iCatalog

Slider Search - An Easier, Faster Way to Browse Materials

Sometimes seeing things graphically is easier to understand and can get you to an answer more quickly. That's why we recently developed an easy to use tool that lets the user fine tune their search while instantly viewing search results simply by dragging 'sliders' back and forth - we call it the Slider Search.

Below is a screenshot from a Slider Search we built for a metals company. It works great for plastics too and can be integrated into your website for your customers to search your materials.

1. Improved visitor experience – Give your visitors what they want – an easy to use materials search tool.
2. Instant results – IDES's search engineering ensures accuracy and speed – results are displayed the instant the user drags a slider.
   
3. Customized for your website – choose which properties to use and how you want it to look.

To learn more, contact Josh Dorrell at 800-788-4668 or 307-742-9227 x220.

Curve Data on Datasheets

Recently we worked with Solvay Advanced Polymers to display curve data on their technical datasheets. View a sample datasheet here (curves appear on page 4 & 5).

 

Complete the short form below and an IDES representative will contact you to discuss your datasheet strategy.

Multilingual: Find Missing Translations, Geographic Smarts & Under-the-Hood 'Kühl' Stuff

We say potato, you say kartoffel, and your customers say pomme de terre (or di patate, or patata, or.... you get the idea).

If your iCatalog is translated into multiple languages, good news!  There are several updates we've incorporated that help your customers better understand the information about your products. The Data Management System (DMS) now reports all missing translations from your iCatalog site and provides you with an interface to suppy the missing translations.

If your iCatalog service isn't translated into other languages and you have customers throughout the world, we invite you to contact Maryann Goyn at IDES (800-788-4668 or 307-742-9227) to talk about how we can best service your needs and the needs of your customers.

We've also instituted a nightly process that reviews all translated items and populates the translations for identical items. This process provides some automated maintenance for translations and insures consistency of translations across the database.

Here's are two other cool, fresco, kühl things too:

• Unit systems can default based on a user's geographical location.
  and...
• Quick search is capable of finding materials when non-English text is entered into the search box. (Go to Polyone.com’s Chinese site and search tech datasheets for 医疗 or 汽车)

To learn more about how to most effectively and efficiently use the DMS tool, we invite you to contact us: 800-788-4668 or 307-742-9227

Auditing: View Changes to Materials, Translations & Picklists

Every once in a while, isn't it nice to be able to cover your own tracks?

That's why IDES has always provided an audit system that allows us to report on any and all changes to materials in the database. Currently we can provide you with a history of changes and in the future, you'll be able to view the history of changes made to a material, translation or picklist using the Data Management System (internally known at IDES as DMS - now you're 'in-the-know')!

The tool also reports all 'out-of-synch' translations from your iCatalog site and provides an interface for supplying the missing translations. For example, this allows us to tell them that someone changed the English value but not the Chinese value. Learn more by reading our Multilingual Post.

To learn how to view history changes, we invite you to contact us: 800-788-4668 or 307-742-9227

Supported Browsers: Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox and more!

The iCatalog software from IDES works with the latest versions of Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox and others like Safari. Whenever there are updates to browsers, we test our services in the new services to make sure your data appears correctly for your customers.

Here's a breakdown of iCatalog site visitors and which browsers they use most (Jan 1 - Aug 31, 2009):

• 87.12% --- Internet Explorer (49% use 6.0, 49% use 7.0, and a mere 1% use 8.0)
• 10.90% --- Firefox
• 00.73% --- Chrome
• 00.42% --- Safari

Source: IDES Google Analytics Account