Hello SuperCat Users,

We’re excited to kick off 2025 with major improvements across the platform, bringing you faster performance, more reliable tools, and smarter features to help you get things done more efficiently.
 

⬇️ Here's what's new from Q1 2025:
 

⚙️ Performance & Stability Upgrades

We’ve rolled out key improvements to enhance platform reliability and speed:

• Fixed issues with missing/large orders and rare system crashes
• Inventory and custom fields are now faster to manage
• Faster e-catalog load times and smoother navigation
• Database optimizations for speedier e-catalog updates
   

🛍️ eCat Enhancements

Improving your catalog product visibility and navigation experience:

• Expanded row view for related items, ensuring easier cross-referencing of products.

   

💡 Related items are now accessible directly from the "All Products" view when set up. Instead of navigating to each product’s detail page, you can simply expand a product row to view its associated related items. This update streamlines cross-referencing and makes it easier to manage product relationships at a glance.

💡 To set up a related items view, a field name called 'RelatedItems’ should be added to your product file. See here for more information on how to set this up. 

Note: Products are displayed in the RelatedItems list in the order in which they are listed in the field.

✅ eCat Admin | ✅ eCat Online | ✅ eCat iPad

📦 Smarter Order Views

Handle orders more smoothly with new enhancements:

• View draft orders directly from order reports
  
  Admin Console > Orders > Reports > Orders > Customize Reports > Show Submitted Orders > Select desired filter option > Update Report.
   

💡 Note: The “shared orders” feature must be enabled to view draft orders. Contact SuperCat Support to enable this feature for your organization. Furthermore, ensure the “Enable shared orders for this user group?” setting is selected for the respective user group.

✅ eCat Admin | ◽️eCat Online | ◽️eCat iPad

• Admins can now download tokenized payment information from order CSV’s.
  
  Admin Console > Orders > Orders > Download orders as CSV > select “Payment information” > Select Download as CSV button.
   

✅ eCat Admin | ◽️eCat Online | ◽️eCat iPad

📊 Enhanced Sales & Reporting Tools

Get deeper visibility into performance with upgraded reporting features:

• Improved reporting on presentation usage and ETL reliability.

  Admin Console > Tools > Admin Reports > Presentation Format Usage > Select date period > Download CSV.
   

• Upgraded sales quota dashboards, with support for prior-year quotas and data imports.
  
  eCat Online > Dashboard > Select Filter Options > Search

   

💡 For accurate reporting, ensure your sales data and sales quota files have been updated with the latest information. See Sales Portal and Files specifications.

✅ eCat Admin | ✅ Sales Portal | ◽️eCat Online | ◽️eCat iPad

• Sales data is now visible on flipbook popovers.

  Follow the steps below to set up your flipbook: 

  Admin Console > Library > New File > Select Section > Type in the “Label” name > Click the drop-down menu for “Interaction mode” > Select “Full-Spread Flip Book > Choose File > Select allowed User Groups > Save.

   

💡 To enable interactive product linking in the iPad Library flip book experience, the uploaded PDF must be hotspot-enabled. 

This means:

• Hotspots must be embedded in the PDF using an external tool prior to upload.
• Each hotspot should link to a valid eCat product URL or identifier to ensure seamless integration with live product data.
• Hotspot-linked PDFs can also be distributed to customers, allowing them to tap product images and access real-time information via the eCat Online product detail page.

💡 See here for more information on how to create a Flipbook.

✅ eCat Admin | ✅ eCat Online | ✅eCat iPad

• Smart list secondary sorting added for more in-depth insights

  To Edit your SmartList: 
  
  Admin Console > SmartLists > Click on already created SmartList > Select the “Second Sort” drop-down menu > Select desired option > Save.
  
  Create a new SmartList with a secondary sorting option: 
  
  Admin Console > SmartLists > Click on “New SmartList” > Fill in required fields > Select the “Second Sort” drop-down menu > Select desired option > Save.
   

✅ eCat Admin | ✅ eCat Online | ✅ eCat iPad

🔮 What’s Coming Next?

Here’s a sneak peek at what we’re building:
 

🔹 Conditional option displays for more intelligent workflows

🔹 More customization in Smart Lists and product field overrides

🔹 Ongoing improvements to search performance and system stability

Thank you for being a valued part of the SuperCat community! If you have any feedback or questions, reach out to our support team.

Best regards,

The SuperCat Solutions Family.

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Announcing eCat version 2024.1, the first release of the year! This release has several new features designed to save time and provide even greater flexibility in managing your customer relationships, orders, and data.

• Clickable Custom Customer Fields
• Create eCat lists from XLSX files
• PO number validation support
• Configurable order header Ship Date and Cancel Date fields
• Can now enable/disable the ‘Changed Address’ Warning

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We're pleased to announce eCat version 2023.6, the final eCat update of 2023! This concludes a total of 22 new eCat releases this year - including 6 major feature releases and numerous performance and other improvements. In this latest version of eCat you'll discover powerful new ways to gain sales insights for guiding your customers to success, improvements to the Library notice board for more efficient team communication, and enhancements to eCat's showroom tag creator. Check it out! You can now...

• Display Territory Item Sales in the catalog
• View Territory Item Placements in the catalog
• Assign titles to eCat Notices and show publication dates
• Create larger barcode hang tags with a new 3”’w x 4”h (portrait) layout
• Print double the number of products in showroom label print batches

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We’re excited to announce the 5th new eCat feature release of 2023. This update introduces new ways to use data for guiding customers to successful product selections and growing both their businesses and yours. It also introduces a message board to simplify communication with eCat users, two new PDF presentation formats, and new ways to manage and evaluate the effectiveness of customer showroom displays.

• Guide Customers to Success with Data-Driven Insights
• New Tools for Efficient Team Communication
• New Presentation Formats Show Related Items
• Manage Product Placements More Effectively
• New Alert Improves Scanned Order Accuracy

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We're delighted to announce eCat version 2023.4! This update brings an array of exciting new features designed to bolster communication, streamline productivity, and enhance your overall user experience. Read on to discover how they can elevate your business operations.

• eCat Notices: Instant customizable communication
• Library Badges: Stay updated and informed
• Edit 'Customer Lists': Tailor your presentations
• Address Change Notification: Ensure data accuracy
• Portrait Hang Tags: New customization option
• eCat Online Product URL: Seamless Integration
• Email Address Updates: Streamlined Process
• Enhanced Troubleshooting Support

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We are excited to release the latest version of eCat, 2023.3 with even richer PDF presentations, branded barcode tags, new sort options and more! This update introduces a range of new features designed to help your team work more efficiently and sell more effectively. Read on to discover how this new version of eCat can benefit your business!

• Sort & Filter by Product Classification
• Include Links in PDF Presentations/Catalogs
• Add Company Logo to Showroom Barcode Labels
• View Pricing in Related Items Views
• New Duplicate Scan Warning for Showroom Order Entry

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We're excited to announce the release of eCat 2023.2, packed with fantastic new features designed to streamline your business processes, improve data reliability, and offer more customization options. Read on to discover what this update has in store for you!

• Optionally Require Order Header Fields
• Securely Capture Credit Card Information
• Five Customizable Showroom Barcode Label Layouts

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The latest version of eCat is now available in the App Store. This version of eCat adds Resource Library navigation enhancements, improved alerts for required order header fields, and other general improvements.

• Library Now Supports PDF Page Thumbnail View
• Improved Error Messaging for Required Order Header Fields
• Improved Image Download Reliability

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The latest version of eCat is now available in the App Store. This version of eCat adds powerful new order and list scanning features, a new option for linking PDF presentations to your eCat Online product detail pages, and other order entry and general improvements.

• Order Scanning Enhancements
• Order Enhancements
• Enhanced QR Code Capabilities for PDF Presentations

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This version of eCat is a hotfix release:

• fix a crash related to searching collections

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This version of eCat introduces improvements to ordering custom configurable items and an enhancement to eCat's group scanning feature.

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Saturday morning's announced FTP file processing server upgrade went great. Total FTP site downtime was one minute. eCat (iPad app) and all eCat Online websites continued operating normally and were not affected. You should start noticing more consistently fast FTP site performance immediately.

Thank you for your business. It's our pleasure to serve you!

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For a brief period sometime between 5am and 8am Eastern time Saturday, September 11 it will not be possible to upload files to SuperCat's FTP server. All other eCat and eCat Online services will continue to function normally. Please notify your IT department so they will not be concerned by any error messages in your company's file transfer logs.

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This new version of eCat enables ordering from a list of multiple related items by scanning a single barcode and introduces other improvements.

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This version of eCat introduces a sales rank sorting capability that delivers powerful insights when used in combination with other eCat features.

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This new version of eCat includes changes to clarify feature descriptions along with a few usability tweaks.

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eCat version 2021.2 adds new functionality and important changes to the feature layout.

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Your data files are importing 5-10 times faster!

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Please note!  Apple will release iPadOS14 tomorrow, September 16. We're excited about the release, but we want to alert you to a very important change.

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eCat version 2020.3 provides powerful Library and order scanning enhancements.

It's now much easier to find your place in large PDF format Library documents.  The barcode scanning feature built into eCat has been completely reworked so it's lightning fast and automatically recognizes the 14 most common barcode types.

Version 2020.3 also delivers enhanced file security on the iPad and lays the groundwork for important new order management functionality to be delivered in the next two versions of eCat.

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On Saturday 3/14 we made major infrastructure changes as part of our ongoing process to maintain reliability and performance.  These included (1) switching to a new and faster production server, (2) updating critical software to ensure ongoing security and stability, and (3) turning off the legacy FTP server used for importing data and photos.  This was done without any interruption of service.  eCat and eCat Online continue to function normally.  

Please pass the following information on to your tech team to ensure your data updates continue to work normally.

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During the period just before the 2019 October High Point market SuperCat's file import servers processed over 25,000 new product photos  totaling over 4.5 terabytes along with more than 10,000 data files!  We're delighted what we were able to handle this load with no problems.  To support further growth and to improve service speed, we are upgrading our eCat FTP server and data import process.  This should reduce import processing time by 90% for certain types of files. 

If your company is currently uploading data files and photos to our server via FTP, these changes will affect you.  Please pass this notice along to your IT team so they can make necessary changes.

Here are the key points you need to know:

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Features

• Support pinch/zoom in library documents
• Export Excel files with embedded product photos
• Enable repeating items in SmartStacks for showroom walk-throughs
• Enable searching shipping locations
• Improve error handling when submitting showroom orders

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(10/3/19) Over the past few days we've processed thousands of new products photo into eCat for High Point Market introductions.  We'll process many thousands more in the coming days.  Look forward to seeing all that new product at market week after next!

As a reminder, to ensure faster image processing there is a 15MB size limit on product photos.  Any image files above that limit will be retained in the FTP site, but will not be processed.  Please review our product photo guidelines for further details.   You may want to pass these along to your graphic arts department.  Following the guidelines on image cropping can make a huge difference in the attractiveness of your products in the eCat catalog, PDF presentations, emails, etc.

All the best,

Your SuperCat Team

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(9/30/19) The most recent version of eCat, v2019.4.3.2 was released a week ago to accommodate changes introduced in iOS 13.  If you've followed the news you may have seen that iOS 13, which just came out for iPads 4 days ago, is buggier than normal.  Users have reported problems with eCat after updating their iPads to iOS 13.  

We've submitted a new version of eCat to the app store which fixes the problems that have been reported.  However, we recommend asking your eCat users to wait on updating to iOS 13 until things have settled down some.

Your SuperCat Team

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SuperCat has upgraded your photo server.  This affects your company in several ways.

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eCat's new PDF catalog creator enables eCat admins to define PDF catalog formats, choosing how they are laid out and the information they contain.  eCat users can select from the pre-defined formats on their iPads to create beautiful PDF catalog presentations in the different formats you define for them.  Users can personalize the catalogs with titles for specific customers, show specific pricing in the catalog, or hide pricing altogether.  Catalogs can be emailed, printed, saved, shared with file sharing services, or opened in other apps.

Check out these instructions to see how you can customize and provide catalog formats to your eCat users.

Be sure to send this training link to your eCat users so they'll know how to take full advantage of this great new feature

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Time flies!  It's hard to believe iPads were introduced to the world over six and a half years ago.  Five months later, the first orders were taken with eCat.  Both iPad and eCat have seen a lot of improvements since then!

Many eCat users use older iPad models.  We want to help you to get full value from your iPad purchase.  So we work hard to ensure eCat performs well on older iPads.  However we also want to use the power of late model iPads to provide awesome new selling tools.  This is why some new eCat features are available only on the newer iPad models that are powerful enough to handle them.

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