After much polishing, we feel comfortable to re-enable the long-awaited and five-star rated Infusionsoft Email Builder to Infusionsoft users. We previously took it offline because it was well, experimental. A conflict between our eCommerce side of things and the builder had a conflict and as you can tell, the eCommerce side won until we fixed it.

Tonight we’ll be turning it on. How cool is that?

Pretty cool.

However, we need to let you know some things about it:

• We do not “officially” support it, yet. It’s experimental. We’re adding features and making changes to it on a weekly basis – it would be moot to bother documenting things that will change the next week. Use the “Submit Feedback” link to let us know if you spot any issues or tell us what you like/dislike about it.
• It will eat your existing templates. It’s important to heed the warning when editing an existing template and saving in the Email Builder – your previous email template will disappear. This is normal and is working as designed. We’ve warned you.
• Use Firefox 3. The email builder is only compatible with Mozilla Firefox. Ideally, use the latest version for maximum compatibility. Internet Explorer users will be greeted with a friendly (or not so friendly) notice to tell them to use Firefox. Again, this works as designed.
• Experiment. Have fun and play around with it. We want you to give it a shot and start using it. We’ve built this from the ground up and you’ll will undoubtedly be impressed by all its power despite the tagline of “Experimental.”

We’re proud to let you use the most advanced technology in email marketing. However, if we see some issues, we may take the editor offline in the best interest of all users. We know you want it; we’re gonna make this editor kick your old one in the pants.

One last reminder here – do not contact support for questions on the editor unless it is absolutely critical and is causing you to lose money, can’t send emails or other mission-critical functions. We’re listening to all your feedback (good and bad) from the Submit Feedback link.

Thanks and you’re welcome.

Tonight, we will be making a minor, but important change to the HTML code  to a couple form fields for Web Forms.

It is completely backwards-compatible, so no worries there, but tech-savvy users (or developers) should take note of these changes. This issue may not necessarily apply to you if you do have custom modifications to Web Forms or use the additional text fields, checkboxes, radio buttons for custom scripting.

WHAT’S CHANGING:

• Checkboxes and Radio Buttons with the field name of “Option-” will be named “infusion_option_”
• Text fields with “Custom-” will be named “infusion_custom_”

Note: Only field prefixes are changing, not the full field name.

WHO CARES?

The only people who really should care about this are developers or if you have custom coding for doing stuff with Web Forms.

WHY?

We recently made this change and had to tweak it in order to provide more clarity these forms were created solely for Infusionsoft. Further, this provides better compatibility with server Query Strings and Javascript handling. In the event more form fields are present (for custom coders who do amazing stuff with it), those will be properly passed and handled by us.

Just to be clear — you do not have to change any of your Web Forms you already have. They will work regardless; our systems have been tested to be backwards compatible.

Thank you for your understanding and sorry for the short notice and any inconvenience this may have caused.

We are under way of releasing our Winter Release (version 18) to Infusionsoft users. This will be a steady, paced roll out to ensure optimal user experiences. This post will be updated with details and status of the deployment.

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1/28/2010 10:33AM — Last night around 11PM, we deployed an update to a very small sampling of users. So far,  so good. We’re doing more testing until we expand this release to more users. These users were notified of their application update at 1AM this morning.

2/02/2010 6:26PM — Everyone who already has the Winter Release will be receiving an update for refinements. This refinement will noticed by the “18.1″ version number in the lower left corner. No new features from the Winter Release have changed, other than a number of back-end optimizations.

2/04/2010 12:19AM — 112 more applications received their Winter Release update. From yesterday, we did not observe any system performance or issues from users. (Don’t worry, we’ll be releasing it in wider, larger batches on future deployments from this.)

2/08/2010 5:29PM — 1189 more applications received their Winter Release update during this weekend. Our fourth of five phased updates will occur this evening. We have not identified any critical system issues or performance as a result and the release is working great for our customers!

2/09/2010 9:44PM — About 1300 more applications received their update yesterday evening. We haven’t had any critical issues stemming from this release and are confident to continue the deployment to the rest of the users this week. The one application performance issue that people have noticed (and is noted on this blog) is unrelated to the Winter Release and rather the underlying architecture that we have identified and are resolving shortly.

2/11/2010 8:10PM — At this time we are holding off on the final deployment due to a few system issues that would negatively impact customer experience. Once we’re confident things are running smoothly, we’ll deploy to the rest of users. Thanks for your patience!

2/16/2010 8:35PM — After much tweaking, monitoring and testing to the code base, we have identified and resolved the previous impairments that prevented us from scaling our Winter Release to customers. Good news is that we’re finally caught up and will be releasing to another group of our customers. This evening, we will be rolling out to 187 applications. Stay tuned for an update following the release.

In observance of the holidays and to keep all our servers cruising right along, we have rescheduled our maintenance release for December 29, 2009. We’d like to wish everyone a very warm and safe holiday break.

Our offices will also be closed December 24 and 25 in observance of Christmas so we can be with our families. Thank you and happy holidays and Happy New Year.

Last night, Infusionsoft Build No. 1.17.17.5  was successfully deployed at 9:59 PM to all users. To see what enhancements  and changes there are, read about them on the Fusebox.

An update has been successfully deployed to all users on December 8, 2009 7:27 PM. This update is a maintenance release that addresses several minor software defects reported by users or found internally within Infusionsoft.

We don’t think the gremlins came out yet. Let us know if something looks funny, okay?

Version: 1.17.16.4.

We’d like to send a friendly notice that we will be deploying an update to all customers’ applications this evening during non-peak hours. It’s a maintenance release that fixes several customer-reported issues as well internally-found items that needed to get resolved. Thanks everyone for your patience!

To learn of all the details of what’s changing, it’s available on the Fusebox.

Version to be deployed is 1.17.10 — just in case you’re wondering. Your version number will be found at the bottom left corner of your application.

UPDATE: The update has been deployed as of  7:23 PM.

Not product related, but more so this post is focused on how we can better serve you. Cliche, we know: “Better serve.” But allow me to explain what that means with regard to this blog and your customer experience.

We work really hard to make a great application and we release cutting-edge features that no others offer in a way that we do. We spend countless hours planning, testing, writing code, testing and somehow we manage to get all our bright ideas out to you in a way that helps you grow your business. Fifteen-thousand-plus people can’t be wrong.

Two byproducts from releasing new features to an avid, entrepreneurial userbase happen.

First,  it’s that not everyone uses the software the way we intended or prescribed. It’s not bad, it’s just a factor that people can do limitless things with it and it’s rather flattering to see it pushed and contorted in ways we never imagined. Take the API for instance; many people are doing a lot of stuff with it that we couldn’t possibly narrow into a test-case, and have to take them as they happen.

Second, is the fact that we’re human. We control powerful machines and are prone to making a mistake. It’s bound to happen, we’re embarrassed when it does, but we take it in stride and learn from it. Every software vendor knows it, admits it …  and if not, they’re denying it.

This is the purpose of the blog — to help you be informed of your application status and to learn of potential workarounds and to give you a valuable resource to check when things go crazy. Again, we don’t anticipate craziness, but we have to plan for it.

As such, this blog is hosted out of Brea, CA (Orange County). It’s a ways away from Phoenix just in case somehow the Valley of the Sun disappears off the Web.  In the event network connectivity is interrupted, we can let you know about it. Even if it means, we whip out our iPhones and post notes from those. (It’s happened before when our office’s power went out.) It’s about planning and being transparent about whatever will impact your customer experience and your customers’ experiences.

Does a red, yellow or green light analogy work to communicate status on things? Personally, I feel it does, but could give rise to panic when there might not be a valid need for it. That, among other things I’d like to think about — could/would you check this blog first before calling support? When you read that something’s not working right, what would ameliorate your concerns?

So I want to open this up to you, our customers, to share what matters to you as we report to you important, timely notices on system changes. This post is rather open-ended, but I’ve shown our hand of cards to you and would love if you shared yours — your suggestions, questions, concerns and things that would be nice.

Thanks for your opinions. Really, they do matter to us and will help guide us in providing better communication, service and trust in our products and services for you.

~Joseph
Community Manager, Infusionsoft

DEPLOYED @ 9/29/2009 9:19 PM.

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Infusionsoft customers will enjoy an update applied to their application during the evening of 9/29 into the morning of 9/30. This update is a maintenance/refinement release that patches a variety of defects across various sections of the application.

The highlights from the release include:

• Restored the ability to access the Leadsource via the API
• Importing process can now place data into drop-down fields properly
• CompanionLink integration now has fully-working Phone and Fax fields
• Infusionsoft application session timeout has been fixed, no longer requiring frequent logins to the app
• Refined the contact record merge process to default to merge new information on an older record ID/Leadsource/etc
• An issue preventing the creation of tasks from a Quick Add Form action has been fixed
• Resolved an issue where User Records could not be saved
• Fixed an issue where Open Rates were not correctly displaying in follow-up sequence conversion reports
• Creating voice recordings will now correctly display the name of the file, instead of a 4-digit number.
• Revised the HTML Link textbox to no longer limited to 255 characters. (Trackable Links)
• After sending a broadcast, you can now view the template (HTML version) when viewing the results in the Email Batch Status report. Previously, if you tried to view the template, you would see code generated, instead of the real preview.
• When trying to access a Web Form that has already been deleted, you will notice a more “user-friendly” error message instead of an “OOPS” message.
• When trying to access a Leadsource that has been deleted, you will see a more “user-friendly” message, rather than an “OOPS” page.
• Products that an affiliate did not receive commission for will no longer show up  under “Products Sold” in the Affiliate Resource Center.
• Triggers now run regardless of the credit card used for Success Triggers.
• When exporting orders, the names of the associated people will display as text in the spreadsheet, instead of as a link.
• If you delete an Affiliate’s Person Record, an ugly oops page was displayed. Now a friendly message is displayed indicating that the Affiliate’s Person record could not be found.
• Editing Order Forms, Templates, and WebForm succeeds even if you loose your session (due to a timeout, or logout) before clicking save.
• You will no longer see an “OOPS” error when adding an affiliate to a Program.
• We added a setting on the create order action that will set the sale affiliate to the lead affiliate. By default, lead affiliate is ALWAYS set.
• If you create an order that has a payment plan, the customer will get an error if they try to bypass it. Previously, the order would appear to be successfully submitted, when in reality it wasn’t.
• If you accept Maestro card (UK), then the issue number will register correctly when using Order Forms. Previously, the issue number was not being recorded properly in the Person record.

We thank everyone for their patience and support at we continually to improve your experience with Infusionsoft!

We’ll undergo a brief loss of connectivity this evening during the hours of 9PM and 10PM MST for planned maintenance. This is needed so we can upgrade and replace a power distribution unit for our servers. During this period, you might not be able to access your application, but should hardly be noticed by any clients.

This notice was sent to all customers when they login to their application:

At Infusionsoft, we pride ourselves on bringing you 99.9% uptime with your Infusionsoft application. We are continually striving to provide you that top level of service everyday. Because of our commitment to your success, Infusionsoft will be performing maintenance tonight, Thursday, June 4, 2009, between 9:00 – 10:00 PM MST.

We are not making any updates or changes to your application.

We will be replacing a power distribution unit in order to ensure the highest quality of service.

There may be a network disruption lasting between 2 and 5 minutes during this maintenance window.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Infusionsoft Customer Service and Support
1-866-800-0004