Portrait Smartphone Fixes
18th August, 2024We discovered that a lot more people than we realised were using the ASM desktop interface on their smartphones. There were many elements of this interface that are simply broken when used on a portrait smartphone - with the primary issue being elements overflowing off to the right, requiring the user to scroll in order to see them.
Earlier this week, we started rolling out fixes for this to almost every screen in ASM. There should be no visible difference to tablets and desktops as a result of these changes, but people using portrait smartphones should notice that all screens now stack their controls vertically (eg: find animal) so that you can see everything with the normal swipe up/down.
The biggest change we made was to table views. Tables are used throughout the system for displaying data, and these were the worst offender for overflowing off to the right.
For example, the results of a find animal used to look like this:
You can't see anything past the first 4 columns as they've all overflowed off to the right. Applying a sort to the list is very difficult.
With the new changes, it looks like this:
The columns now stack on top of each other with labels to the left. You can now see all of the data without having to scroll to the right. The column headings are shown so that you can sort the list by tapping them.
You can swipe up and down to browse the table rows, which use alternating colours to show where each row ends and a new one begins.
We've had quite a bit of feedback from users about this, and the feedback has all been negative! If you don't like the way that tables look, and preferred them the old (broken!) way, then you have 2 options:
- Turn your phone 90 degrees to landscape mode. This should increase the horizontal viewport size and make the system display the tables without stacking.
- You can turn off vertical stacking of tables for all users. This can be done under Settings -> Options -> Display -> Tables stack vertically on portrait smartphones
ASM 48
1 May, 2024ASM 48 is now available. This release adds support for reserved and sponsored location units, automated emails for adopter followup and licence renewals, medical document templates, excel export for reports, mobile licence renewal checkout, built-in check-a-chip search for UK/US/Aus and many bug fixes and improvements.
Storage charge reduction
6th March, 2024
After a review of our storage surcharge prices, we have decided to lower
them to 10%/10GB from 15%/10GB
We've been able to do this because we recently switched to a cheaper
storage provider and can pass the savings on.
Entry Type field
6th January, 2024There will be a new change deployed this coming week to add a new "Entry Type" field to the entry slider of animal records. This new field is a dropdown containing a fixed list of known reasons for animal intake. The options in this list are deliberately not user-editable. This field will replace the "Transfer In" checkbox on-screen.
The reason for adding "Entry Type" is to support and simplify the integration we have with third party organisations such as PetFinder and ShelterAnimalsCount, along with all of the standardised reports that we have for the ADCH, ASPCA, Asilomar Accords, Best Friends, Petco, USDA, etc.
This field has become necessary because so many integrations and reports rely on being able to accurately identify strays, surrenders and transfers, as well as TNR and confiscated/seized animals in some cases. At the moment, we infer these values from a number of different fields and by looking for English text values in the entry category field. This means the behaviour between reports can be inconsistent and do not work for non-English speakers or where shelters have named things as something else.
When this new field is added to your database, the same rules currently used to infer these values will be used to set the value of this field for all of your existing animal records. This means that nothing should appear to change in terms of reporting and integration immediately. You will be able to better control where intakes are categorised on reports in the future. It will also help the system to hide fields from animal records that are not relevant to it.
ASM 47
18th August, 2023ASM 47 is now available. This release adds support for couple contact fields, daily observations of animals in care, additional fields searchable via advanced find screens, additional fields for movements, HTML slideshow template, quicklinks and shelterview modes per user, new data protection options, stock level alerts and 70 incremental improvements and bug fixes.
Hosting Price Increase
1st March, 2023With effect from 1st April 2023, our biennial price rise will take effect. We last reviewed our prices in 2021, when we increased our prices by 3%. That came after a period of 3 years without a rise due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
There have been a number of economic pressures on our business in the last 12 months, with inflation over 10% and our suppliers raising their prices by 20% due to the current high costs of electricity.
From 1st April 2023 our prices will rise by 9% to:
| Currency | 3 months | 6 months | 12 months |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States Dollars | $125.00 | $210.00 | $380.00 |
| UK Pound Sterling | £80.00 | £130.00 | £240.00 |
| Australian Dollars | $140.00 | $240.00 | $440.00 |
| Canadian Dollars | $135.00 | $235.00 | $435.00 |
| Euros | €95.00 | €165.00 | €305.00 |
ASM 46
30th January, 2023ASM 46 is now available. This release adds support for 2 factor authentication, import and export of all media via CSV, improved translations, support for S3 compatible providers other than Amazon, UI table performance improvements, shelteranimalscount API integration, Stripe CSV import, upfront creation of medical treatments, improved online form spambot protection, new locales (Latvia, Zimbabwe, Indonesia), support for multiple intakes/entry history and over 150 incremental improvements and bug fixes.