What's new in Comic Connect?
Are you ready for some nice Comic Connect updates? Stay tuned in the next couple of weeks, as multiple improvements and new features are coming up. Today is the first one, a special addition for CovrPrice subscribers:
Value Totals for any issue list
A common request from CovrPrice subscribers has been: How can I see the total value for a Series? Or per Storage Box? Or per Publisher?
So here’s our solution: a CovrPrice value total is now always showing at the top, next to the issue counter!
Combined with the Folder tool, this gives you values for any sub-selection of your collection you can think of, per Series, or per Storage Box, per Cover Artist, per Grading Company, per Tag, etc…
A big update for your Comic Connect web-based software today, which is all about pick list fields.
Pick list fields (and the pick lists behind them) are an important part of your comic database. These are the fields in the Edit screen that let you pick from a list of possible values, with that list being fully configurable by you the user.
Examples of pick list fields are Storage Box, Owner, Genres and Tags (both multi value pick list fields), but also Series, Series Group and Publisher.
Now, a lot of the questions we usually get about Comic Connect are related to pick list fields and can usually be answered with:
“Just use the Manage Pick Lists screen”
Renaming Storage Boxes, Merging duplicate Series, fixing series sort problems, fixing typos in creator names, etc… it is all done in the Manage Pick Lists (MPL) screen. An important and powerful screen, but… not so easy to find if you don’t know where to look or don’t even know what to look for.
With today’s Connect update, we are making this a lot easier: We have improved the Manage Pick Lists screen itself AND made it more accessible / discoverable:
In short:
- Improved Manage Pick Lists (MPL) screen
- Easy access to the MPL screen right from the folder panel
- Refreshed Edit Comic screen, with better pick list fields and direct MPL access
Since November 2021, CLZ has been providing you Key Comic information for your comics, like first appearances, cameo appearance, deaths, iconic covers, etc.. Up till now, we have been indicating the importance of Key Comics using Major Key (yellow) and Minor Key (blue) designations.
However, starting today, we are renaming Major and Minor and are introducing several extra Key Comic importance levels, so that we can give you a more granular indication of a comic’s importance.
Here’s an overview of the new Key Comic levels, with some examples:
We hope you will enjoy these new key indicators!
Got any questions or feedback? Please post your comment in the special topic on the Club CLZ forum here!
Thanks to our translator Peter Stickler, the Connect web-based software is now available in Swedish!
If you are interested in translating Connect to your language, let us know!
The main translations we are looking for at the moment are:
- Norwegian
- Italian
Thanks to our translator Frank Silas Kesia Jensen, the Connect web-based software is now available in Danish!
If you are interested in translating Connect to your language, let us know!
The main translations we are looking for at the moment are:
- Norwegian
- Swedish
- Italian
Thanks to our translators Fernando Carvalho, Milan Sobat and Brano Mazari, the Connect web-based software is now available in 3 extra languages: Portuguese, Serbian and Slovak!
Thanks guys!
If you are interested in translating Connect to your language, let us know!
The main translations we are looking for at the moment are:
- Danish
- Norwegian
- Swedish
- Italian
New Check Value screen – quickly check CovrPrice values without having to add the comic to your database first
Up until today, the CovrPrice integration has been all about getting values for the comics in your collection. Super useful of course, but… since launch (back in October 2022), a common question from CovrPrice subscribers has been:
“How can I quickly check the value of a comic that is not in my collection?”
And they’re right. There’s other situations in which you may want to check a comic’s actual value, e.g. when you are looking at a comic you may want to buy.
Until now, our recommendation has always been: “Either use the CovrPrice.com website, OR, create a “Temp” collection in your app and add the comic there so that you can see the value”.
But not anymore! Your Comic Connect software now includes a new “Check Value” screen, that lets you quickly check a value of a comic, either by scanning its barcode, or by using the super-fast issue search. Just set it to Raw or Slabbed, pick a grade and go!
Here’s the latest results from our endeavour to improve the UI/UX of all Connect features and screens. Today, we made further improvements to both the “Manage Collections” tools and the new Edit Multiple tool.
Add Comics : better “In Collection” indicators when using Hide Variants mode
Here’s one brought to our attention by one member in the CLZ Comics group (our friend Xander Frydek):
In the Series tab of the Add Comics screen, I like having my issue list in “Hide Variants” mode. But the problem is, then I cannot see if I already own a variant different from the A variant.
In other words: It only highlights the issue #7 number in blue if I actually own #7A, but NOT if I own #7F for instance.
In this case, can you maybe highlight the issue number in a different way, to indicate you do own that issue?
The Edit Multiple feature is an efficient tool for making changes to multiple (or all) of your database entries in one go. It has been part of the Connect web-based software for many years (since May 2015!). For the CLZ mobile apps, this “batch editing” ability was introduced much later, in July 2020.
However, when we did that, we were forced to completely re-design the feature’s user interface, to make it work well on the small phone screen. And a strange thing happened: the UI/UX we ended up with, turned out be much better than the original Edit Multiple design of the Connect web-based software and the Collector desktop software 🙂
So today, we are bringing that new Edit Multiple setup to the Connect web-based software!
This update is all about the Pre-fill screen, you know, the screen that appears when adding items and lets you pre-fill fields while adding, like Location (= Storage Box for comics), Owner, Purchase Date/Store/Price, etc…
This Pre-fill screen was introduced in Dec 2020, with a fixed set of fields. Then a year later, in March 2022, it was made completely user configurable, so that *you* could choose which fields appeared on the screen.
This screen turned out to be a popular tool, but we’ve seen one problem with it:
Sometimes, users pre-fill a field for a specific movie (e.g. Purchase Price or Quantity), then forget to CLEAR it for the next items they add. Causing lots of items to be added with that same field set incorrectly.
So today, we are making another tweak to the Pre-fill screen:
A small but useful update for your Comic Connect software:
- Filter your series folder panel by Completed status
This was already available in the CLZ Comics mobile app, but it now possible in the Comic Connect software too.
Just tap the checklist icon at the top and choose “Show completed” to only show all series that have been marked as Completed.
The Link with Core screen is a tool in the CLZ Cloud site and the Connect web-based software that is used to link entries with CLZ Core. E.g. items that you added manually, or items that you imported. The Link with Core tool is mostly used by users coming from other software and are switching to CLZ.
Today’s update is a “behind the scenes” update, to make the Link screen faster and to improve search results.
Improved
- The search now uses our elastic search engine, giving you better and more meaningful results for your unlinked items.
- Better uses of indexes and the elastic engine makes everything much faster too!
On top of that, we’ve improved the search results in the Link with Core screens for some Connect flavours specifically:
- Comic: Now takes series popularity into account.
- Movie: Now now also digs into our vast library of “alternative” and foreign titles for movies to obtain a result that matches your movie.
- Music: Now also uses Discogs for finding results.
What is Linking with Core?
Connect is built around our central online database: Core. All factual data and cover images are used and shown directly from Core. If you have been using the Add screen to catalog your items, then most, if not all of your items will already be linked to Core.
If you’ve added some items “manually” or if you’ve imported a list from CSV (or from somewhere else), there will not be a lot of data in them.
To automagically fill in data for your items, the items need to be linked with Core. If you have unlinked items, you can link them to Core using the Link with Core screen which is found in the menu top left!
Earlier this year, we updated our Connect software to make it fully localizable / translatable. Shortly after, we went live with Dutch and German version of Connect.
Today, after the hard work of three loyal CLZ users, three more language options went live on the site:
- French
- Spanish
- Hungarian
Thank you, Philippe, Rafael and Pető!!
The entire CLZ development team has been working on this major feature for several months. A huge project that we have been postponing for many years, because of the complexity and the enormous amount of work. But today we can finally go public with it, resulting in a major update for the Comic Connect web-based software:
As of today, it is finally possible to modify the CREATORS and CHARACTERS lists of your comic entries!
Also, once the upcoming version 8.5 of the CLZ Comics app is live (early next week), it will be possible to sync those customized cast and crew lists to the CLZ Comics mobile app.
Continuing with our quest to revamp and re-design features and screen of the Connect web-based software. Today we took on the Import from CSV/TXT screen.
Connect and CLZ Cloud users often ask us about printing or exporting only a part of their collection, e.g. “how do I print just my wish list?” or “how do I export a list of just one series?”.
Now, this was possible, but it took a few steps that were not intuitive for many users. You had to:
- Make the selection in the main screen first, e.g. by using folders, the collection status filter or the search box
- Checkbox all comics in the selection, using the checkboxes in the list
- Then use the Print or Export button on the special blue action toolbar above the list
With today’s update, we are making this a lot easier. And while we were at it, we also freshened up the user interface of the Print to PDF and Export to CSV screens.
Great news for all our German-speaking customers: starting today the Connect web software is also available in German!
Our programmers have been working for months to make the Connect software available in other languages (other than English). This meant:
- Make the Connect software translatable, to ensure that all interface texts come from a translation database.
- Making a nice and easy translation tool for our translators, so that they can translate all texts efficiently and also maintain the translation when new functionality is added.
- And of course, to do the actual translation.
And today we can take the next step: Connect is now available in German!
A nice update for all Connect users who use multiple collections, especially for those who have a LOT of collections.
New in this re-design:
- Single row tab-bar. No more lost screen estate caused by multiple rows of tabs.
- Got more tabs than fit on screen? Scroll the bar horizontally.
- Or use the next/prev buttons on the right to jump page by page.
- Alternatively, click the menu icon on the bottom left to pick a collection from a menu.
- The menu also provides quick access to the Manage Collections screen.
- Drag tabs to change their order.
- Double click a tab to rename a collection.
In the CLZ Comics mobile app the Series list has always been a special case folder option, not showing the regular textual folder entries, but instead a nice layout with the cover art of the first or last issue.
So we decided to bring that same look to the Series folder panel in Comic Connect:
A big project our web-dev team has been focused on the past few months is making our Connect web-based software available into other languages. A huge project that consists of:
- Making the software translatable, basically ensuring that ALL UI text is retrieved from a translation database.
- Creating a nice and easy web-based CMS tool that translators can log in to and translate text, preview in Connect, etc…
- Doing the actual translations of all UI texts.
And today we can finally show the first results: Connect is now available in Dutch!
Now live in your web-based Comic Connect software, a big update that is all about slabbed comics!
More and more CLZ Comics users are using the app to catalog slabbed comics (CGC, CBCS, PGX, etc..). So let’s take our slab support to the next level!
Here’s what’s new in Comic Connect today:
- Three new slab-related fields: Label Type, Page Quality and Custom Label.
- A cool new look for your slabs in Card View and Details Panel.
- Four new options for the Grade field: NG, PG, CVR and ART.
- A new setting “For raw comics, show Grade as letters”
Introduced in November 2021, the Update Key Info tool is one the biggest and most popular features of the Comic Connect software. It automatically gives you crucial information about your collection, that is, which of your comics are major keys, which ones are minor keys. Of course, it also tells you why, for example: first appearances of characters, deaths, cameo appearances, first team appearances, origins, iconic cover art, etc…
However, since we introduced this feature, one of the most requested improvements has become:
“After updating my key info, I would like to see WHICH comics were updated and WHAT has changed.”
We’re closing in on the end of the year, so it is time for the
CLZ Comics Wrap-up 2022!
CLZ Justin has been gathering some stats and has created some nice top 10 lists for you.
These are the most popular 2022 comics and series based on your usage of the CLZ software:
Enjoy!
Today, two further improvements to the CovrPrice integration in your Comic Connect software:
- New “View Last Update Report” in the menu, to re-open the last “Updated Values” report
- Updated Values screen now includes cover images!