The new Casabella website has been put in place, and the previuos one is now archived.

Now everybody can reach it at our usual address www.casabellaonline.biz

Please send any comment or contribution to my attention.

Ciao Giovanni

Dear all, finally we are back in office! I have tried to use my Summer time in order to – almost totally – renew Casabella website. The new website, not yet activated at our usual address www.casabellaonline.biz but reachable and – almost fully – operational at www.casabellaonline.biz/wp . As soon as we will be happy about the result the new website will be reachable at the usual internet address www.casabellaonline.biz .

The aim has been to have an informational and usable tool in order to ease our business.

I would like to describe here the structure and the main services which are available online:

* Overall: The center body of the website is organized as a blog. If you do not know what a blog is please instruct yourself here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

The left sidebar shows when an entry has been posted, in which category and by who.

The right sideboard shows the following (top to bottom):

a. A slideshow of random pictures taken from the variuos galleries

b. A login or registration form

c. Upcaming events related to Casabella, like exhibitions or other

d. Current and daily updated European exchange rate of the Pound Sterling and Us Dollar agaist the Euro

e. “Cottage industry news” – Thanks Gerald – (news relating to UK and Furniture taken daily from Google UK news)

f. Good news (Good news from the world)

g. Monthly Calendar

h. Weather forecast in Casabella area

i. Search within Casabella website

The top sidebar shows different menus, as follows, from left to right:

* HOME: just links to the main blog page

*THE RANGES: (and subsequent submenus): Here the visitor can find pictures of all our current ranges Onda included, splitted by living/dining, Bedroom, Custom finishes, and Traditinal ranges, range name.

Once a range is selected, a blog page opens showing a description of the range and a slideshow of the images of that range. It passes to the next picture automatically, or you can click the arrows to go to the next image, and on top of the slideshow you also have the thumbnails of the other available picutures, which you can select to see. If the visitor clicks into the image will open on a new page. All the pictures have been uploaded, but not all the description have been implemented yet.

*CONTACTS: The contact menu is splitted in Italian/Worldwide contacts, UK contacts and Contact Casabella.

The UK contact page shows Areas, Names, and mobile phones of each of you. In addtion there is a contact form which the visitor can use to contact yourself via email selecting the pertinent Area from a dropdown menu. If this happens you will receive a notification in your email address with the contact details of the person looking for you with his contact details.

*PRICE LISTS: This menu is splitted in the following submenus :uk price lists, northern ireland p.list, Irelans p.list, and ex-factory Euro price list. Any menu contains the relevant price list by range. I have decided not to password protect the pdf files (as it used to be) but to protect only the pages containing them. At the moment I have uploaded only Prima and Adria UK pricelist only .

*ONLINE SERVICES: Selecting this menu wil open a blog page from where you can access the following online services:

a. order panel monitor : (opens in a new window) : This service allows the user (which could be Casabella office, the sales director, the area manager or the client) to see an updated situation of their pertinent orders into the system. Once the login has been done, he will see (and can also search) any order sent to Casabella, what has been ordered, the different statuses  Processed (which means received and loaded into Casabella system)  Production (self explanatory) and Shipped (self explanatory) value of the order and other useful information. A separate email will reach you for an in-depth explanation of this service.

b. Service request: (opens in a new window) : This service allows the user – which could be any customer, but also any area manager, sales director or even an office personnel – to open an online service request on many different subjects (Catalogues and Price lists, Delivery and bookings, Invoices and credit notes, Order enquiries, Product enquiries, Service request enquiries). Once the service request has been opened the system assigns it a ticket number, the relevant person in the office receives a notification and everything goes on from there. Any progress of the ticket is automatically registered into the system and both the user and the office can see its progress and status. In this way any request is traceable and streamlined. The instructions on how to use this system come into an email as soon a service request is open. Already fully functional, really easy to use, a bit difficult to explain.

c. Live account into the system: this is for office use only, and links to a login page to manage the open tickets.

*ABOUT: This is a page about Casabella and its contact details.

I am planning to also add an area where users can dowload high res pictures for printing.

* HOW TO CONTRIBUTE: Being a blog, anybody can easily contribute to the website, posting his own contents (wording or pictures) which will appear on the website main page. The easiest way to do it is sending an email (with or without attachments) to a certain email address, and its contents will be immediately published on Casabella website – as this post was. If this is interesting for you, please let me know and I will forward you the relevant informations. Any post can be also commented by readers. Comments will also be shown on the blog, after the site admin approval.

Things highlighted in bold orange needs still to be completed .

There are surely things I have forgotten, so please just have a look at it and send me your comments and questions, which I am really looking forward to.

Thanks Giovanni