I know, I know. With Christmas just around the corner, we’re not setting a very good example – letting everyone see the new ScreenSteps Live before it’s officially available is equivalent to showing somebody their present before Christmas. It’s shameful.

But we’re just too excited!

It’s just so gosh-darn good looking and fun to play with, that we’re going to host a webinar on Wednesday, 12/12/2012 at 12 pm EST to take an in-depth look at the new features, workflows, and possibilities of ScreenSteps Live.

Here’s What’s Coming!

Is it kosher to give a sneak peek of a sneak peek? We’re not sure – but here goes.

Improved workflow

• Revision notes
• Automatic revision storing
• Rollback to previous versions
• Link to any article in your space

Better collaboration

• Assign articles to authors
• Track article status
• Send revision notes to other authors
• Check articles in and out

New tools

• One-offs for quickly sharing one-to-one articles
• Activity history
• Nested steps
• Align annotations
• Auto-number steps
• Add SEO information to articles

So there you have it – a sneak peek of a sneak peek. Hopefully it was enough to get you through until next week’s webinar when we walk you through all of these and more (oh yeah, there’s plenty more where that came from).

Hope to see you there!

We are getting close to having Clarify ready for release so please keep the feedback coming!

Save Time. Reduce Frustration. Clarify Your Communications.

Download a FREE Trial >

I run a bootstrapped company, Blue Mango Learning Systems. I am a CEO, web developer, chief marketer, accountant, head of business development, customer support agent and all around fire extinguisher. In addition to my work roles I am a husband, father to 4 very energetic young boys, church volunteer, runner and basketball player. My life is a little busy.

Time is my most precious commodity and I am willing to bet it is yours as well. Clarify is designed to give you back your time by helping you communicate more clearly with less effort.

We believe that three attributes make up a perfect communication. We designed Clarify so that it would be easier to create communications with these qualities. We like to call them the three Be’s of Clarify.

The Three Be’s of Clarify

1. Be organized
2. Be brief
3. Be clear

Be organized

Clarify helps you organize your thoughts

The only thing worse than being a disorganized thinker is having to read an email from a disorganized thinker. Sometimes in our effort to respond quickly to a message we don’t take time to organize our response. Clarify helps you focus your response. With Clarify you break your response down into sections, each communicating a single idea.

Be brief

Clear and brief. This document communicates a lot with just 66 words and took under 3 min. to create.
See example

Being organized doesn’t mean being verbose. Nobody has time to read lengthy emails. Clarify isn’t designed for writing your next novel or even your next software manual. Clarify is designed for communicating a handful of thoughts and moving on. By making it easy to add images to your communications Clarify helps you communicate more information with fewer words.

Be clear

Text-only communications are inherently ambiguous. When you describe something in words, your reader has to create a mental picture of what you are describing. Their mental picture will most likely be very different than what you intended. Adding pictures to the communication adds clarity and reduces confusion.

Changing the Way We Communicate

For the past several weeks, as we have prepared it for release, I have incorporated Clarify into my daily workflow and it is really paying off. My communications are shorter, better organized and clearer. Most importantly, the clarity of my communications is giving me back precious minutes and hours each day.

We have a new page where you can learn more about Clarify or download the public beta. We think it is going to totally change the way you communicate.

Save Time. Reduce Frustration. Clarify Your Communications.

Download a FREE Trial >

• How to optimize your documentation for customer support
• How to create “just in time” documentation
• How to integrate ScreenSteps Live with Zendesk to make your support agents more productive

You can register for the webinar here:

Register for webinar

We hope to see you there.

By the way, if you want to get your team to fill up your Zendesk knowledge base with great content in less time, please take a look at our product, ScreenSteps. It lets your team collaborate on visual documentation and automatically publish it to Zendesk.

1. Stage 1: Awareness (Video, Blogs)
2. Stage 2: Interest (Video, Screencast)
3. Stage 3: Investigation (Screencast)
4. Stage 4: Implementation (ScreenSteps)

If you have watched the webinar then you will remember that we felt like we had some good media for stages 2 and 4, but we have been missing a lot in stage 3. In preparing for our ScreenSteps 2.8 update we realized that our media for stage 2 wasn’t that great either. It was a little too specific. It focused on one aspect of the program but didn’t expose users to all that the product could do.

Since we were already working on updating our site for the 2.8 release we decided to redo all of our media as well. You might be interested in what we did.

Stage 2 Video – Interest

The goal of stage 2 is to create a video or screencast that moves the prospective customer to stage 3. That is all it needs to do. It shouldn’t be instructional in nature. It doesn’t need to be a support tool. It just has to generate enough interest that the customer wants to investigate the product in more detail. To do this the video needs to meet the following criteria:

• It needs to be short
• It needs to give a broad overview of the application (large scope, low detail)

To create our stage 2 video we used Screenflow, Keynote, Garageband and YouTube. The video shows up on the main ScreenSteps landing page. You can see an example of it here:

This was the hardest video to create. It took several days with a lot of edits and a lot of revisions.

Stage 3 Screencasts – Investigation

After watching the video we want to allow the visitor to investigate the product. To do this we set up a separate “Features” section of our website. On the left there is a menu that lists the features we are looking to highlight. For most of the features we include a short screencast highlighting that feature.

The purpose of this material is to make the visitor want to implement the feature. We aren’t worried about giving them enough information at this stage that they could implement the feature. Just enough to make them want to.

These videos need to meet the following criteria:

• One video per feature (more detail, less scope)
• It still needs to be short

These videos were actually very easy to create. By focusing on individual features the scripts are easy to write and the video is relatively straight-forward to record.

Here are a couple of examples of our feature videos:

• Capturing Images
• Annotating Images
• Replacing Images
• Creating Manuals

Stage 4 ScreenSteps Docs – Implementation

Finally, if the visitor has arrived to stage 4, we need to give them the tools they need to implement the vision we sold to them in stages 2 and 3. We didn’t change what we were doing here. We use ScreenSteps and ScreenSteps Live which work great for us and for our customers (see our documentation center).

But we did have to update almost every single lesson since the majority of the ScreenSteps user interface had changed. This meant replacing literally hundreds of screenshots in over 100 lessons. We will write a separate post on this process, but suffice it to say that it was much easier than we imagined. We had over 100 lessons updated in less time than it took us to record one video.

So, what do you think of the media we have prepared for stages 2 through 4? Are they effective? We’ll let you know what the results are in a couple of months, but we would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Revamped UI

Our major focus with version 2.8 was revamping the UI. We felt there were a number of areas that needed to be cleaned up in order to make the UI cleaner and more enjoyable to author in. We really like how it turned out. We hope you do too.

Linking To Lessons Is Fun To Do

The URL dialog received a lot of attention in version 2.8. It is now the Link dialog and sports a couple of new options. For starters you can now specify that a link should open in a new browser window when the lesson is exported in HTML format (HTML, Blog/Web or ScreenSteps Live).

The big new feature, however, is that you can now easily link between lessons in the same manual. When editing a lesson that is part of a manual the new Manual Lesson tab allows you to select other lessons in the manual to link to.

Links between lessons are preserved when you export a manual to any format – Word, PDF, HTML or ScreenSteps Live.

Enhancements and Bug Fixes

Version 2.8 contains over 40 enhancements, changes and bug fixes. We always try to make little changes here and there that improve the program but aren’t necessary newsworthy. Getting known bugs fixed so they don’t interfere with your work is always a major focus as well.

You can read all about what is new in this version by reading the release notes.

Download

Version 2.8 is a free upgrade for 2.x customers.

You can download version 2.8 from the downloads section of our website:

http://www.bluemangolearning.com/screensteps/downloads/

Our purpose in redesigning the UI is to make it easier for you to focus on the content you are working on. We also wanted to tidy up the arrangement of things to give the application a better visual flow.

This is what we have so far and would love to hear your feedback. The new UI will be available in the 2.8 update which will be free to all 2.x license owners.

Lesson Library

Manuals View

Lesson Editing

After the webinar was over Greg and I started discussing Joomla and I decided to look into it again. It turns out there is a great Movable Type plugin for Joomla. Since ScreenSteps uses the Movable Type API to post content to TypePad and Movable Type, the Joomla Movable Type plugin works perfectly with ScreenSteps.

I’ve posted a new manual on Integrating ScreenSteps with Joomla that will walk anyone through the process with Joomla 1.5. You will be publishing visually rich tutorials to Joomla from within ScreenSteps in no time.

I will mention that the ease of creating the manual in ScreenSteps while installing the plugin, and then instantly publishing to ScreenSteps Live brought a smile to my face.

View the video below to see a quick overview of all that is new.

We consider this one of our most significant releases ever. With the new Export Lesson to Clipboard feature, you can now use your ScreenSteps content in a wide variety of applications. Here is a short list of the applications that can now accept content created in ScreenSteps:

• Outlook
• Microsoft Word (on Windows)
• Apple Pages
• Mac OS X Mail
• Evernote
• Yojimbo
• OmniFocus
• Or any other application that will accept HTML pasted from the system clipboard

This means you can now:

• Send visual emails
• Insert ScreenSteps content into existing documents you are working on in your word processor
• Use ScreenSteps to capture knowledge and store it in information collection applications such as Evernote and Yojimbo

We have also made improvements to the way your lessons look including:

• Drop shadows on annotations
• Improved HTML export templates

You can see previews of the new templates here:

Examples of ScreenSteps Output

We have scheduled two webinars to help you learn about the new features in ScreenSteps 2.7. The first one is this Friday, and the second one is in early January. We will also show you how you can implement these features into your daily workflow.

Register for Webinar

You can download the latest release of ScreenSteps here:

Download ScreenSteps

You may also want to check out the chapter in our manual on the new Export to Clipboard feature.

Learn More About Export to Clipboard

The video below points out some highlights.

Copy HTML or PDF to the system clipboard

HTML works great for sending emails to customers, colleagues and customers. But help desk ticketing systems often mangle HTML emails. We really think that ScreenSteps is a great tool to use when you are trying to submit bug reports so we had to come up with a solution. And thus was born the copy PDF to clipboard feature.

If you are submitting a bug to a help ticketing system, just select Copy to Clipboard > PDF and paste it into an email. This will also work for attaching PDFs to web based email systems such as Gmail.

In addition you can use the copy PDF feature to send lessons via instant messaging applications.

Searching with the Tags Palette

You can now drag tags from the Tags Palette into the search field to quickly filter your lessons by tags.

Improved: Set the Maximum Width for Your HTML/Blog/Wiki Templates

The other day we were preparing for our WordPress and ScreenSteps webinar. When using ScreenSteps with any blog or wiki you need to make sure that you set the maximum width of your template to the width of your blog/wiki. While preparing for the webinar we decided that the process doing that was too cumbersome. So we made it easier. You can now set the maximum width for your templates right in the ScreenSteps Preferences screen.

2.7 Is Coming Soon

The 2.7 release is coming soon. You can download the latest version here.

The Biggies

Copy lesson to clipboard is the feature I am personally most excited about. I have been using this feature over the last couple of weeks and being able to insert pictures and text into an email is truly fantastic. It is great for sending a quick how-to to a client (or family member) or for submitting bug reports.

So far we have tested this feature with Microsoft Outlook and Apple Mail and everything seems to work great. Entourage users – we are sorry but it doesn’t look like it is going to work out for you. We don’t know what Entourage does with rich content that is pasted in but it certainly isn’t what you would expect.

Drop shadows on annotations is a close second as far as favorite features. Annotations really stand out with the new drop shadows. We think that you will agree that everything looks much better.

Smart selections make working with annotations so much easier. You no longer have to switch tools to reposition annotations. Just click on the annotation and move it.

The Tags palette makes tagging your lessons a snap. Just select Window > Tag Palette. You can now drag tags onto any lesson in your library or in your manual.

Replacing content is also very exciting for our WordPress, TypePad, Movable Type, MindTouch and Confluence users.

1. Post a lesson to your blog or wiki
2. In the blog/wiki editor, add content before or after your lesson.
3. Change your lesson in ScreenSteps Desktop and repost.

Your lesson content is replaced but all other content is left alone.

Other Improvements

• You should notice that ScreenSteps is a bit faster. We have added a lot of optimizations to improve launch time and other functions.
• We have expanded the search options to allow you to sort lessons by status and also find all of your draft lessons.
• Markdown has been added as a template style.
• ScreenSteps Live users can now attach files to lessons they upload right after they post the lesson to ScreenSteps Live.

Download The Public Beta

You can download the public beta here: Download 2.7 Public Beta

You may also want to register for our WordPress and ScreenSteps webinar next Tuesday. We will be showing off some of the new 2.7 features during that webinar.

Register for Webinar

1. I create a tutorial in ScreenSteps
2. I post it to my WordPress blog
3. In the WordPress editor I add a section above the lesson content with some information about some event we are having.
4. I notice that one of the images in the lesson needs updating. So I update it and repost from ScreenSteps Desktop.

In previous versions of ScreenSteps the event information I entered would get overwritten. In ScreenSteps 2.7, only the content that ScreenSteps created will get updated. Everything else remains intact. This works with WordPress, TypePad, Movable Type, MindTouch and Confluence.

Watch the video below for a quick overview:

If you are a frequent blogger then this will be a great addition to your blogging system.

ScreenSteps and WordPress Webinar

Next week on Tuesday, December 8 from 12pm-1pm EST we will be hosting a webinar entitled Advanced WordPress with ScreenSteps and ScreenSteps Live. In this webinar we will be covering how to get the most out of using WordPress and ScreenSteps together including:

• How to quickly create and publish visual blog posts and pages for your WordPress blog.
• How to customize your ScreenSteps templates to match the format of your blog.
• Inserting YouTube videos into your blog posts using ScreenSteps.
• New in ScreenSteps 2.7: Updating ScreenSteps content on your WordPress blog.
• Integrating ScreenSteps Live into your WordPress blog.

You can learn more about the webinar and register here: Register for webinar

This preview is all about annotations. We will be highlighting two new features that may seem small but that will have a big impact on your day to day use with ScreenSteps: drop shadows and annotations.

Drop Shadows

In 2.7 you will be able to add drop shadows to any of your annotations. Drop shadows not only look nice, but they make the annotations “hover” above your screen captures or images. This makes it much clearer what part of the image is your annotation and what is the original image.

Smart Selections

Smart selections are one of those subtle changes that make a world of difference. In previous version of ScreenSteps, working with different types of annotations could be a little cumbersome. To reposition different types of annotations you needed to use the Select tool, or choose the annotation tool that matched the annotation you wanted to reposition.

Not anymore. In ScreenSteps 2.7 you easily select, reposition and resize any annotation, regardless of the tool you have selected. We think that you will really love this improvement.

The Sale Just Got a Little Staler

Today (Wednesday, November 25th) the ScreenSteps discount went down to 30% off. If you haven’t purchased ScreenSteps yet be sure to take advantage of the offer today (30% off is still a great deal). Just use the coupon code THANKS. Be sure to do it today though. Tomorrow the discount will drop to 20%. You can order ScreenSteps here

We wanted to show you a bit of what is coming in ScreenSteps 2.7. We are always trying to make it easier for our users to communicate visually and ScreenSteps 2.7 is going to make a major improvement in that area.

Two big features coming to 2.7 are:

• Copy lesson to clipboard
• Drop shadows

Below is a video showing off the copy to clipboard feature. You can now copy the contents of your ScreenSteps lesson to the system clipboard and paste it into a new email message.

This is going to help you use ScreenSteps in a completely new way. Some great uses of this feature will be:

• Customer support
• Submitting bug reports
• Demonstrating the flow of an application to a colleague
• Any type of visual communication via email

We hope to have a public beta in the coming weeks. With 2.7 we are still trying to help you do more than just capture screens. We want to help you communicate visually. This upgrade will be free for all 2.x owners so, if you purchase during this weeks sale you will be entitled to the 2.7 upgrade at no additional cost. We think you are going to love this.

Starting Today! The Sale that Goes Stale

Last month we had our biggest sales month ever and two weeks ago we had our biggest single sales day ever. Thank you so much to all of you who are using ScreenSteps and especially all of you who are telling your friends and colleagues about it.

To thank everyone for their support and to celebrate Thanksgiving we are having a Thanksgiving sale. But this isn’t your standard sale. It’s the “sale that goes stale”.

Monday and Tuesday – Fresh – 40% off of all Blue Mango Products

Wednesday – Like day old bread – 30% off

Thursday – Why are you shopping anyways? You should be eating turkey – 20% off

Friday – stale – 10% off

The sale begins now (Monday, November 23, 2009) and isn’t combinable with any other offers. The percentage off can be applied to ScreenSteps Standard, ScreenSteps Pro, or to the first three months of a ScreenSteps Live account.

For ScreenSteps Live the discount applies to the first 3 months of your plan. So, if you signed up for a Solo ScreenSteps Live account at $19/month you would only pay $11.40/month for the first three months. This applies to any plan.

All you need to do to take advantage of the sale is use the coupon code: THANKS

• Purchase ScreenSteps Standard or Pro
• Sign up for a ScreenSteps Live account

NOTE:

• This coupon code is not combinable with academic discounts and won’t work in our academic store
• The coupon code is only applicable to new ScreenSteps Live accounts

Visual knowledge bases combine images and text to provide clear answers and instructions to your customers and users. Visual knowledge bases have the following advantages:

• They have full text search – unlike video libraries.
• They have clear visual information to help users complete tasks quickly – unlike traditional, text-based, knowledge bases.
• They are easy to update when things change – unlike video libraries.
• They are faster to create than either a video library or traditional knowledge base.

The video goes through the entire process of creating a visual knowledge base including:

• Signing up for an account
• Going through the new account setup wizard
• Configuring your ScreenSteps Desktop software to post to ScreenSteps Live
• Posting your first manual to ScreenSteps Live
• Customizing the design of your ScreenSteps Live site

You can view the video below.

The new account setup wizard on ScreenSteps Live really makes it easy to get your ScreenSteps Live site up and running quickly.

Webinar – Creating Visual Knowledge Bases with ScreenSteps Live

A lot has been added to ScreenSteps Live over the last month. To help introduce existing users to the new functionality and introduce new users to ScreenSteps Live we have scheduled a webinar for this Friday, Nov. 20, at 10am EST. Topics covered will include:

• The basics of creating visual knowledge bases
• Understanding the difference between buckets and manuals on ScreenSteps Live
• Introduction to the new “tasks” feature
• Introduction to new color customization options for spaces on ScreenSteps Live

We will of course leave time for answering questions from attendees. You can register for the webinar here:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/943393976

We hope to see you there.