As Lou noted in his last post we are focused on changing the status manager. Lou is working with our engineering team to ensure that the functional specification is defined so the engineers can make the magic happen.

Functional specifications, for those who do not know, are detailed descriptions of how the product should look and behave as users interact with it. It’s important to spend some upfront time documenting the changes in order to ensure that we build what we believe is the right solution. Our designers flesh out the look and feel to ensure that it makes sense, and our engineers code and test the changes with the goal of matching the specification. Of course, what looks great on paper does not always look good in reality, and that’s when we go back to the drawing board.

Our goal is to have most of the status manager updates available to you by the end of September. This is, to be honest, slower than I had originally desired, but is a realistic goal and one I’m excited to share with you. As things continue to take shape up I will post more details.

John

Hey all,

John wanted me to take a sec to post here in the Builder’s Blog about a project I’m currently working on.  We’re planning a major overhaul to the Status Manager tool that promoters use to notify artists of their submission status.  I’m not going to go into all the details here, but I did want to drop a hint about one feature in particular.

The way the status manager exists today it’s not possible for a promoter to asign a status to a submission without reviewing it first.  However, it is possible for a promoter to legitimately review a submission in a way that’s not tracked in the EPK Visits Tracker.  First and foremost we’ll be closing out those loopholes so all submission review activity will be accurately captured. In addition, the new status manager will include the date that your submission was reviewed with your status update.

We don’t have a launch date for the new status manager yet (still working out some final details), but as soon as we do it will be announced here.

Rock on,

Lou

The team continues with our regular weekly updates. This week’s updates were primarily focused on home page cleanup, but planning is moving ahead quickly on the transparency changes I have been discussing.

I have asked Lou to post some more information tomorrow.

-John

I spent the better part of my Saturday waiting at the garage while my car was undergoing regular maintenance. I feel it’s important to do the regular oil changes, tire rotations, and other standard maintenance; I want it to be ready when I need to use it.

Just as I count on my car to be ready when I need it, our members count on Sonicbids to be ready when they need it. That’s why you see us spending time each week fixing bugs, working to improve site performance, and adding new features. These regular updates are critical so that we can keep things running as well today, with our 150,000+ artist and 14,000+ promoters, as it did when Panos started the site years ago. Of course, unlike the tire rotation which takes place while the car is up on the lift, our changes take place while our members are working with the site, almost like performing that same tire rotation while you’re driving the car a top speed. It is great being an engineer.

In the last couple of months we have made nearly one hundred updates to the site, ranging from fixing bugs to adding new features. Please continue letting us know where we need to improve, we need your input as we continue to improve your site.

John

Hi,

While the majority of the team is heads down on some larger changes which I can discuss next week, we just released a few minor updates to the site. This include a couple of bug fixes and minor changes to our home page. Keep checking back for more updates.

John

The Sonicbids’ engineering team sits down monthly and reviews what we’re doing well as well as where we need to improve. This month we will be focused on some of our internal processes and I won’t bore you with those details.

We were pleased that we have released 16 updates to the Sonicbids’ web site in the last 5 weeks. These updates represent feature improvements and bug fixes; all were done in the name of constant product improvement. Thanks to everyone involved, our members, our members relations team, the engineers, the UI designers, and our loungineers.

John

The temperature is over 90 Fahrenheit in Boston and this easily-burned ex-Vermonter decided to come in and cool off. The family reminded me of how dangerous it can be outside in this heat and I knew they were right, I listened and I made the right choice.

As with my family, I have been listening to our members who have been asking for more transparency in the submission process. We are still working through some of the details and the exact timing but I wanted to take a few minutes to share with you a few changes you will soon be seeing.

Members will be able to:

- Gauge the volume of submissions that a gig listing is receiving
- See when their submission is viewed
- See when their submission audio has been downloaded (by promoters who review songs offline)

Keep checking back as I will be posting updates every few days.

John