth series. I don’t know if you know what that is, but it’s a sci fi series by N. K. Jemisin. It’s very good. I finished the first book. It was part of my friend’s book club. That turned into basically a third of the people actually reading the book, and so now it’s over. Maybe I can do Dune after that. I have a couple of other books I want to do, but I could do …
Tom:
Speaking of movies though, getting to my trivia, we haven’t got to the trivia, even though that Hans Zimmer one was pretty good. In getting to movie theaters, it’s obviously been very interesting with all the things going on. If you look the number one box office films, it reminds me of these are probably what it looked like in the 1905s, whenever a movie was a nickel, because if you look at the top grossing, it’s like $30,000. Some people are going to movies still, but obviously not quite a bit.
Tom:
I was reading an interesting story, that there was a group of people who basically found a way to become the number one grossing film in the United States with a 29 minute movie with a $0 budget. I believe it was all shot through Zoom, and they made this movie, I think rented out a theater and this little group of people with a $0 budget, literally $0, became the number one movie at the box office in the United States. So the trivia question to send to our, @Maghub Twitter to get a prize (new respondents only please), what is the name of that movie that was number one in America with a $0 budget?
Tom:
One positive thing, getting into my Cat Facts, because again, that’s the only reason people listen to this podcast, is if you’re a fan of the podcast … Which obviously you are because you’re listening so you’re obsessed with it and you’ve listened to every episode, probably multiple times looking for the hidden meetings, which there are, obviously. You probably know that I have a cat who I despise and is up for sale if somebody wants to buy him, you’re more than welcome to, named Bentley who became diabetic, I think, when we started this. That might actually have been my first trivia. Not only can cats get diabetes, they can actually revert. So, since this time he now no longer has diabetes, so that’s good. Saves a pile of change.
Tom:
But you know what else? Cats can require dental surgery, which can cost hundreds of dollars, and that was my other cat. So, Cat Facts, cats are very expensive and have all kinds of diseases that you get to deal with, and it’s terrible. But anyway, if anyone really wants to buy my cat and can promise a good home, I will totally ship him to you in a box. I’ll poke even one air hole in it.
Tom:
Well, Zach, if there’s anything you want to tell our Jugheads, I think that was the name, before we end this podcast?
Zach:
Nothing comes to mind other than clearly, Tom is joking, so he will not ship his cat. The cats are fine.
Tom:
I said an air hole.
Zach:
Let’s make that clear now.
Tom:
No, I’m not going to, I’m not going to harm my cats. There’s no cat harm. I think like any person who has owner of cats, there are times when they are very frustrating to you, the things you have to do. I mean, all they do, all I do is clean up the poop and serve them food, and they yell at me at the worst times. And then they vomit on things when you really can’t clean it up and you have babies who are crawling all over and you’d go clean vomit. Then your baby’s going to vomit. Stressful time.
Zach:
How happy are you to be back in the office, Tom?
Tom:
It’s an interesting thing. I started back in the office recently because a daycare opened, and it’s funny when he goes to show you daycare is usually a requirement to work, but it’s not necessarily right now. And I know some friends, you have the choice. Do you go to daycare or keep it there? I’m basically sacrificing over well or at the money I make just to be back in the office and send my kids to daycare. So, how happy I am? I paid for the privilege to be back here. That’s how happy I am to be here.
Zach:
Well, thanks for basically not answering my question, but all right.
Tom:
I’m happy to be back in the office. That’s how I am.
Zach:
There we go.
Tom:
Because I paid money to be back here is what I’m telling you. I don’t have to be here. I’m paying to be here. That’s how happy I am.
Zach:
All right. Well, on that note, that’s all I have. I really don’t have any additional comments for this podcast. Plus it’s already like 20 something minutes already, so I feel like it’s probably gone on a long enough.
Tom:
All right, well, I appreciate everyone’s time. Thank you, Jugheads, for listening, and till the next time, have a … I need a call off line too. I got to think on that for next time. Latress on the menjay.
