Transcript

Announcer:

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Tom’s Tips podcast, your place for obscure movie references, catch backs, and everything MagHub related. And now your host, Mag Hub product manager, Tom Bellen.

Tom Bellen:

Hello everyone. And welcome to Tom’s Tips podcast. The 10.2 release edition. I am your host, Tom Bellen, product manager for Aysling joined by always our marketing director, Zach Gilbert. Say hello to the, what were the names again?

Zach Gilbert:

Jug heads.

Tom Bellen:

Jug heads. I’m sorry. We’ve been off for a couple months. It’s been a long couple of months, and I forgot our favorite… I’m sorry, audience. I just lost all of our three followers by forgetting their name. Say hello to the Jug heads.

Zach Gilbert:

Hello, Jug heads.

Tom Bellen:

Yeah, there we go. See that’s the problem. I’m a creature of habit, and it’s been very odd for me because we missed, our last release was kind of a release, kind of not a release. It was different. So, and then, we missed our podcast. And I’m a mess. So let’s just start it off. Fantastic. Luckily, our release has been fantastic. Well obviously, I haven’t been doing very well over the past two months. But Zach what’s been going on with you over the last few months, since our last podcast?

Zach Gilbert:

I’m trying to think of what’s actually new for me. It’s getting warmer outside, which is beautiful. I was able to snag a PS5. That’s exciting news for our household because we are a big PlayStation fan.

Tom Bellen:

So you snagged, does that mean you already have it? Or does it like, you know?

Zach Gilbert:

It comes this week.

Tom Bellen:

Oh, it comes this week. All right. So, what is the thing you’re, get out of the box, ready to go, what’s the first thing you’re playing?

Zach Gilbert:

So it’s called Demon’s Souls. It’s a DARK SOULS game. It’s part of the DARK SOULS trilogy.

Tom Bellen:

Sounds like my parents.

Zach Gilbert:

There you go. But yep. So it’s an RPG. It’s medieval fantasy kind of game. I’ve played all the other ones, which I’ve been enjoying. So it’s a really cool game. My buddies that live all across the country and I play together. It kind of keeps us together. So I’m very excited for that one. And I think that’s pretty much it. I don’t think there’s too many… there’s a few other games that I will try out, but I’m really doing it just for that game.

Tom Bellen:

So it’s funny that, as you started this conversation, you talked about the weather getting warmer and nicer, and now you’re getting a video game system so you can stay inside all day.

Zach Gilbert:

You’re not wrong.

Tom Bellen:

Okay. Well, plus you are the one who likes it when it’s cold in this area or don’t mind it as much. But you are correct though. It is getting warmer. I’m a golfer. I’m very excited for that part of it. Also excited because I was having two very small children, during these times, being inside, during the cold, sucks. It’s the harder than trying to do any of my actual job is trying to get kids to put on snow pants. So I’m very excited that that is over. But I, while you’re playing your PlayStation 5, I have gotten into my SEGA Genesis Mini. And I play that from time to time. So I’m very excited about that. And my son’s gotten very into Sonic recently so he thinks he is Sonic. And he wears a Sonic shirt bought for him and Sonic shoes. So, that’s my video game world.

Zach Gilbert:

It’s great. It’s a great video game. You did share the picture of your son in the Sonic uniform or costume getting a Sonic comic book. And it’s just, it’s great to see. I mean, I grew up with Sonic as well. It has a lot of great memories, and I’m so grateful that future generations are learning to love it just as much as we did.

Tom Bellen:

Yeah. So we, because again, now that we can go outside more, get a little more comfortable out there, we went to a local comic book store because he’s very into superheroes. In fact, that’s a big battle today. I put up a superhero line up of all his clothes because he was looking for some superhero. He always play superheroes at daycare. So I laid out all his superhero clothes so he could pick it because I always find every morning he doesn’t have the one he needs. It turns into a problem. So I was like, “You know what? I’m creating the superhero lineup. Grab it.” He was Superman today with a Sonic shirt. It’s actually Superman pajamas that I wore as a kid. So.

Zach Gilbert:

Wow.

Tom Bellen:

Yeah. I know. But one of the games that’s PS5 that I would play is, I think, they’re making Streets of Rage. Aren’t they, for PS five? I thought I saw something about that. Or is it PS4?

Zach Gilbert:

So they’ve released just recently a new Streets of Rage 4. It’s already been released. It’s really, it’s a great game. I’ve actually thoroughly enjoyed it.

Tom Bellen:

Okay. Because that was always my jam as a young kid on the SEGA Genesis. And they don’t have the first one on the mini, but they have the second one. So, that’s the game that, I’m not a huge gamer, but if I could play the new Streets of Rage, that’d be fun. And then I’m waiting if they ever release college football again onto the system. Because it’s been like six years, basically, since everyone’s waiting for the NCA to burn down, which looks like it’s coming. I’m very excited about. But I am excited to get warmer because one thing I’ve been stuck in my house doing is now that gambling, and speaking of those sports, is gambling is legal now Michigan. That was good timing, when everyone’s stuck in their homey, middle of winter. So I’ve been doing a lot of that. So I also need to get out of my house away from my phone, looking at numbers bounce up and down. So, I need to get out on the golf course. I’m looking forward to it because I hate my screens. They’re the worst.

Zach Gilbert:

I hear you. I think everybody does.

Tom Bellen:

Yeah. I just, they’re the worst. So with all that, let’s talk about all the great things you can see on your screen now in Maghub with the releases over the last few days. So yeah. Talk a little bit about the 10.1 release. That was in February. We do a release every second Tuesday of every month. Sometimes, based on the calendar, it’s a shorter time, a longer time. We actually had pushed back the 10.0 release a couple of weeks because we had to finish a couple of things. So it was an even shorter release cycle for 10.1. So we actually just solely focused on some performance items and just catching up on some issues that were in around the system. So we didn’t really do any new features and things like that. So a lot of us, it’s very good release. It’s just kind of cleaning up some stuff.

Tom Bellen:

So that led to this release where we, then, we were kind of knocking out some things that we had already had been working on, but we couldn’t quite finish for that release. So there’s a lot in the 10.2 release that we got going. Probably, the big one, from an integration standpoint, is the fact that we now kind of say, quote unquote, completed our initial HubSpot integration process. So when we started this back in late part of 2020, it was about getting a contact for most of our indoor system. Then it was being able to do more with it, in terms of the mapping or the information that showed up. And then it led to where we are now, where we’re pushing information back over to HubSpot, not just the contact information but also how the data syncs between the two platforms.

Tom Bellen:

So now you can really have that bi-directional sync, or just pushing, pulling. It can do it all. So again, that’s kind of finishing that part of it. We’ve also, with that, have kind of finished up one of the other projects we’ve been working on a lot was our goal for updating how our projects works in resource management. So in this release, over the last releases, we’ve updated how the projects have worked. Now, how the time sheet time entry works has been updated, as well as some of the reports. So you can better see who’s available or is your staff busy enough, too busy. So if you are doing some more elaborate project work for customers, you can keep track of that and make sure it’s profitable, billing how you need to bill it, and then as well as be able to see is someone available or not available.

Tom Bellen:

So that was another one of those things that we’d started on that we kind of completed. And now we’re looking at some other things that we want to get started on and have some more future plans for. One of them was some changes to automation we wanted to do in this release. We’ve added the ability to send internal notifications through automation. You could always do it through Slack, but now you can send a ticket. I know I’ve talked to a few customers about that, about being able to send a notification to a rep if a ticket status is XYZ or the ticket owner to be notified, if something happens to the ticket. So if someone changes, I’m the ticket owner and someone changes the status on my ticket, to let me know that, or again, if a customer uploads something through a client portal, be able to let people know, depending on the property, if it’s print or digital. So there’s a few different ways you can take advantage of it.

Tom Bellen:

And then again, we’re going to do some other things in automation to just make that a little bit clear too, next release. We’ve also started more of the process of report consolidation and some things with report reporting, actually. We know that one of the issues we’ve had with converting digital media and using digital media is it’s too separate. There’s a better word for that. Can’t think of right off the top of my head, but we’ve created a new snapshot report, which is essentially, again, it’s going to be, if you have online snapshot, print snapshot, digital media snapshot, service snapshot, this is something that really gets to 80% of all that stuff in one report. So you can go to that report, see most everything you need. And we are going to expand on that a little bit, and then we’re going to do that soon with the production report and some other reports. So trying to bring all that stuff into, again, few reports that you have to go to. So you don’t have to go to a bunch of different spots. So we’ve added that as well.

Tom Bellen:

And then along with it, we’ve kind of put in some different changes for subscriptions, making the subscriptions forms more secure, more configurable. So you could say, “Hey, if you only give subscriptions to people in United States, you can make your web form do that now without any issues.”And then there’s some capture stuff to prevent those evil robots from taking over the world. So we don’t want that. Robots are evil. And then hopefully, there’s no robot association that’s listening to this, and we’re going to get sued for me saying robots are evil. And then along with that, one other change that maybe people don’t notice every day, but in the persistence of searching on pages. So if you were to jump around pages, change a page, and then you lose your filters, we’ve added that functionality to all pages now. So we have that going for us. So that’s a lot of the stuff that was in this release. So I’m going to pause for a second. Zach, is there anything that’s super, that you love so much about this release or maybe a particular bug we fixed from the previous release?

Zach Gilbert:

So I’ll probably say the two favorite things, or the things that I think make a huge difference for my life because this is what I personally use, is obviously the HubSpot stuff is always cool. HubSpot fanboy over here, and that’s never going to change. I really do though, we use our own time sheet internally, seeing the time sheet change so much, it looks so great. I love our time sheet. It is crazy. It’s amazing how much a small change that you guys have made to it, how much better it looks. It looks cleaner. It looks more modern. It works really well. Like I said, we use all of our own time sheets for managing client hours, internal hours, meetings, all that good stuff. So it’s really cool.

Zach Gilbert:

And then I also, without a doubt, the question mark on every individual page is so nice. Whereas like, “Oh, I’m on a contact record or a contact page. What can I do here?” And clicking the question mark and then going directly to the help center for that. So you’re not trying to look, search for like, what is a contact page? Like, what do they call it? Do they call it a contact record, a contact detail page? What’s it called? Having that automatically go to that page so you could see kind of this outline of everything it does is probably the coolest feature. It’s so helpful. So for anybody that’s jumping into a new page that you’ve never jumped in before and you’re like, “This is overwhelming.” Click the question mark. It’s probably there somewhere on the far right hand corner. It’ll provide you so much information. I mean, our help center is so great. But I mean, that problem always is that disconnect between our system and the help center, where it’s like, “You have to manually search for it. Or have it open a new tab.” That’s gone now, and it’s just so much nicer and cleaner and an elegant solution. So, those are my three favorite things. I love them all.

Tom Bellen:

Well, I’m glad you liked the button. We had talked about that. I’ll just say it. I was up till, I don’t know, 1:00 AM or so adding a lot of those the night of the release. As many people, some people know the help center is the greatest stain of my life. I have to do a lot of stuff in there. There’s so many things I would like to do. This is one of the things I’ve wanted to do for a while. So working with Joe, on our team, who helps with that, making the functionality possible. So, we’re going to continue to expand on that. I think it is very helpful. It’s also helpful, just with the amount of content we have, noticing if there isn’t a link on the page, it probably means that we don’t have a great doc for that yet. And so we’re just compiling that list to make sure we do that. There’s just a lot of things that we’re trying to improve on that experience.

Tom Bellen:

So yes, I think that will help a lot of people get to the right spot, maybe help our support team, as well, not have to share links to people, or people can help support that. I know we also made a change to say, “Send some more ticket in versus report problem,” which our team’s excited about. So like I said, it’s a lot of those little things that, like the time sheet display, a huge item but makes a big, big difference. So, we did add some of those big ticket items but also getting some that easy to use stuff is still something to do. So, I still have many more links to add. I will add them, especially now that Zach has flattered me so to do that. So.

Zach Gilbert:

I’m just saying, it’s cool. I’m just saying, the new help center is… I mean, for all of you that have not checked out the new help center, please go to it. There are webinars. There are learn to Maghub series. There are so many assets in there. And so that you all understand why it’s a bane of Tom’s existence, we have two software platforms, Aysling and Maghub. They’re both targeting very different industries. Maghub is the media publishing industry. Aysling is engineering, IT software, basically anybody that does professional services. They have entirely different terminology. Maghub is very specific to the media publishing industry. So what might be called one thing in one platform is called something different in the other platform, different coloring, different schemes. So Tom’s basically designing two help centers in conjunction and trying to manage it. So.

Tom Bellen:

Someone’s put you up to trying to blow smoke up my butt. I don’t know, but either way I appreciate it. You know what I really wish people could understand? From when I started there, what the help center was. I’d rather design a help center. I wish people would know. Like, if you use the document manager, that’s what we had before and how that works but worse. There was like three docs in it, written by who knows whom. You couldn’t move them. You couldn’t do anything. And then I had to write it all. And then we moved to WordPress and that all broke. And everyone at my company knows I don’t like to write stuff. So it’s one of those things that, you know, ugh. One of these days, I think in a few months, I’ll actually be able to sit back, have a drink, and be like, “I’m proud of this thing.” I think I’m close. I’m close. And I had more of a team help me with it, building a process in there, correcting my typos. So, I’m getting there. I’m close. So maybe you’ll have a celebration, when I’d be like, “It’s done. It’s done.”

Zach Gilbert:

It’ll be amazing.

Tom Bellen:

Yes, I’m close. But yeah. So a lot of different things in there. Again, more ways to get people help. We’re working on more panel guides and stuff. Always, that’s one of the things is we feel, I feel, is… And trying to add more examples and stuff of, we have so many things, and a lot of times it’s hard to understand where’s the information on how to use it or what’s the best way to use it. So we’re trying to think of more ways to share that type of stuff. So people just are aware of all the things you can do with it because I think what we find is most of our customers don’t even realize the types of stuff they can do. You get stuck in the thing you do every day, and it’s fine. And then you’re just not realizing that there’s some other way to do it. We help. But anyway, enough about that. One other thing I know that we’re looking forward to, I don’t know if anyone in your life has got vaccinated, Zach. I know my wife, she’s in the medical field. She’s got vaccinated. Her parents have. My sister-in-law has because she’s a teacher. I know your wife’s a teacher. I don’t know if she’s been vaccinated yet?

Zach Gilbert:

Yes. She just got her first vaccine. There was much rejoicing around our office, around our house. And then I will say, pretty much all of my, like my father did. His wife did. My daughter has actually because there’s a weird situation there with that one. But a lot of people I know actually got vaccinated, which made me incredibly jealous. Just every time I hear somebody get it, I’m like, “Nice. Must be nice.”

Tom Bellen:

And my friend in Florida, I guess, he found a place, and they were just giving them away like candy.

Zach Gilbert:

Insane.

Tom Bellen:

Some of this stuff, I don’t understand it. But I know one of the things, getting vaccinated, looking forward to things in the future we’ve talked about, we used to do a lot as a company, is going to the movies. And so, we would do big movie things, and we saw the Marvel movies together because we’re a bunch of nerds. Nerds! I’m trying to think of any other movies, but yeah, I was really mad at movies. But I know that going back to the box office, we need to get that AMC stock to the moon. Would be nice. But thinking about looking back at the movies and what were… Before this all went down, there were two movies in 2020 that reached a hundred million dollars in box office or above.

Tom Bellen:

So only two, when normally you’d probably have, I don’t know, a hundred movies or so that gets to that point, but there’s only been two. And for the trivia question today is name one of those two movies that reached a hundred million plus in box office revenue. And again, you can tweet the answer at us at Maghub. And it’ll give you a hint. One of them was referenced quite a bit on this call already. So one of them was already referenced quite a bit on this call. So, and I look forward to seeing the sequel. I will tell you that very much as well. So, again, if you have that answer, just, I don’t know, what do they tweet at us? What else would people do at us? TikTok, the app nowadays.

Zach Gilbert:

No. No, no, no. TikTok. Tweet would be good. That’s the easiest one to do, but you can also Facebook us. Facebook us? Comment, like, I don’t know, comment, I guess. It’s not really called Facebook us. That’s weird.

Tom Bellen:

Slap our face.

Zach Gilbert:

LinkedIn us, if you want to. We go on all three of those platforms quite active, and we do use HubSpot to manage our social media. Plug right there. So any one of those three channels will work.

Tom Bellen:

All right. Do you know the answer, Craig?

Zach Gilbert:

You said, you mentioned it a lot during this call already, during this podcast?

Tom Bellen:

Yeah.

Zach Gilbert:

No I don’t.

Tom Bellen:

So, I guess the hint did not get to you. Oh man. Big thing there. Well, Oh man. Well, you’ll have to noodle on that. Well that’s it for this item. I think the next thing to look forward to is we’re getting towards April. St. Patty’s day is coming up. Very exciting for sitting at home, I guess. That’s sad. But yeah. I don’t know. Anything you want to tell these Jug heads, got it this time, before we sign off this podcast?

Zach Gilbert:

Yeah, I think there’s two big things. One is, obviously, our team is working remote. So in an effort to not go crazy and to help with Tom’s Grambling addiction, we are doing a March Madness bracket for our clients. And we’re also doing an internal one too. But for the client one, there’ll be a hundred dollars gift card to the winner of the bracket. So, if you want to join that, if you’re a current client of ours, jump onto live chat or submit a ticket request inside Maghub so we can get you set up. It is only for our clients. So sorry for anyone else that does it that’s not a client that listened to this podcast. Though, that’d be really weird because why would you care about our release notes as much, but hey, enjoy. So that is starting now.

Zach Gilbert:

And then also the Maghub fall forum is slated to be in-person this year, September 20th through the 22nd in Chicago, Illinois. It’s going to be at the Loews O’Hare hotel, as originally planned for last year. We are taking a lot of safety precautions, obviously, to make sure that everybody is well taken care of. We are also watching a baseball game Chicago Cubs versus the Minnesota Twins. It is, we have our own private suite with our own private grandstand and everything along those lines with catering. All that’s included in the ticket price of 250 per person. So it should be a really fun experience there. We’re really looking forward to it.

Zach Gilbert:

qI will also say with that, we are researching stuff for streaming or recording the sessions as well. So if you buy your tickets and something happens and you can’t attend, or you’re not feeling comfortable, you can still watch all the recordings. You’ll still be able to basically be, participate with us. You’ll be entered into drawings that we have and all that stuff because you did pay the ticket price. So just be aware, we are doing everything in our power to make it as flexible and safe for everybody. But I just want to let, make sure you all know that. You can buy your tickets on Maghub.com/fall forum. That’s all up and learning. It’s using our e-commerce storefront and event management. Another plug there. I think that’s all I have to say.

Tom Bellen:

So we should do, I forgot about, yeah, the basketball tournament. And obviously, if anyone picks Michigan State or OSU to go all the way, they immediately lose. I will also make fun of our Jeremy today, who was basically like, “So selection Sunday is Sunday?” And I was like, that was a good moment today when we were talking about this. Yes it is. So again, brackets are out on Monday, but Michigan should be a one seed. Zaga, Baylor, Illinois will probably be the one seeds. So a little inside information. Those teams are good. So Zach, if you need help with your bracket I can let you know.

Zach Gilbert:

I Google it every week. Every time I do it, I Google everything where I’m just like, “I don’t understand.” I do. Basketball is one of the few sports I actually understand, and I actually enjoy. I do not watch basketball just because I don’t like watching any sports on TV because it’s so boring. I’d rather be there. Just boring for me. So I do research that.

Tom Bellen:

Well, yes. I mean, I used to go to Michigan basketball games. I was part of the base rage in college a bit so. But we were not good at that time. I tell you, we were terrible. So yeah. But I look forward to that fun thing, and I don’t know. I don’t know who the dark horse, Yukon. That’s my dark horse tip. That’s not a big shocker, but they’re probably going to be one of those teams you can pick to go a long, long way. Put them as your champion. And usually, if that hits, you win. But yeah, I don’t know. I think that’s about it. We should do like a your shiny moment too, if the winner comes there. You ever hear that song at the end of the tournament? It’s what I miss. Do you ever sleep Barrett?

Zach Gilbert:

I don’t think so.

Tom Bellen:

So, at the end of the winner on Monday night, they play the cheesiest song with a montage of the tournament clips. You should look it up. It’s a thing they do. “So one shining moment.” It’s like straight from the eighties, and they’ve been doing it every year. They just-

Zach Gilbert:

I love it.

Tom Bellen:

Yeah. You would love that. It’s terrible. And then just the highlights of all of the tournament. And they’re just, “One shining moment.”

Zach Gilbert:

I feel like I’m there right now. This is great. Thank you.

Tom Bellen:

Yeah. So maybe we can do that at the forum, if the winner of the tournament comes in there. But anyway, good luck. Hopefully, we have a tournament this year.

Zach Gilbert:

All right. Well thank you, Tom.

Tom Bellen:

Yeah.