2022 Release Notes and Update History

November 2022

v22.12.1

When generating a receipt which has an associated sales agreement, you can now choose to generate only a sales agreement. This can be combined with the e-sign feature if you would like to send out only a sales agreement for e-signing.
Inventory item types can now be included/excluded from the "Fittings Planning" report by editing them in the Inventory Settings.
The automated email template for "Customer Order Date (Purchase Made)" now allows you to additionally filter orders by the inventory item type. This allows you to exclude certain item types like accessories, veils, etc. from triggering an automated email.
The "Order Reminder Alert" can now be configured to alert off the order's purchase date instead of the customer's event date.

v22.11.2

The "Payments Created" report now allows you to filter the data either by Payment Date (default), or Created Date.
The "Payments Created" report now has two new columns: "Subtotal Amount" and "Tax Amount". The tax amount of a payment is calculated at the time of sale based on the item type's tax rate, as well as taking into account any tax exemptions that may have been applied to the payment.
The inventory now has new filters for "Sizes" and "Color". These filters can help you find items that match a specific size or color.

v22.11.1

Added ability to e-sign receipts, which requires the Ultimate plan. When generating a receipt, you will now have the option to send it to the customer for an e-signature, allowing for the ability to no longer print paper receipts.
Added a new "Fittings Planning" report, which allows you to query customers by their event date so that you can plan your upcoming fittings to schedule.
Made improvements to how dialog popups are handled on mobile device to improve their usability.
Most print views now open directly in-app as a dialog popup instead of redirecting you to a print page, making the printing experience more seamless.
Updated "Unassigned Seamstress Alert" to allow you to select which order statuses to include in the alert. Previously, this alert only considered arrived orders, but you can now expand the statuses to others in the alert settings.
Fixed a few errors that could appear when using the payment plans feature.

September 2022

v22.9.1

Added the ability to create orders directly from the Orders page instead of having to go through the customer's profile. This greatly streamlines off-the-shelf sales as you will no longer be required to have a customer's profile created.
Improved SMS messaging to have a more conversation-focused layout that resembles messaging from a mobile device.

August 2022

v22.8.3

Added Smart Fields support to appointment emails, which means you can now personalize your appointment status and reminder emails with details like the customer's name. Simply visit the Email Settings tab in the Appointment Settings to get started.
Added 2 new reports

Favorite Items Report: Allows you to get a sense of which items are the most frequently favorited among your customers, and also provides an idea of how these items convert to sales. Note that this requires filling out the "Favorite Items" field for prospects.

Referral Type Performance Report: Provides information about your customer acquisitions and how effective your referral types are. Note that this requires filling out the "Referral Type" field for prospects/customers, or having them self-provide the referral type in the customer registration form.

The "Multi-Order Display Mode" functionality of receipts has been removed in favor of introducing all of the best parts of each display mode into a single easy-to-read receipt.
Added the customer's balance directly to their profile so you don't need to view the payments to get an idea of their outstanding balance
Renamed "Detailed Order" to "Special Order" to better describe the order process
Fixed some instances of blurry fonts

v22.8.2

Introduced 2nd phase of site redesign. Back in June, we implemented the 1st phase of the redesign which created the foundation to introduce a cohesive and consistent design into CloudBridal. There are many changes related to fonts, color, spacing, and so on. However, the functionality of the product itself has not changed otherwise.

v22.8.1

Added automated emails. This feature hooks into the existing Email Templates feature, and you can configure it in the Email Settings. Previously, email templates were used to generate manual emails to prospects and customers, but now you have the ability to schedule these emails to go out based on various conditions. To configure these conditions, simply add or edit an email template, and check the Send This Email Automatically checkbox. Afterwards, you have the ability to handle loads of scenarios such as:

Send an email [X] days after the customer's wedding date to congratulate them

Send an email [X] days after a prospect visits your store to give them an incentive to make a purchase

Send an email when the customer's order has arrived so that they can schedule their follow up appointment

Send a welcome email to any customer or prospect [X] days after they are registered into the system

You can also include dynamic fields just like you could with email templates, so emails can be personalized to include data points like the customer's name, event date, and so on. Note that this feature is only available to the Core and Ultimate subscription plans, with Core being able to schedule 3 active email templates, and Ultimate being unlimited.

July 2022

v22.7.2

Added ability to have customers leave a credit card on file when booking their appointment through the Stripe integration. This also allows you to charge them a no-show fee if they do not show up to their appointment. To configure this, you will need to edit an appointment type in the appointment settings and enable the Reserve Using Credit Card option, which will prompt you to enter the maximum no-show fee. Note that in order to see this option, you must also have enabled the Stripe integration.
Both the previous paid appointments and the new reserved appointments will now create a Customer record in Stripe.

v22.7.1

Added ability to create custom inventory item types, each with their own tax rate. The previous system types, which are Dress, Accessory, Veil, Childrenswear, and Other have been pre-seeded into your environment based on whether you had the type enabled or not. Note that the Dress type can't be deleted or renamed. These types can be managed in the Inventory Item Settings.
Improved ability to manage fields that are available in the order form. The main difference is that fields can now be hidden or marked as required/optional depending on whether the order is for a dress or a non-dress. For example, you may want the Size field to be required for dress orders, but optional for other order types, and now you can accomplish this.
Updated the bulk inventory item import process to support adding items of any type. Note that this requires that you download a new template file in the Data Import settings page.
You can now print out your monthly subscription invoices at the Subscription Settings page.

June 2022

v22.6.2

Paid appointments that are assigned to an auto-confirming schedule will now automatically be confirmed instead of forcing the staff member to accept the appointment manually
Added ability to brand the following elements in the appointment scheduler with a custom color: Calendar background, Paid appointment amount label, 'Continue/Save' button, 'Select Slot' button, 'Deselect Slot' button, and 'Join Waitlist' button

v22.6.1

Major rewrite and code modernization of UI. In general, we have kept features more or less identical to before, but there are many improvements to UI consistency, mobile usability, typography, colors, and more. Some features were also enhanced during this rewrite as needed. Since this is a major rewrite, it is possible for there to be some bugs so please go ahead and report any issues you encounter to support@cloudbridal.com.
You can now add alterations, additional work, and additional fees directly to a payment plan instead of having to create separate payment plans for these.
Added ability to override the global appointment lead times with appointment-type specific lead times.
(Advanced feature) Ability to set up link tracking for appointment requests. This allows you to append custom parameters to your appointment type links, which are then tracked and viewable on the customer's appointment request and within reports. This can be useful if you want to differentiate referral sources for customers such as paid ads, social media, etc.

May 2022

v22.5.1

PDF generation has been reworked to work across all devices more consistently. Additionally, the formatting for PDFs has also been improved to fix issues with spacing, fonts, and other such elements.
Fixed issue where rich text fields do not work correctly after changing the font size in the field.

April 2022

v22.4.2

You can now add attachments to emails when using the Send Email functionality from the customer/prospect profile.
Added support for order tax exemptions. This allows you to define one or more custom tax rates that you can then apply on an order. You can manage these exemptions in the order settings.
Paid appointments will now pre-authorize the customer's credit card instead of charging them right away. The appointment is now only charged upon staff confirmation.
Added ability to hide the following system fields on an order: Seamstress, Alteration Price, Additional Work Price, and Additional Fees Price. These fields can be hidden in the order settings.
Fixed issue where creating payments for multiple orders at the same time would cause the newly-created payments to not count toward the customer's outstanding balance.

v22.4.1

Implemented the new Payment Plans feature. This feature allows you to designate future scheduled payments to be paid on a regular interval. For detailed information about configuring and using payment plans, please view the documentation article on the topic.
Added ability to limit order and measurement custom fields to a specific item type. For example, you can create custom fields that will only display if the order item's type is a veil, dress, and so on.
Added ability to display the customer's physical address in their receipt. This is enabled by default, but can be hidden in in the receipt/quote template settings
Improved handling of orders in the Cancelled state
Added new alert to the customer profile page if they have any orders that are in the Picked Up state and is not fully paid
The Referral Type field is no longer set as a required field on the customer profile

March 2022

v22.3.1

Added integration with Shopify. For detailed information about the integration, please view the documentation article on the topic. However in short, if you are a current user of Shopify for either e-commerce or simply to display your products on your website, you can take advantage of this new integration to help keep your Shopify product and quantities in sync with CloudBridal.
Added ability for customers to book their own follow-up appointments. To enable this, simply edit one of your appointment types in the appointment settings, and set its Type field to Bookable: Follow-Up. Afterwards, customers who book this appointment type will have the option of entering their email address, which will associate the appointment request with their customer profile. If a profile can't be found, they will still be able to request an appointment, but they will have to fill out their details as though it is their first visit.
When generating a quote, you will now have the option of entering Additional Quote Details into the quote, which allows you to enter custom one-off text into a quote. This even saves the additional details into the Comments field on the customer's profile, so you will be able to refer back to the quote details in case you promised something like a special discount.
Fixed issue where a customer's receipt displays order custom fields in both the header and also in the order details, causing some confusion about duplicate field values.

February 2022

v22.2.4

Added SMS Message Templates feature. This is similar to the existing Email Templates feature, but instead allows you to pre-define common templates that you frequently send by SMS. New templates can be added either directly when sending an SMS message, or in the template settings. After creating a template, you will be able to select it when sending an SMS. Note that the 150 character limit still applies, so your templates should be reasonably short.
Added new Minimum booking lead time (hours) setting in the appointment settings. This prevents customers from booking an appointment slot without providing sufficient notice. By default, this is set to 3 hours, meaning that customers can only book slots that are more than 3 hours in the future.
Added new permission toggle when editing a role: Hide Wholesale Prices. Users with this toggle enabled will be able to view all inventory item details except the Wholesale Price field.
Added new dynamic template fields (Email and SMS templates): Customer Event Date, Customer Next Appointment Date, Customer Next Appointment Start Time, Customer Next Appointment End Time

v22.2.3

Added an official way to block appointment schedules in the appointment calendar. Creating a block allows you to prevent prospects from booking appointments during a certain time period. You can block individual schedules, but keep other schedules open. You can also block specific time ranges instead of blocking the schedule for the whole day.
Implemented new Emails Not Delivered dashboard alert, which helps you understand if an email from the Send Email tool is not successfully delivered to a customer or prospect, such as if it goes to their spam or to an email address that was mistyped and does not exist.
Added new columns to Customers/Prospects Registered report: Num Appointments and Appointments, which provide some details about the customer or prospect's appointment history.
The Appointments Created report is now a bit smarter when resolving a value for the Staff Member column. If an appointment has no assigned staff member, but the corresponding prospect/customer profile does have a staff member on record, it will pull that staff into the report instead of showing a blank value.

v22.2.2

Added ability to export appointment calendar to 3rd party service such as Google Calendar, Outlook, etc. In order to export your calendar, you must first set the new Timezone field in the Localization Settings. Afterwards, clicking the Export Calendar button will display a unique link to your calendar that you can add to 3rd party calendars. The unique link takes into account your existing calendar filter options, so you can fine-tune which appointments are exported.
Improved some mobile usability issues with text overflow in the navbar and appointment calendar page.

v22.2.1

Introduced a free plan that only includes the appointment calendar feature for up to 50 appointments created per month. Additionally, the Basic tier now has access to 50 free apppointments per month as well. The Core and Ultimate plans remain the same, allowing you to create unlimited appointments.
Added new Rich Text custom field type. This allows you to create a custom field with formattable text such as font size, bullet points, and more.
Added new Multi-Line Text custom field. This is similar to the rich text field, but does not provide any formatting options so it appears visually cleaner if you want a multi-line field without all of the formatting options.
Added new File Upload custom field type. This allows you to create a custom field that allows you to upload a file into that field. This field type is not available for appointment custom fields, but is available on all other entities that support custom fields.
Added localizations to the appointment calendar and staff schedule calendar. This means that the calendar will appear based on your native locale, including things like date formatting, starting day of week, and so on.

January 2022

v22.1.2

Many new improvements to the dashboard. Some of the widgets will now display comparisons to the previous time period, which gives you an idea of how your data points are trending over time. The order counts widget has also been updated to allow you to select a time period, rather than always displaying the Year to Date count. 2 new selectable time periods are available for several widgets: Year to Date and Last Year. The customer counts will now only display actual customer counts and not include prospects in the count. Finally, the inventory widget now has a Total Num Orders column.
Many of the Notes and Comments fields in CloudBridal have been upgraded to a Rich Text Field. This allows you to format your notes using bolding, bullet points, and more.
Added columns to several reports: The Orders Created report now has an Event Date column. The Appointments and Customers Registered reports now contain an Orders column, which has a breakdown of all the customer's orders if any exist.
Receipt Templates, Quote Templates, and Sales Agreement Templates now allow you to set a Logo/Header Alignment. Previously, the header was always left aligned, but now you can choose to center or right align the header.
Added new alert category: Customer Missing Email Address. This is only triggered for customers, and not prospects. You are able to turn this off in the Alert Settings.
The appointment calendar now has a new filter available: Filter by Appointment Resource.

v22.1.1

Appointment permissions are now much more flexible and powerful. There are 4 new permissions that can be set on a role in the roles settings: View assigned, Manage assigned, View by appointment type, and Manage by appointment type. This means that you can now allow certain users to view only the portion of appointments that is relevant for them. For example, you can create a Seamstress role who can only manage appointments with the Alteration appointment type.
Appointment types now allow you to set a Start Date and End Date. This can be configured by updating an appointment type at the bottom of the appointment settings. This is specifically useful for limited-time events that run either in a date range or on a specific date. This prevents prospects from booking appointments for this appointment type outside of the configured date range.
Added a Google Analytics integration which includes page and event tracking. This new integration is available for customers on the Core or Ultimate plans, and can be configured in the Google Analytics settings. Currently, this integration is specifically useful for tracking user engagement in the appointment scheduler tool. For example, if you run paid ads and you want to test the effectiveness of certain ad platforms or how well the ads themselves perform, you can configure an event that is sent to Google Analytics whenever a user books an appointment through the scheduler.
You can now set a Default Order Status in the order settings. Normally, orders always start in the New status, but shops that focus primarily on custom dresses may want to default to the Ordered instead for new orders.
It is now possible to create a new vendor directly when adding a new inventory item.