Better tool to see what resources we have
It would be great if either through the web site, or even as a feature within Logos, we could see exactly what we do and do not have in resources. Current problems with relying on the grayed out buttons in browsing products:
1. Products bought from a third party will not be reflected as purchased;
2. If you have some of the resources of a bundle there is no easy way to find out which ones. Maybe it's worth buying a bundle, or maybe a discounted price could be offered if the license with the publisher supported it.
3. Resources are re-bundled in new collections, I may not have bought the new collection but I may have most if not all of the resources in it. This happens particularly during specials and sales.
4. Sales never reflect what I have and don't have. I always have to check or think about it.
IMHO I think the more we can see what we have and what we do not, even down to the resource, the more chance we will buy something. Come on Logos!
Comments
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Dominick Sela said:
1. Products bought from a third party will not be reflected as purchased;
May want to check dates of resources; appears buttons are grayed out to match resource licenses when resource matches. However, button is not grayed out if Logos is now selling a newer edition for that resource.
Caveat: have found a bundle purchase in my Logos orders that opens to current product page, but button not grayed out on that product page.
For same order placed with Logos sales, found a library purchase that includes 12 vols for one author, yet the individual bundle of 12 vols has orange button.
Dominick Sela said:2. If you have some of the resources of a bundle there is no easy way to find out which ones. Maybe it's worth buying a bundle, or maybe a discounted price could be offered if the license with the publisher supported it.
Wish for bundle upgrade pricing based on current resource licenses. For example, if already have resources that compose 80 % of regular price for bundle, would appreciate 80 % discount to complete bundle purchase (upgrade).
Keep Smiling [:)]
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I know they've been working on making the website better reflect what we actually have, but there are still bugs.
You can go to http://www.logos.com/products/search?unlocked=no&Status=Live and see all the books Logos.com thinks you don't have. I find quite a number on that list that I actually do have.
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Rosie Perera said:
You can go to http://www.logos.com/products/search?unlocked=no&Status=Live and see all the books Logos.com thinks you don't have. I find quite a number on that list that I actually do have.
Concur; noticed 2 out of first 15 are in my library. For now, recommend checking library for resources before purchasing something with an orange button.
Keep Smiling [:)]
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Thanks Rosie, good tip!
I did see one interesting resource on the first page. But out of the first 15, I have 10 in my library!
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Dominick Sela said:
Thanks Rosie, good tip!
I did see one interesting resource on the first page. But out of the first 15, I have 10 in my library!
Not surprised. The other day I tried to look at what Catholic resources I didn't [yet] own: http://www.logos.com/products/search?sort=bestselling&pageSize=60&Christian+Group=Catholic&unlocked=no.
- Surprise 1: according to logos.com I own less than 60% of all resources tagged as "Catholic"...
- Surprise 2: out of the 54 that I supposedly "don't own" well over half were such that I, in fact, do own.
- Surprise 3: lots of Catholic prepubs that I have on order were nevertheless not grayed out.
- Surprise 4: today those prepubs are grayed out again -- but they still show up under "unlocked=no" instead of "unlocked=yes". (I thought gray=unlocked and colour=locked, but it seems not...)
- Surprise 5: There doesn't seem to be any kind of logic in what shows up as unlocked and what doesn't. Butler and Orthodoxy are "unlocked", but Newman and Pohle are "locked" -- and yet I got all of them at the same time through the Catholic Library Builder. Most of the Oxford Movement books are "unlocked", but one of them, as well as the collection as a whole, is "locked" -- and yet I got all of them at the same time through my base package. And so on.
Wish for bundle upgrade pricing based on current resource licenses. For example, if already have resources that compose 80 % of regular price for bundle, would appreciate 80 % discount to complete bundle purchase (upgrade).
Wouldn't we all! I can remember owning half a bundle in value, and yet being offered exactly $0.00 in discount...
Mac Pro (late 2013) OS 12.6.2
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I recently got a vote back on uservoice for something that had been completed. (wish lists I think). I'll gladly vote on this idea if you add it there!
Pastor, seminary trustee, and app developer. Check out my latest app for churches: The Church App
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Rev Chris said:
I recently got a vote back on uservoice for something that had been completed. (wish lists I think). I'll gladly vote on this idea if you add it there!
Actually that's not really necessary since they are actively working on making sure that the site accurately reflects what we own already. Phil, and others know where the shortfalls are and whatever programming that has to happen on the backend is being worked on.
Sarcasm is my love language. Obviously I love you. 0 -
Thomas Black said:Rev Chris said:
I recently got a vote back on uservoice for something that had been completed. (wish lists I think). I'll gladly vote on this idea if you add it there!
Actually that's not really necessary since they are actively working on making sure that the site accurately reflects what we own already. Phil, and others know where the shortfalls are and whatever programming that has to happen on the backend is being worked on.
Well, a 100% reliability of the grey buttons would be nice and helpful. However, I'd rather like to have the choice to update this with my information (and thus correct the button if it's wrong), allowing me to reflect more info:
- I own this in Logos
- I own this electronically elsewhere (some people use more than one bible software, some use Kindles and other e-readers, some resources are available as PDFs or other electronic texts)
- I own this in paper
Logos could grab only the first button from their licence database - right now they do well with Logos.com-bought products and some, but not all third party products. I think that the goal for us in seeing what we already have is to avoid unintented duplicate buying - but this necessarily includes duplicates outside of Logos.
Going forward: The goal for Logos is to make the experience as pleasant as possible and to reduce unneccessary steps on the way from opening the resource page to "submit order". If a potential cutomer thinks - "I'd like to buy this, but first I'll have to check the Logos library, then the other software and then I need to look in shelf #17 and also in the pile of books that don't fit the shelf, to make sure I don't buy this twice" then (s)he will probably refrain from buying - and forget about it later.
To make the site even more attractive (Amazon-like [;)] ) and thus encourage us to spend even more money onLogos, there's a wealth of information that Logos has (or could have via syncing) and could display alongside
- This is on my wishlist // on the wishlist of XYZ people in my group
- XYZ people in my group // XYZ % of my group own this resource
- I have rated this book in my library with XYZ stars
- the average rating given to this book is XYZ stars (YZX stars in my group)
- ... you get the ideas
of course, this requires consideration of data protection and potentially opt-in/opt-out mechanisms. But then again, what we do in some forum threads is sometimes comparable: potential buyers want to have information and feel good to buy things others like. In the future, the Logos site could even advise us based on our existing library and preference structure.
Mick
Have joy in the Lord!
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fgh said:Surprise 3: lots of Catholic prepubs that I have on order were nevertheless not grayed out.
Surprise 4: today those prepubs are grayed out again -- but they still show up under "unlocked=no" instead of "unlocked=yes". (I thought gray=unlocked and colour=locked, but it seems not...)
Surprise 5: There doesn't seem to be any kind of logic in what shows up as unlocked and what doesn't. Butler and Orthodoxy are "unlocked", but Newman and Pohle are "locked" -- and yet I got all of them at the same time through the Catholic Library Builder. Most of the Oxford Movement books are "unlocked", but one of them, as well as the collection as a whole, is "locked" -- and yet I got all of them at the same time through my base package. And so on.fgh, that's why I included &Status=Live in my URL. Books that you've ordered in pre-pub are not considered unlocked because you don't have them in your library yet.
My understanding is they are working on a way of having the website know what you have on a resource-by-resource basis, not on a SKU basis (which includes bundles, library builders, etc.). They are partially done with that, which might explain why it is seemingly random which resources it knows you have and which ones it doesn't. I'm not holding my breath, but now with that link I provided above I have an easy way to tell whether they've "finished" the work they aim to be doing, at least as far as my own holdings are concerned. As soon as that list accurately reflects what I actually have I will trust that they've finished fixing the problem.
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Rosie Perera said:
fgh, that's why I included &Status=Live in my URL. Books that you've ordered in pre-pub are not considered unlocked because you don't have them in your library yet.
Not sure you read my whole post... [;)] None of my examples in 5 were prepubs, so that doesn't explain it. Besides, now that I look a bit closer, I find that all my prepubs are, in fact, unlocked. I thought it was about half of them, but it's actually all. It's my CPs that are locked. And they sure have been unlocked earlier. I've sorted my CPs by &unlocked=yes and &unlocked=no dozens of times.
Furthermore, the Catholic Library Builder isn't an old product for which new code needs to be added somewhere before the buttons can work correctly. It's a very new product, added long after the new website was launched, so it should have been coded correctly from the start.
In fact, as far as I am concerned the graying out and sorting by unlocked worked far better when those buttons were first added than it does now. Back then there were a few errors. Now it's so many as to be virtually unusable. And even if I do add &status=live, it's still half that are wrong.
Mac Pro (late 2013) OS 12.6.2
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fgh said:
Not sure you read my whole post...
None of my examples in 5 were prepubs, so that doesn't explain it.My first paragraph was responding only to your #3 "lots of Catholic prepubs that I have on order were nevertheless not grayed out". I should have interspersed my reply between the points of your post rather than doing it all as a block. Sorry for the confusion.
I was merely giving you a way of weeding out some of the erroneous responses for now. It's still an incorrect list, but at least it's easier to browse through that shorter list looking for nuggets you really haven't bought yet. I completely agree that it's bogus for the already purchased pre-pubs to be showing as orange. Didn't meant to be defending Logos there at all. And you're absolutely right that the whole thing is inconsistent and might have gotten worse recently. And yes I did read your entire post, but wasn't replying to all of it, as I agree with its main thrust and have experienced most of those same inconsistencies you describe.
Hoping Logos fixes this all soon. Apparently it involved a huge infrastructure changes to get this properly fixed. I've been assured that they are working on it, and it should be finally taken care of by early 2012. For me, that seems an awfully long time since the new website was rolled out with this new feature of a button that is supposed to indicate whether you own a product or not (new features should work consistently when they are newly introduced, or shortly thereafter; huge infrastructure changes needed to support new features should be anticipated and done before the features are rolled out; ahem [:)]). But I'll be happy when it is finally fixed.
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Rosie Perera said:
I was merely giving you a way of weeding out some of the erroneous responses for now.
Unfortunately that weeds out items I want to see as well. [:(]
Rosie Perera said:For me, that seems an awfully long time since the new website was rolled out with this new feature of a button that is supposed to indicate whether you own a product or not
You could say that again! There are so many things that we complained about more or less the minute the new website was launched that still aren't the least bit better now. The first few weeks there were small improvements each week, but after that? Can't seem to remember anything much between spring or so and the new wish lists recently.
Mac Pro (late 2013) OS 12.6.2
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Rosie Perera said:
You can go to http://www.logos.com/products/search?unlocked=no&Status=Live and see all the books Logos.com thinks you don't have.
Hi Rosie. Your comment above made me smile [:)]
The idea of walking into a hardware store, or Amazon.com or whatever, and asking to only see products I don't yet have seems mostly pointless.
Whats funny is that for some of the customers of Logos, the list of what we don't have might be shorter than the list we do already have. Scary ...
OK - going back into my hole to do more reading ...
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JimT said:
The idea of walking into a hardware store, or Amazon.com or whatever, and asking to only see products I don't yet have seems mostly pointless.
It really only makes sense for a store with a reasonable number of total items in their catalog. Yes, with Amazon it would be pretty silly. Besides, I often go up to Amazon to look up info about books I already own as it's quicker than finding it on my shelf to get the publication info for a citation.
What's different about Logos (from a hardware store for example) is that I don't always go to the catalog looking for something I already know that I want. I often like to go poking around looking for interesting new things to buy that I don't have yet. But even if I didn't already own more products than I don't (which admittedly is probably the case for me), just owning one or two entire commentary sets would mean scrolling through pages and pages of stuff I already own so I'm not interested in browsing to potentially buy it. That's what I use the &unlocked=no feature for.
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I don't know, it could start a trend in marketing.JimT said:The idea of walking into a hardware store, or Amazon.com or whatever, and asking to only see products I don't yet have seems mostly pointless.
I can't tell you how many times I've bought the same hardware part. "Oh, I just remembered I needed a 1 1/4 hinge" (I have three on my rack at home.)[:$]
Sarcasm is my love language. Obviously I love you. 0 -
Thanks for the smile TC! (Name change I see)
I too end up buying repeats like that, because I forgot I had one, or because I KNOW I already purchased it, but can't find it!
As far as I know from memory, I have purchased two DVD movies twice: "Groundhog Day" and "Conspiracy Theory". If I was to do that for a third movie, I expect it would be "Deja Vu" to keep the theme going ...
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Dominick Sela said:
1. Products bought from a third party will not be reflected as purchased;
Looking at Logos.com noticing gray buttons for some third party items that match licensing = Thanks [8-|]
Dominick Sela said:3. Resources are re-bundled in new collections, I may not have bought the new collection but I may have most if not all of the resources in it. This happens particularly during specials and sales.
Would appreciate bundles or collections being gray if have licenses for all resources in bundle.
Conversely, would appreciate individual resources being gray when have purchased a bundle or collection, which includes individual resource license.
Keep Smiling [:)]
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