Over the past year Guidebook has transformed from a simple events app into a platform for bringing people and places together. You have used Guidebook to power your weddings, orientations, campuses and conventions. You have shared your photos and your thoughts; managed your schedules and organized your experiences.
Over the past year we have studied how Guidebook is used, and are now extremely excited to announce and release Guidebook 2.0 - the next evolution of the Guidebook platform.
The release is full of new features and enhancements which we are eager to show you. Here are some of the new additions, though you will have to upgrade Guidebook to see everything which has changed.
Expanded details screens
You asked for it - more information on an item’s details screen. Detail screens now have time and date information, more robust schedule data, and support for linked items.
Five-star ratings
For those who wanted a more granular way to express their feelings about a session (rather than the binary “like/dislike” buttons that Guidebook used to have), you can now rate items within Guidebook on a 1-to-5-star scale. Oh yeah, you can also rate list items and guides themselves.
Search anything in a guide
Now you can find the session, exhibitor, or any other item that you’re looking for by searching for any keyword. For instance, you might want to see a presentation on the geology of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Even if you don’t know the presenter’s name you could type “geology,” “Sierra Nevada,” or any other topic into the search bar and all of the relevant items would appear. This is a big improvement from the days of only being able to search names and titles.
Share individual sessions and items
Enjoying a session? Excited to visit an exhibitor? Let your friends and followers know exactly what you’re doing by sharing the details on Facebook and Twitter with one click.
Update your guide quickly, without having to exit
One of the great things about Guidebook native apps is that you don’t need to have internet all the time in order to use them. Unlike mobile websites they store information and offer much faster browsing. The one downside used to be that you had to exit your guide and re-download it when an update was made. No more! Now if someone makes a change to the guide, users can update it in the background, without ever leaving the screen they’re on.
Link sessions, speakers, and anything else in a guide
Do you have an exhibitor that is also giving a presentation? Or a session that has multiple speakers, each of which have their own bio pages in the guide? Now you can link speakers’ bios to the calendar listings of the sessions that they are presenting, or link sponsors to the descriptions of their booths. This makes navigating the guide much simpler!
Contextual menu
With Guidebook’s growing feature set, we needed a way to allow for more view-specific actions and options. For instance, if you are checking out the description of a session, and want to share it with your friends, you just have to open up the contextual menu and click “Share this session.” Now, every screen you visit has a contextual menu (accessed via the menu button in the top right), which offers a list of the actions that you would most likely want to use.
Scan to download an individual guide
Guidebook 2.0 has a new way to download guides. Now attendees who have Guidebook can scan a QR code that takes them to a specific guide. If you see a Guidebook QR code at an event or venue - scan it! It will automatically download the appropriate guide.
Lots more
The release is stuffed with new content, including a glorious updated UI and icon set. Seriously, download the update and check it out.
Let us know what you think. We’ve had a great year. Here’s to the next!
