We've moved some of the info about recent changes to CMAssistant here. (4-2-2009)
Well, we thought nothing could be easier than 1-2-3, but it turns out that we were wrong. We now have the user feedback to confirm that this is easier:
Users of previous versions of CMAssistant 6.x: notice that the 1 2 3 buttons are gone (upper left corner) and in their place are just two buttons with plain English names: Setup and Delivs. The Setup button takes you to all of the tabs that you used to have to click the 1 and/or 2 buttons to get to. Now, all the setup tabs are in one place:
Finally, note that, in the upper left corner, there aren't two buttons, there's just one, "Delivs" - the one you actually need if you want to switch out of setup.
CMAssistant 6.3 makes it easier than ever to see at a glance what is going on with your circulation system. Today's big news is the addition of a "calc recent waste" button. Want to know where all your problem drops are? Who your overachievers are? Average waste for the last six issues? The answers are one-click and a minute or two away. Here's a partial view of the results on screen:
CMAssistant 6.3: What you see after clicking on the Calc W% button.
NOTE:
In our tests on a pub with 2500+ active drops, analysis took 3 minutes (FileMaker Pro 10, Windows XP SP3).
At this point, you might want to narrow the found set to those records with waste over 20%. They're easy to find because their waste is displayed in a red font. After narrowing down the number of deliveries you're dealing with, mark them using the new "Mark Found Set" button, then start looking at each drop's history and making changes as needed. After you edit a drop, use the Retrieve Marked Records command to get your previous found set and go to the next record. Modesty schmodesty: We think it's brilliant.
We're not trying to put you out of a job: the analysis doesn't run itself (you have to click a button) and of course CMAssistant leaves changes up to you. But you don't even have to touch the mouse to know what's changed since the last issue. CMAssistant 6.3 automatically highlights deliveries whose draw has changed since the previous issue, right on the screen. And it highlights drops with changes on the route sheets, too, to give carriers a heads up.
Amounts in yellow have gone down, amounts in green have gone up.
Here's what you see on route sheets (with comments):
The highlighting draws your attention to changed amounts.
NOTE: It is important to understand what the highlighting actually means. The highlighting is triggered by a change in the draw, not by a change in the delivery amount. If Larry's Pizza gets one delivery per issue, and you raise the delivery amount from 40 to 50 copies, then the first delivery of 50 copies will be highlighted. But if, a month later, you decide to add a restock of 25 copies, bringing the draw for Larry's Pizza up from 50 to 75, both the primary delivery and the restock delivery will be highlighted, even though the primary delivery amount in itself hasn't changed.