We made some big changes to Kompoz this weekend, including a fundamental change to the basic Kompoz collaboration workflow.  Let me start with that first, then tell you about some of the other changes in subsequent blog posts.

The biggest change is with how we handle new tracks.  Until today, new tracks were simply added to the project as soon as they were uploaded.  It was then left up to the project owner to organize the tracks so that other members would know which tracks were in, and which were out.  The project owner could use folders to do that, or more drastically (and in the interest of keeping the project organized), delete tracks as needed.  Project owners would also have to "accept" members into the project so that contributors would receive proper credit on the project overview page.  Of course, most project owners simply did not have the time or patience to deal with these issues, and very quickly many projects became disorganized.

The new change we've made is designed to address all of that, and is based on feedback from many in the Kompoz community.  

With the new change, as new tracks are uploaded they are automatically marked as "auditions".  Auditions are clearly displayed in the new interface with a green icon, and they are kept organized in the "auditions" folder.  When new visitors check out your projects, they'll be able to quickly see which tracks are auditions, and which are working tracks.

Project owners can quickly and easily mark auditions as working tracks by selecting the new "Mark As Project Track" menu option.  Project owners can mark one at a time, or batch update mutiple tracks by using the checkbox options in the new track listing. 

To make project management easier, when tracks are accepted into the project using the "Mark As Project Track" menu option, the member that uploaded the track is also automatically accepted into the project and displayed on the project overview page.  You no longer have to keep track of who submitted what, and who should be included in the project liner notes.  Just accept the tracks that you want, and the system keeps track of the rest.

The new "auditions" feature should work well for most.  But there is another option.  For those of you that don't want to have to manually accept auditions, you can also setup your projects to auto-accept all new tracks.  When you create your projects, use the new "Mark New Tracks As" drop-down option to tell the system how you want to handle new tracks.  The default is to use the new "auditions" feature, but you can also opt to auto-accept new tracks as project tracks.