IN THIS NEWS:
1) SASSIE X AV Server NOW on the Amazon Cloud
2) More on Admin Dashboards – Configurable Pie Slices!
1) SASSIE X AV Server NOW on Amazon Cloud
Unless you’re skydiving, defusing bombs or getting sawed in half by a magician, you usually get a second chance to get things right!
A few hours ago we successfully switched over the the new AV system on the Amazon Cloud and THIS time it went every bit as smoothly as we expected it to last week.
A few details:
* In the previous SASSIE NEWS we forgot to mention one key benefit to the new AV system for international clients:
Amazon CloudFront technology now speeds up AV content delivery by letting you pull commonly used data from the closest Amazon CloudFront center to your location. In other words, if you’re in China you can pull SASSIE AV content from Hong Kong rather than our previous AV data center in Boston. CloudFront currently has centers in Amsterdam, Dublin, Frankfurt, London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore and nine locations in the US.
* We reset the file size limit to 50 MB for now to ensure stability and performance.
* To answer those who asked, our investigation uncovered that last weeks outage was primarily caused by our OLD AV system literally refusing to totally let go and hand over control to the new AV system. While any outage is bad news, the good news is that our new Amazon Cloud-powered AV system is still everything we hoped it would be.
2) More on Admin Dashboards – Configurable Pie Slices!
One question that’s come up about the new Admin Dashboards is “Can we have different statuses show up in different slices?”. In the Reviewer pie chart (for example) some companies want HOLD A to show up in the REVIEWED slice and others want it to appear in the NOT READY slice. The good news is that we can configure most statuses any way you like. To change the status/pie slice configuration, send a tracker email with your modified version of the default setup listed here:
Overall Shops Pie Graph
- Open – Open status
- New – New status
- Incomplete – Incomplete status
- Completed – Completed status
- Finalized and higher – Finalized, Emailed, Client Finalized, Locked status
- Other – Collaboration Shop, Excluded, Hold A, Hold B, Created status
Scheduler
- Not Scheduled – Open, Created status
- Not Completed – New, Incomplete status
Reviewer
- Not Ready – Open, Created, New, Incomplete status
- Waiting – Completed status
- Reviewed – Hold A, Hold B, Reviewed
——————————– In case you missed the last SASSIE NEWS, it’s repeated here:
A) SASSIE X AV Server on Amazon Cloud
This week we’re reaching another SASSIE X milestone with a major upgrade of our AV services (i.e. the uploading of pictures, audio, etc.) AND a major advance in our data center technologies.
It’s the goal of every service provider to give their clients servers that never go down, that can handle infinite amounts of traffic and data storage at blinding speed, that have seamless backups and that can literally survive the dropping of a bomb. While no such data center exists today, SASSIE takes a step towards that goal with our first full time production server to go into the “Amazon Cloud”.
The typical server involves hardware purchases, a complicated installation process and ongoing maintenance and backup concerns. Furthermore, these server can go offline if the data center facility has an outage. In contrast, by licensing “virtual servers” from Amazon we are literally getting slices of one of the most powerful data centers on the planet, complete with their internet connectivity, backups, load balancing and security. As we move more of our operations to the cloud, we’ll even gain the option to house entire copies of our data center in multiple cities around the globe for greater performance and EXTREME stability (i.e. surviving the aforementioned bomb !).
So what changes will you notice NOW from all of this? If we’ve done our job right, you’ll notice VERY LITTLE change, aside from the following:
- Faster uploads
- Greater stability
- Upload limit now raised to 50 MB
- New upload window:
With the new SASSIE AV Services in place, we’ll have a foundation for some really exciting features in the near future, like the upcoming “Photo DNA” technology to detect faked pictures and receipts.
B) Admin Dashboards
How is your company doing overall this month? Are your schedulers and editors on track with that new client you just landed? How many shops are getting excluded this year?
Get answers to all of these questions at a glance with Admin Dashboards, available NOW for FREE (just submit a tracker request)!
Once Admin Dashboards are activated on your system, just click the button to the top right of your Main Admin screen
You’ll be presented with three pie charts on your entire company’s progress:
i) Overall shop statuses
ii) Scheduler progress
iii) Reviewer progress
Clicking on any slice will display those shops in the admin shop log
To view a detail on a specific client (or group of clients), click the “modify search” link:
With Admin Dashboards you’re only a click away from getting the data you need to manage your company!
3) New Emergency Support Line: 1-617-292-8008 x1
We’ve installed a new emergency support line with 24 hour LIVE monitoring. If you experience a complete loss of SASSIE service, please call us at 1-617-292-8008 extension 1.
Best wishes, John Hsu Managing Partner
SurfMerchants LLC Emergency SASSIE Support : Please visit http://status.sassieshop.com for the latest status updates and contact information.