TECH - eDesign Grouping Functionality

HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS NEW GROUPING FUNCTION INCLUDE:

 

·         The ability to group multiple objects of the same or different type (images, text, pop-ins, art, etc.) and maintain the grouping status as desired.

·         The ability to select an individual object of the group, manipulate it as desired, and still maintain the integrity of the group.

·         Ability to manipulate all the objects in a group in unison in the same manner that individual objects are manipulated.

 

TO ACCESS THE GROUPING FUNCTION: 

 

·         Select the objects to group using either the Selection Tool to draw a box around the objects, or shift-clicking to select each object.

·         Click Objects > Group Objects from the Menu or click the Group icon in the Control Panel just below the Lock icon.  The icon will turn green when grouping is enabled

o    To edit the entire group, click on one of the objects in the group to make your edits.  A dashed green line will appear around the group.

o    To edit one object within the group, double-click on that item and make your edits.  The group will maintain its integrity while you edit the one object.

·         To ungroup the objects, Click Objects > Ungroup Objects from the Menu or click the Group icon in the Control Panel just below the Lock icon to toggle grouping off.

 

Items of note:

·         The concept of groups within groups, or nested groups, is not supported with this functionality.

·         Groups cannot be aligned, distributed, or flipped, and that functionality has been disabled for groups in the Control Panel.

·         eDesign Help will be updated to include all the Grouping functionality, and a new Grouping tutorial in next day or so!

MARKETING – Stitch Achievements Launch

The Stitch team is pleased to announce the launch of the Achievements feature. This is the first feature to allow Stitch users to be recognized and to earn points as they engage in memory-making with their school community.

 

STITCH ACHIEVEMENTS Q & A

 

Q: What will the students see?

A: Stitchers who complete various activities will be awarded points. There are also “Missions” which are a series of "Achievements" that users can complete.  With enough points, the user will “Level Up” and receive stars. Stars are an indication of the overall level/score of a Stitch user. These points and stars show on their ID card in the Photostream, My Stitch and Storyline links. There is also a leaderboard that shows the scores of the top 25 users at that school so you can tell quickly which students are most highly engaged in Stitch.

 

 

Q: What activities are considered “Achievements”?

A: The list of activities that qualify for points is subject to change, but can be seen by clicking My Stitch > Achievements(see below). The goal is to get students engaged and interacting within their school community.

 

 

 

Q: Can Achievement points be used for anything special?

A: Achievement points are simply a way to encourage involvement both in school and with Stitch, but not necessarily a way to earn tangible products. Schools might consider using them as a jumping off point for contests, recognition, etc.  They are also a great way to find yearbook interview candidates.  Who would know more about student activities than the top 10 Stitchers at the school?

 

Q: Why does my leaderboard say “Coming Soon”?

A: The Achievements Leaderboard has a time delay.  Before a leaderboard is created, Stitch must be active  and have more than one user with a score. There might be a delay of a few days while the leaderboard is initially populated.

 

Q: Why is the score slightly different between my ID card and my entry on the leaderboard?

A: Leaderboards have a 15 minute delay while scores from completing various tasks are tabulated and ranked.

 

Q: Hey! I already favorited photos and stuff! Where are my points?!?!

A: We cannot retroactively credit the scores of every single Achievement that was performed before this feature was launched. The next time a pre-existing user logs on, they’ll be given credit for the Registration activities, but no other pre-existing activities will be scored.  Don’t worry, you’ll be starting on the same level as everyone else.

 

Q: What if someone tries to cheat and do the same thing over and over for points?

A: Several of the achievements have a “cooling off period” that prevents this.  For example, you can only get the “Welcome Back” achievement for logging on once every two hours.  Otherwise, a student could put themselves on the top of the leaderboard by logging on and off over and over again.

 

Q: What if I have more questions?

A: Your friendly-neighborhood TSAs have got your back!  This is an industry first, so if they don’t know the answer, they can definitely look it up.

 

Q: What if I have suggestions for additional Achievements?

A: Email any Stitch suggestions to stitch@herffjones.com.  You even do this from the application, just click Settings (top right) > Contact Stitch.  Of course, Tech Support should be sent to your TSA’s, not the Stitch address.

 

MARKETING – Stitch Mobile App Update

The Stitch Android mobile app is ready for download from Google Play today. We have submitted the mobile app to Apple for their approval and we are currently in the review period. We will send market-wide communications once the Apple version is available for download for iTunes, but we wanted you to be aware of our progress thus far.

eDesign Security Upgrade

As recent news stories have shown, any site could fall victim to hacking. To improve user ID and password security for our customers, Herff Jones is taking proactive measures to ensure school data is safe in eDesign and Stitch. On Friday, September 21, eDesign and Stitch will be converting to a new “https” secure address. Visitors to the old address will be automatically forwarded to the new address.

Current: http://hjedesign.com            http://stitch.herffjones.com
New:      https://hjedesign.com          https://stitch.herffjones.com

Please share this information with your school IT personnel so that proper access may be granted to the new url and in the case of the school networks that have opened a specific path to eDesign down to the port level (port 80), so that they can redirect to port 443. In this case, the redirect will be blocked at your school’s firewall until the new address and port are allowed for eDesign and Stitch. Should you need any assistance or have any questions about these changes, feel free to contact our toll-free Tech Support Hotline at 1.877.362.7750. For customers who experience technical difficulty with this change, the TSA team is prepared to explain the port number and URL change.

MARKETING – Everything You Need to Know About Yearbook Critiques and Contests

Opportunities for Feedback and Recognition of Your 2012 Yearbook If you are planning to submit your 2012 yearbook for critique, it’s wise to do so before you leave for the summer. That way, the organizations can take advantage of a larger summer pool of critiquers and facilitate the efficient return of the comments. Hopefully, this would mean you’d have the critique back as school begins and could really incorporate the suggestions that are made. While there have been some changes in membership formats and deadlines, the processes are very much the same. We have compiled information on memberships, critiques and individual contests and created a single FAQ at FAQs > Awards > 2012 Contests & Critiques. Links to association sites are also found there. Or, you can head to Resources > Forms for PDF versions of the membership forms under each organization. Both CSPA and NSPA also offer competitions which recognize individual students for their work. Deadlines for NSPA contests are June 15 and CSPA encourages early submission from spring delivery books as well. Information on both the NSPA Picture of the Year, Story of the Year and Design of the Year contests and CSPA’s Gold Circle Awards (66 categories of yearbook competition) is included in the FAQ and the forms are posted with the membership forms.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT- New Training Resources

eLearning Tutorials
You now have access to a series of video tutorials on HJ Panel Builder and HJ Quick Panel. These videos can be found by going to www.yearbooks.biz > Resources (log in) > eLearning.

HJ QUICK PANEL
HJ Quick Panel (Part 1): Introduction and Initial Setup
HJ Quick Panel (Part 2): Importing Portrait CD
HJ Quick Panel (Part 3): Clean Up a Name List
HJ Quick Panel (Part 4): Print Directory Proofs
HJ Quick Panel (Part 5): Edit Names and Portraits
HJ Quick Panel (Part 6): Export Portraits

INDESIGN
HJ Panel Builder (Part 1): Portrait Options for InDesign Users
HJ Panel Builder (Part 2): Creating Panel Sections
HJ Panel Builder (Part 3): Building Panel Sections
HJ Panel Builder (Part 4): Integration with HJ Quick Panel

Portrait Options for InDesign Users
To supplement the HJ Panel Builder (Part 1): Portrait Options for InDesign Users video tutorial, you can find a printed version of the information at www.yearbooks.biz > Resources > InDesign Tips & Tricks > IDT&T-Portrait Options.

eDesign Tips & Tricks
Sections can be used to manage images, build the index and ladder, create folios and select images. This information is now in a customer-facing document: eDesign Tips & Tricks – Using Sections.

If you ever wanted to add an accented letter, a copyright symbol, an en or em dash to text, you can now easily add any one of these plus over 100 other special characters and symbols in the customer-facing document: eDesign Tips & Tricks – Special Characters.

Both documents can be found at www.yearbooks.biz > Resources (log in) > eDesign Tips & Tricks.

Photoshop Tips & Tricks
New in the www.yearbooks.biz > Resources (log in) > Photoshop Tips & Tricks section is a tutorial on preparing hand-drawn elements for use in InDesign or eDesign. You will find not only the Photoshop Tips & Tricks – Hand-Drawn Elements.pdf, but a first-ever (coming soon) Tips & Tricks video tutorial on the same topic at www.yearbooks.biz > Resources (log in) > eLearning > Photoshop.

MARKETING - Manufacturing Marvels Show to Feature Kansas City Plant

Our Herff Jones yearbook printing plant in Kansas City is going to be featured on Manufacturing Marvels. Their typical two-minute episodes spotlight American manufacturers and their products, as well as the companies' processes.

The segment featuring Herff Jones will air on Thursday, January 26 sometime between 8:25 -8:40pm EST on the Fox Business Network. Be sure to set your DVR if you're not home to see it.

I hope you'll agree that this is just another reason to know that you made the right choice in working with me and Herff Jones yearbooks.

TECH – Google’s Picnik Announcement

As you may know, eDesign has a connection to Google’s Picnik image editing site for photo editing features. Customers have been using this service to correct red eye and to add fun effects to photos.

This weekend, Picnik sent a notice to all registered users that the site would be shutting down on April 19, 2012. To read the complete announcement, visit http://blog.picnik.com/2012/01/official-announcement-picnik-is-closing/

How does this affect our customers? The timing of the closure should allow the majority of yearbook customers to finish their book this season without issue. For those customers with later deadlines, there are photo editing alternatives. These aren’t integrated with eDesign, but can be accessed directly for photo editing.

There are several options, such as:
Desktop Software:
· MS Office Picture Manager (for XP computers with Office)
· MS Photo Gallery (for Vista): The majority of Windows-based computers already come with software to crop and remove redeye.
· Apple iPhoto: Apple provides some very useful features for editing and managing photos. This software comes with every Mac.
· GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP.org): This is a free desktop program, similar to Photoshop. You may only want to recommend this software to more advanced schools.

Web-based Programs:
· Pixlr: http://www.Pixlr.com
· Aviary: http://advanced.aviary.com/tools/image-editor
· Sumo Paint: http://www.sumopaint.com/start/

How will eDesign edit photos next year? We are investigating a variety of options. Stay tuned for an update later in the year.