Hi Everyone,
This week we’ve got a huge set of updates that we’re introducing to My Music Staff.
Here’s what’s new and improved this week:
- We were hard at work all summer long rebuilding the way teacher websites are created in My Music Staff. While your current website looks the same on the surface, the backend has been completely revamped. This change allows us to add new website templates that offer a wider variety of layouts.
- We’ve added six (6) new website templates that offer a bit more variety than the previously available templates: “Goldenrod“, “Mia” and “Ocean” (which share a similar layout to one another) plus “Zerofour“, “Escape Velocity” and “Strongly Typed” (which are all completely different).
- The “Student Attendance” report can now be created in CSV format in the “Report Center”.
- If you have “Show Advanced SEO Settings” enabled for your website, you can now override the page “<title>” tags with a new custom page title.
- On the “Expenses & Other Income” page, future transactions are now hidden. You can view future transactions by clicking the new date picker button in the top right hand corner.
- We’ve added “Color” setting to “Locations” and an option to color the calendar based on the location color. You can change the color mode of your calendar by clicking the appropriate option at the bottom of the calendar page.
- We’ve added a new option in the “Student Practice Log” so that the student can select the day of the week that their lesson is on. This allows students to align the “hours practiced this week” calculation with the day of their lesson.
- We’ve added “Title” fields to the parent information. This allows you to specify proper titles (i.e. Mrs., Mr., Ms., Dr., etc.) and then use those in your email templates. Your emails can now be addressed in a more formal tone (i.e. “Hello Mr. Smith…”).
- We fixed two small issues with the Login Widget:
- We fixed an issue that would prevent it from displaying on some sites
- We fixed an issue that would prevent parents who take lessons from different teachers (with separate My Music Staff accounts) from switching profiles
- Emails sent from the “Download Library” to notify students of new files are now logged in the “Email History“.
- When you add a new file to the “Download Library” the student permissions for that file are now preselected based on your current folder. This saves a few clicks for teachers who use a separate folder in the download library for each student.
- We’ve changed the way “Past Lesson Notes” are loaded so that lesson notes from different Event Categories are shown (as long as the Teacher is the same).
- We fixed an issue in the Student Portal that would prevent parents with multiple students from switching the “Attendance & Notes” between students.
- We fixed an issue with the “Week” calendar that would show the incorrect day name in the heading if you’re in a region where the calendar week begins on Monday.
Multi-teacher studios will enjoy the following changes:
- We’ve added a new teacher “Privilege” setting to disable the ability to view “Student Profile Attachments” (i.e. files uploaded to the student profile).
- A few weeks ago we changed the way teachers are colored on the calendar. This change caught a few of you off guard, and you let us know. 🙂 To make it up to you, we’ve added the ability to assign colors to teachers in their Teacher Profiles.
We hope you enjoy this weeks updates. Have a great week!
– The My Music Staff Team
Did you know? You can view many My Music Staff “how to” videos on our YouTube channel. View all available videos.
Dear “My Music Staff” team,
My name is Igor Gorpin and I have been enjoying your amazing website for the past few months. It is incredible what a big help is your website for our music studio and Thank you for that. I do have a question for you though, “do you plan to have auto pay option builded in the website?” Many parents find this option useful for them and they do not have to worry to make a payment every month when it is already done for them. Thank you in advance.
Sincerely,
Igor Gorpin
Hello Igor,
Thanks so much for the message and kind words. Auto Pay or Recurring Payments is a feature that we have on our radar. Please hold tight and stay tuned for future updates.
Thanks,
Keith
To Igor’s request, and not surprising I’m sure, I would love to see that feature implemented as well.
Thanks for the latest updates and for your strong support of this platform. Starting my first ‘season’ with MMS, and it’s is going very well, and other teachers on staff are adapting to it quickly.
Kind regards,
Lonny Koch
Hi “My Music Staff”
I have a request about the “Daily” calendar display. Would it be possible to select the time increments in the daily view. Currently every 5 minutes is displayed and it would be nice to be able to change that to every 15 minutes as the 5 minute increments are very difficult to scroll through, especially on an iPad or iPhone.
Hello Emily,
Thanks so much for the message. You can schedule your lessons down to the minute or choose 15 minute increments. To do so you will need to select your preferred setting from the “Time Picker Interval”. To access the settings click on “My Preferences > Personal”.
Thanks,
Keith
Thank you and I have really enjoyed this software – it has brought tremendous ease to running of my music school. I have a wish however. I noticed that the Student Tax credit report reflects the charges based on the scheduled lessons for the student in the calender. Is it possible to add a feature to run the Student Tax credit report based on payments made by the student since that is the actual credit the student is eligible and will use for claiming the credits. If this is a feature that already exist please direct me as to how i can generate such report to reflect the money paid by the student in a specified period. Thank you
Auto-pay would be amazing!
Thank you for adding more templates for the website layouts.
How do I look at these templates before choosing one? I have already done a lot of work on my website and I don’t want to muck it up by changing the template before I know what the template looks like.
I started with MMS in July as a trial and find it truly amazing in the time savings for me.
I then started a trial with Music Teachers Helper because it has better options for website layout. However, I have spent so much time and energy with MMS that I don’t want to change systems. If your website layouts can be more flexible, I would be very happy indeed.
I see that you have already fixed a bug that I was going to tell you about, now there is no need! Awesome.
Hi My Music staff
Thank you for the updates.
My question is this:
Under a tab on my website, the pages no longer appear in the order that I have created them and are now in no particular order.
A fix for this would be appreciated.
The tab in question is my studio policies tab. I want the viewers to progress logically (my logic of course) through the pages.
Thx, Elizabeth
Hello Elizabeth,
Thanks so much for the messages. In order to view a website template you will first need to select the template, save it and then view it in the web browser. You can safety switch back and forth between templates without losing any formatting. With respect to your drop down menu options, this should now be fixed and your menu options should appear in the order you set them. If you require any further assistance please feel free to email us at support@mymusicstaff.com.
Thanks.
Keith
Thank you once again for the many weekly improvements to the program. It is helping me in so many ways. This week I see that you have already implemented my request from just two weeks ago. From the comments it looks as if many others are as appreciative of your excellent program and support as I am.
Hi MMS,
Thank you for the updates. We have been enjoying using your system as it helps us cut down a lot of time in our studio management.
Just want to know if you are going to have an SMS payment reminder feature in the future?
Regards,
Trang
Hi Trang,
Great suggestion. I’ll share this idea with the team and we’ll see if it’s something we can add.
– My Music Staff
Hi MMS
Just making some adjustments to my fonts with the new template I selected when I noticed that Webdings is no longer available.
I use a heart in my logo which is in Webdings and now it is not there. Any chance of putting it back?
Thx E
Hi Elizabeth,
Yes, we removed Webdings and Wingdings from the list of available fonts. These fonts don’t work on all systems (Mac, iOS, Windows, etc.), and regular text appears instead. This caused confusion in both directions; teachers were creating sites with these fonts that were unreadable on some systems, while others were wondering why their symbols didn’t appear all the time.
As a replacement, we’ll soon be adding some basic symbols back in as a drop-down menu beside the “Notes”. This uses a different technique which doesn’t have as many symbols, but will work consistently on all systems.
– My Music Staff
You and your team are amazing! Thanks for your hard work. I have a request. When Entering students for an event, I am required to enter their current grade in school. Could a place for this be put in the student information? Also, I have same request for student’s current age.
Hi Jo, the student’s age is automatically calculated by My Music Staff if you fill in their birthday (age is visible on the main student list).
There’s currently no dedicated field for school grade, but you could place this info in the student “Notes” field, or perhaps “Skill Level”. Both of these fields accept free-form text.
I am new and getting things set up. I would like to import the calendar from y MacBook Pro. I share that calendar with my family. I have a separate calendar for my lessons. How do I just import that category?
Thank you,
Robyn DIno
Hello Robyn,
Thanks for the message. The calendar sync with iCal only works one way. You can add lesson and events to your My Music Staff calendar and have them show up in your iCal calendar on your MacBook but not the other way around. If you need any further assistance please feel free to email us at support@mymusicstaff.com.
Thanks,
Keith