New: Client Area

leftquark

If you've ever wanted a special place on your SmugMug site to highlight your Clients' photos you now have that place: the Client Area. The Client Area takes our Private Sharing feature to the next level by consolidating the photos you’ve shared with a client in one easy-to-find location on your SmugMug website. No longer do they need to keep track of any links you email them.

Portfolio and Business account holders can see this new client area at http://nickname.smugmug.com/client. Just replace “nickname” with your SmugMug nickname. You can also add a link to the client area in your navigation menu.

Just like the 404, browse, popular, etc pages, the Client Area is fully Customizable.

To get started, invite your clients to view their gallery by Privately Sharing it with them. Once they accept the invitation they can view their galleries in your Client Area. This feature is commonly called "Client Login" but the Client Area is more than just a login, it's a home for your clients photos.



For more information or help setting this up, visit: http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/1963529-how-do-my-clients-find-photos-i-ve-shared-with-them-?b_id=1644

photoclick

This is a very interesting and unexpected (in a positive sense) implementation of the "Client Login". I'll have to give it a try. Thanks for this update.
mike

markderry

This is awesome!!! Finally!

markderry

I LOVE the new client area however I am wondering if there is any way to get the functionality that we have with Events where the client can pick favourites?

My use case would be as follows;

1) I do a shoot for a customer
2) I invite them to their photos
3) They view the photos
4) While viewing they do one of the following

a) mark their favourites or
b) rate the photos (a 5 star system like Aperture or Lightroom would be amazing) or
c) use the like button

to identify the ones they want retouched.
5) Using Lightroom I sync and see the meta data from those selected pictures
6) Filter to them and retouch photos
7) Photos sync back to Smugmug from Lightroom

I understand that this is out of scope however it seems weird that you can have favourites for events but not for your registered contacts.

leftquark

markderry wrote: »

I LOVE the new client area however I am wondering if there is any way to get the functionality that we have with Events where the client can pick favourites?

We had a little bet going regarding what the first Client Area question would be... I had my money on "can my clients favorite photos from the Client Area?!":) Excellent question!

Site-wide favoriting is something we're very passionate about adding to SmugMug but unfortunately it's not available at this time and I cannot comment on when it would be added. I certainly want the same workflow myself so at least you have me right there with you on the workflow!

markderry

I hope you won something! So in lieu of site-wide favouriting could we use comments to do the same? If the client adds a comment to the picture is it possible for that comment transferred to Lightroom?

jasonscottphoto

markderry wrote: »

I LOVE the new client area however I am wondering if there is any way to get the functionality that we have with Events where the client can pick favourites?

... it seems weird that you can have favourites for events but not for your registered contacts.

deal

markderry

Ok I have another use case for you and I am running into a bit of a road block.

I have customers that have been with me for several years. Lets say I have done 5 different shoots for this customer.

1) A family shoot
2) 2 fitness shoots
3) Engagement
4) Wedding

Now I would like to have 1, 3, 4 be available in an Event and I would like to have all of them available when my client logs in to access her photos.

Currently to do this I need to upload duplicate galleries for 1, 3, 4 such that I can assign those to be viewable by people I invite only so that my customer can see them when she logs in. I can then use the original galleries 1, 3, 4 for the event that she would want to share with her family.

This seems like it would make more sense if I could just include a public gallery as a gallery that I also share with a specific person.

Thoughts?

jasonscottphoto

markderry wrote: »

Ok I have another use case for you and I am running into a bit of a road block.

I have customers that have been with me for several years. Lets say I have done 5 different shoots for this customer.

1) A family shoot
2) 2 fitness shoots
3) Engagement
4) Wedding

Now I would like to have 1, 3, 4 be available in an Event and I would like to have all of them available when my client logs in to access her photos.

Currently to do this I need to upload duplicate galleries for 1, 3, 4 such that I can assign those to be viewable by people I invite only so that my customer can see them when she logs in. I can then use the original galleries 1, 3, 4 for the event that she would want to share with her family.

This seems like it would make more sense if I could just include a public gallery as a gallery that I also share with a specific person.

Thoughts?

I was wondering about this too. Is the Client page only for Private galleries?

leftquark

jasonscottphoto wrote: »

I was wondering about this too. Is the Client page only for Private galleries?

Right now it's just for Private galleries however we'd love to improve the Sharing features to allow for Public galleries to be added to the Shared with Me Dashboard. This would facilitate adding sharable galleries to the Client Area. Unfortunately I cannot tell you when we would add this functionality but I did want you to know that we're listening!

agallia

leftquark wrote: »

Right now it's just for Private galleries however we'd love to improve the Sharing features to allow for Public galleries to be added to the Shared with Me Dashboard. This would facilitate adding sharable galleries to the Client Area. Unfortunately I cannot tell you when we would add this functionality but I did want you to know that we're listening!

SM Admin, Thanks for efforts to continuously improve SM features. I understand it is impossible to satisfy everyone and there are often conflicts about which features are wanted.

markderry

markderry wrote: »

Ok I have another use case for you and I am running into a bit of a road block.

I have customers that have been with me for several years. Lets say I have done 5 different shoots for this customer.

1) A family shoot
2) 2 fitness shoots
3) Engagement
4) Wedding

Now I would like to have 1, 3, 4 be available in an Event and I would like to have all of them available when my client logs in to access her photos.

Currently to do this I need to upload duplicate galleries for 1, 3, 4 such that I can assign those to be viewable by people I invite only so that my customer can see them when she logs in. I can then use the original galleries 1, 3, 4 for the event that she would want to share with her family.

This seems like it would make more sense if I could just include a public gallery as a gallery that I also share with a specific person.

Thoughts?

Alternatively even if we could expose the "likes"

mrhoni

Sorry but I haven't figured out (or found instructions) the step by step of how to use the Client Area.

markderry

Keith this should help: http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/1963529

leftquark

mrhoni wrote: »

Sorry but I haven't figured out (or found instructions) the step by step of how to use the Client Area.

Wow, Keith, I think I spent an hour on your site just going through all the puppy photos, with the Mrs. in the back saying "awwwww, puppies! No go back! Show me that one again!"

Mark beat me to the help page: http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/1963529 but here's a brief summary:

1. Privately Share a gallery with your Client (it's in the gallery settings -> Security & Sharing -> Access -> "People I Choose"
2. Have your Client accept the invitation it sends
3. Point your client to http://www.mrhoni-photography.com/client. Once they login, they'll see the galleries you've shared with them.

You can also add a "Client Area" link in your navigation "Menu" Content block.

Let me know if you have any questions.

markderry

I think that there may be a bug with this when there are capitals in the email. Aaron could someone take a look?

leftquark

markderry wrote: »

I think that there may be a bug with this when there are capitals in the email. Aaron could someone take a look?

Mark, thanks for reporting this. Can you describe the steps in a little more detail? Are you trying to invite someone via Private Sharing, and entering an email address that has capital letters? Does it give you an error message? Is there something else going on?

markderry

I copied and pasted in an email that contained a capital. The person got the invite however when they had signed up and tried to look at the pictures I had shared with them the just saw a blank sharing area. To fix it I had to switch the folder I had shared with them back to a password security folder, save it then reset it back to a shared folder with the lower case email.

Does that make sense?

leftquark

markderry wrote: »

I copied and pasted in an email that contained a capital. The person got the invite however when they had signed up and tried to look at the pictures I had shared with them the just saw a blank sharing area. To fix it I had to switch the folder I had shared with them back to a password security folder, save it then reset it back to a shared folder with the lower case email.

Does that make sense?

Hi Mark,
I tried to recreate your issue but I couldn't repeat the issue you are having. I'd like to make sure I repeated your steps properly. I set a Gallery to be Privately Shared and then invited "Aaron+TestCaps@<myemail>.com". I received the email and clicked the link to accept the invitation and sign-up. I created a free guest account and was taken to the gallery I had been shared with.

I did notice that the email address had been converted to lowercase letters during the account sign-up process: it was listed as "aaron+testcaps@<myemail>.com".

Did i do anything differently from you?

markderry

So after a lot of back and forth it seems that my client missed the confirmation. User error rather than a bug. Sorry for the trouble. A suggestion for future improvements may be to allow us to initiate the resending of the invite and confirmation?