Where am I? CaptionSync looks totally different!

Change can be disorienting at first. But it can also be a good thing, especially once you become oriented to the new environment. That's what this article is for -- to provide a quick orientation for existing clients moving from the old CaptionSync user interface to the new one. 

Keep in mind that all of the professional-quality CaptionSync services and features that you've been using remain the same; this is basically a redesign intended to make the CaptionSync site easier to learn, and easier to use.  Below are the main changes.

Dashboard Page

One of the first differences you'll notice when logging in is the new dashboard page.

• The dashboard is the new landing page in CaptionSync. From the dashboard you can jump to the appropriate pages for the most common service types (captioning, transcription, audio description, and live captioning) with just one click.  

• Over time we'll add more shortcuts and status messages to the dashboard. Let us know if you have specific things you'd like to see on the dashboard.  

Left Hand Navigation Menu

Another change is the location of the navigation. We've moved the primary navigation options from the top of the page to the left side of the screen.

To give you more space if you're working on a small screen, we've also included a button at the bottom that allows you to collapse or expand the navigation bar.

Top Menu

The top right menu items are pretty similar to what was in the upper right before. Help and Logout are in the upper right, and we now also have shortcuts to your Contact Settings and News in the top right. If you have a pre-paid account, you'll also have shortcuts to your credit balance details and the page where you can purchase more credits.   

Submission History Pages

The Submission History pages have been redesigned to make the data easier to read and easier to search through. There is a new search bar at the top right of each data table that you can use to quickly narrow the list.

The submission lists are "paginated," meaning that by default you'll only see 10 submissions per page, but you can change the number of submissions per page using the "Show __ entries" field on the left. Keep in mind that searches will search across all of the pages in your results.  

Breadcrumbs

One final difference is the addition of navigation feature known as "breadcrumbs." At the top of each page you now have a summary of where you are in the navigation hierarchy. This often useful if you've arrived at a page through a shortcut from another page, as it provides a quick orientation to where the current page sits in the navigation menus. In the example below we are on the page for a specific invoice, but we can easily jump to the list of all invoices by clicking on the Invoicing Summary link in the breadcrumbs.

Conclusion and Acknowledgements

There are many other small differences, but we hope this article provides a good overview of the key differences so that our long-time clients can jump right in and "hit the ground running" this fall. 

Speaking of long-time clients, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to all of you who have provided feedback and ideas on how we could improve CaptionSync.  This update to CaptionSync is based on your ideas over the last few years.  We couldn't have done it without you, and we will strive for continuous improvement going forward. 

On that note, there are still a few pages that have not yet been re-designed, and there definitely user interface features that we would like to add or improve even further.  If you run into any problems or have any questions, please open a support ticket or give us a call at 877-278-7962.  

Thanks, and keep the comments coming!