As a new feature we have also put up a complaint form where you can post a complaint when you think a OMINS client is sending a promotional emails without prior opt-in authorization or if a promotional email does not contain a working opt-out link.

We reserve the right to restrict email features for clients who are abusing the OMINS email system.

As an aside, we also wish to point out that many OMINS users do not use promotional emails at all, and if you have a problem with emails please follow the opt out instructions and report any client that do not seem to be using the OMINS email systems appropriately.

You can view the policy document at the following link:
http://www.snipesoft.net.nz/policies/email/

Often you want to know how many items a tab (“section”) contains.  For example, how many sales does this product have?  How many auction rules are set up?

Previously you’d need to go into each tab to find this information out.  To avoid this, we’ve made a small change which now shows the count on the tab itself so you can see at a glance how many items are in that tab.

Just a small change, but a nice step forward for usability.

quick guide to setting up a new product:

http://snipesoft.net.nz/support/viewtopic.php?t=276

A guide to auction length and timing of auction using OMINS:
http://snipesoft.net.nz/support/viewtopic.php?t=280

The new auto adjust (advanced feature) instructions:

(this shows how to create new highy dynamic buynows and $1 reserves that can will automatically adjust prices and the number of items listed based on sales or average prices)

An couple of examples of a buynow setup and a $1 reserve setup, these also contain examples of the new auto ajust features in context:
http://snipesoft.net.nz/support/viewtopic.php?t=281

We have also added a new trademe tip, The 25% Theory:
http://snipesoft.net.nz/support/viewtopic.php?t=277

However, with a recent explosion in interest for OMINS, we just don’t have the time to properly support Easy Lister or it’s users.  Therefore, we have had to make the tough decision to put the release of Easy Lister on temporary hiatus.

Can’t you release Easy Lister without support?
We could, but we’d rather not.  Great support is an important part of being a Snipesoft customer, and if we don’t feel we can live up to that we’d rather wait until we can.

What should I use now that Easy Lister is delayed?
Of course, we’d love for you to try out OMINS and see if it is right for your business.  Please feel free to contact us for more information and a free trial.

When will Easy Lister be released?
Due to the growth in interest for OMINS, we are currently looking into expanding our team.  This will allow us to continue to support current and future OMINS clients, and may also allow us to re-open Easy Lister development.  Watch this space!

OMINS customers that want to update their prices can either use the bulk pricing updater, or else we can run a script to quickly update your entire product catalogue.  Send an email to support to request this.

Of course, this will only affect you if you set the reserve price manually.  Products that use the advanced pricing inheritance feature for reserve prices won’t be affected.

23 June – Reserve fee to apply in general categories

A 25c reserve fee will apply to auctions where you choose a reserve price that is higher than the start price, effective from 1 July 2008.

This change is designed to offer a better buying experience by encouraging sellers to be transparent about reserve prices. As a result, buyers will know that any bid has the chance to be successful.

No fee applies when you keep the reserve price equal to the start price, or when listing a car or other vehicle.

Therefore, one of our top priorities when designing OMINS was how to deal with this data.  How to make it easy to store, but more importantly how to make it easy to retrieve when you want it.

The most obvious solution to this problem was building OMINS around powerful search functionality.  Allow the user to not only quickly search for data anywhere in the system, but also allow them to construct advanced searches based on almost any condition!

Furthermore, once the user has constructed a custom search they can then save this search and recall it later.  As only the search conditions are saved, and not the data itself, recalling the search will always return the most up-to-date data.

After implementing this model, the benefits became apparent very quickly. We found we were able to easily use it as a base of many other features in OMINS, a couple of which are outlined below.

Reporting:

Because they are built using the search functionality, we are able to quickly create or adjust reports as needed.  It also allows us to provide standard reports which can be further refined or expanded by the user based on almost any criterea he or she wants at any time – live!  The end result is a very powerful, system-wide reporting system.

For example: Want to see the profit report for all your products?  No problem.  What about just the products that are currently in stock?  Easy.  How about only products that sold in the last week of February?  Piece of cake.

Emails:

Once again, emails are made very powerful in OMINS thanks to the search functionality.  They can be constructed and sent out based on almost any event in the system!  This is accomplished by using a previously saved search (see above).

For example: A user could create a new saved search that found all customers in the system who have bought a product off TradeMe in the past week.  They can then create an email thanking those customers, attach this email to that saved search and schedule it to run weekly.  The end result is a simple “thank you” email going out automatically to all of your TradeMe customers.  Easy, but powerful.

A few further examples of emails provided standard in OMINS:

• Daily tracking number mailout for all sales sent that day.
• Scheduled payment reminders to customers who haven’t yet paid.
• If a previous customer has been bidding on or watching one of your TradeMe auctions, OMINS can send a link to that product on your website allowing the customer to buy it directly without waiting for an auction.
• Many more.

For the techies:

All of this powerful search functionality wouldn’t be possible without good infastructure to support it!  That’s why we built OMINS on enterprise-level software such as the MySQL database server.  This gives us infinately more power, performance and flexibility over entry-level software like Microsoft Access.

Of course, as we’ve said before, being web-based helps a great deal too.   Desktop software just doesn’t allow for the kind of flexibility or power needed to provide these features.

Summary

As you can see, by taking advantage of search we have been able to make OMINS both easy to use and very powerful.

Not an OMINS user?  Leave us a comment telling us how you manage your business data!

This is why we’re happy to announce that we have now upgraded our infrastructure to 64 bit, allowing us to take advantage of the newest server technology and keep up with the growing demand.

What this means for you, the OMINS customer, is that you will continue to receive the same high-speed access to your system, and indeed should notice a speed increase on the heavier features such as advanced reporting.

It also means you can feel good knowing you’re trading on the cutting-edge. Quite an exciting place to be, we think.

This is overall a positive change as it allows customers a larger, clearer view of the product they’re interested in. However, it can also mean increased bandwidth usage and slower listing time due to the larger photos. The people most affected are those who list and maintain many auctions, either manually or with an offline listing tool.

Thankfully, OMINS users need not worry about this. Photos only need to be uploaded to OMINS once and are then uploaded to TradeMe from our high-speed servers as necessary. Our highly-optimised listing processes mean that each photo will most likely only be uploaded once, however if the photo is deleted from TradeMe – either manually or after 45 days of non use – it will be uploaded again automatically if needed.

No wasted bandwidth and no listing slowdowns – chalk another one up for web-based software!

You can set up and manage unlimited TradeMe usernames, information sites and e-commerce websites. Each of these websites can be customised to contain different looks, such as logos and colour schemes.

These features are commonly used for branding purposes or operational management, such as a seperation of branches, departments, of even companies.

And of course, being a web-based application, OMINS supports multiple concurrent users so all of your staff can access your OMINS system simultaneously from anywhere in New Zealand or the world. This is essential if you do have multiple branches or departments.

There’s no need to run multiple applications just to manage your different usernames – it’s all available to you with OMINS.