New Consumer Portals September 12th

On September 12th, Flexmls willl be launching new Consumer Portals for desktop, mobile web, and iOS. The new portals bring a fresh, new interface as well as several new features, including an agent-branded iOS app available to consumers through the Apple App Store. 

Click here to watch a video introducing the new portals.

Be sure to attend the special training course by FBS (the makers of Flexmls) trainer Nikki Baldwin on how these new portals can boost your website.

Consumer Searches in the Portal
One of the most important new features in the new Consumer Portals is the ability for consumers to create their own searches once they are logged in (searching before logging in is only available if the agent has purchased IDX). The option for consumers to create their own searches has been one of the most frequently requested new features.

User Option to Turn on New Portal and Portal Settings
You can try out the new portal by going to the Portal option under the Preferences menu in Flexmls.



The new Portal Preferences page is shown in the screen shot below and features a a video describing the new portals (the same video linked above) along with a big blue button you can click to try out the new portal. Alternatively, if you want to edit your existing portal preferences, click the link below the button to access the classic portal settings. 

New Portal Settings
Once the new portal is turned on, you will see the following options, which mirror the existing portal preferences with a few exceptions discussed below.



Featured Listings on Portal Home Page
One of the new options is that listing agents can select to show their active listings on the desktop and mobile web portal home page.



When turned on, the featured listings look like this on desktop:



Default Subscription Settings
Another new option allows you to set Default Subscription Settings. The new portals allow the consumer to subscribe to searches by simply clicking "Subscribe". This one-click option is made possible by the Default Subscription Settings, which allow you to control what events trigger a new listing update for the search. These settings are similar to the options currently available when you save a search in Flexmls and can select which options trigger a new notification.



Listing Content Options
Similar to the default subscription settings, the Listing Content Options allow you to control what content shows to your portal customers. These options are similar to the options for your manual or automatic emails in Flexmls where you can include or exclude certain content such as documents, open house info, and taxes or public records.



IDX Options
For those of you who have purchased Flexmls IDX, there are two new options.  You will be able to include a custom search and a featured search on the home page.



The search widget and featured searches look like this on the portal home page.



Switching Back to Classic Portals
The last option is under the Other card and allows the user to switch back to the classic portals.

Mobile Web Portals
The new, fresh look and feel and the options described above also apply to the Mobile Consumer Portals. Here's a screen shot:




Flexmls Consumer Portal App in the Apple App Store
The new portal release also includes the option for consumers using iPhones to download an app from the Apple App Store to access their customer portal. (Please note: This new app for consumers is called Flexmls whereas the app for agents in the Apple App Store is called Flexmls Pro.)

One of the primary benefits for consumers to use the new Flexmls iPhone app is to receive push notifications of new listings. Push notifications can be controlled directly by the consumer on their phone so they get the most prompt updates of just the listings they want. Another major benefit is the excellent usability and speed of having the app downloaded to their phone.

Manual Emails Confirms Customers Email for Subscription

On September 8, when a contact opens a link from a manual email, it will automatically confirm their email address for subscriptions. In addition, if an agent emails a public version of listings and chooses to send a copy of the email to themselves, they will be able to access the private version of the listings from their copy of the email.

Opening a Manual Email Confirms an Email Address to Receive Subscription Updates
Currently, the first time you set up a subscription for a contact, they receive an invitation to confirm their email address and opt-in to receiving future subscription email updates. You can manually resend the Confirm Opt-In invitation one time if your contact does not receive it the first time. Now, in addition to the previous process, if you send a contact a manual email, it will automatically confirm their email address and allow them to receive subscription updates via email. Because of this policy change, there is an additional line of disclaimer text added to manual emails: By clicking a link in this email, you agree to receive future listing-related automatic emails from your real estate agent. 



Note: Subscription emails will expire if the subscription email link is not clicked on at least once every 13 months. Now, each time a contact clicks a link within a subscription or manual email, it will extend that time frame 13 months from that date.

Receive a Private Link when You Manually Email a Public Version
When you email a public version of listings and choose to send a copy of the email to yourself, you will be able to access the private version of the listings from your agent-copy of the email. From the manual email screen in Flexmls Web, select the Public version of the listings and check the option Send a copy to me.
Note: Some MLSs only allow the public version of a listing to be emailed. 



As before, your contact will receive an email with a link to the public version of the listings. Your copy of the email will have an Agent Only section with a link to the private version of the listings.
Note: The Agent Only section only appears in your copy of the email; it is not included in the email message your contact receives. 



When you click the link in the Agent Only section, you'll be taken to the private version of the listings. 

Note: If you open the Agent Only version on the desktop version of Flexmls Web, you will be able to add additional search criteria on the Edit Search tab. If you open the mobile version of the Agent Only option, you will not be able to edit the search; you can access only the listings in the email. 



If you want to see the public version of the listings (in the same manner that your contact does), click the link in the body of the email.   

Centralized Subscription Settings

This install has been delayed.  Please watch for updates. On September 7, the Classic Portal Preferences tab will will become the central location for controlling the default behavior for your subscriptions. The new and updated settings described below will be available on 9-7 when viewing the Classic Portal Preferences page; however, if you are using the New Portal, you can access these settings now. New Portal Preference: Default Subscription Settings This setting controls what events will trigger a listing to be sent to a contact's News Feed and sets the default for newly created subscriptions. When a listing matches the search criteria associated with a subscription, the checked events will cause the listing to be sent to your contact and appear in their News Feed. The default settings are determined by your MLS, but this setting lets you set your own defaults. Previously, this was controlled by the saved search associated with a subscription and set on the Save Search screen. Now, you can control this at the Subscription level, allowing you to save a subscription with trigger events that differ from those selected in your Portal Preferences (above). To access a contact's subscription, go to Contact Management, select a contact's Searches/Subscriptions tab, and click on the subscription name. In the What events define a listing as New for this search section, you can keep the Default (as set in your Portal Preferences) or select Custom and modify the settings for the specific subscription. If you modify the events, it will apply only to the current subscription, not the default settings in your Portal Preferences. Renamed Portal Preference: Exclude these listing statuses from the news feed The current Portal Preference, Allow these statuses in the portal news feed for listings that no longer match, will be renamed to Exclude these listing statuses from appearing in the news feed unless the status is included in the search. Selected statuses will be excluded from the News Feed. For example, if your setting excludes Closed listings, a listing previously sent to your contact's News Feed will no longer appear in the News Feed if its status changes to Closed. As before, this general setting can be set on a per user basis by going to a Contact's Portal tab in Contact Management, and selecting Change Settings Note: Although this setting is changing from being inclusive to exclusive for the selected statuses, the behavior of your previous settings will not change. All previously allowed statuses will still be allowed in your News Feed.

Flexmls Pro for Android 2.3.0

On September 8, Flexmls Pro version 2.3.0 will be released and available in the Google Play Store (already available for iPhone). This version will include the ability to enter password information less frequently, search by listing/selling member/office, view member and office license numbers, toggle between viewing your listings and your office listings, view videos and virtual tours, delete contacts, and more!

Enter Password Less Frequently
Some behind the scenes changes to how your password information is stored means that the prompt to enter your password will appear less frequently. This means more convenience for you as you can open the app and tap to login with your pre-filled password rather than having to re-enter it between each session.

Search by Listing/Selling Member or Office
Member and Office fields are now available when creating a search. If you add Member or Office to your search criteria, you are able to search by listing/selling member, co-listing/co-selling member, and/or listing/selling office.

View Member and Office License Number
When viewing member and office information, the Member and Office License Number now displays (as available in your MLS).

View Your Office or Company Listings
Toggle between viewing your listings, your office listings, and your company listings. On the More Tab, tap My Listings to view your listings, then tap the arrow icon at the top of the screen to select My Listings, Office Listings, or Company Listings.

View Videos and Virtual Tours
When viewing a listing's details, tap Videos and Virtual Tours to view the videos and/or virtual tours for that listing.

Delete Contacts
From the Contacts tab, select a contact, then tap Edit.  Now you can edit the contact's information or tap Delete Contact to remove the contact.

Other improvements include:

• Improved speed and stability
• The ability to remove listings from a custom collection
• Innaccurate Last Activity dates have been fixed
• A radius drawn from My location can now be removed from a search
• A bug preventing listing from showing in the selected sort order has been fixed
• and more!

Upcoming changes to Manual Email Updates - Confirm Subscription and Include Private Links

On September 8, when a contact opens a link from a manual email, it will automatically confirm their email address for subscriptions. In addition, if an agent emails a public version of listings and chooses to send a copy of the email to themselves, they will be able to access the private version of the listings from their copy of the email.

Opening a Manual Email Confirms an Email Address to Receive Subscription Updates 

Currently, the first time you set up a subscription for a contact, they receive an invitation to confirm their email address and opt-in to receiving future subscription email updates. You can manually resend the Confirm Opt-In invitation one time if your contact does not receive it the first time. Now, in addition to the previous process, if you send a contact a manual email, it will automatically confirm their email address and allow them to receive subscription updates via email. Because of this policy change, there is an additional line of disclaimer text added to manual emails: By clicking a link in this email, you agree to receive future listing-related automatic emails from your real estate agent. 

Note: Subscription emails will expire if the subscription email link is not clicked on at least once every 13 months. Now, each time a contact clicks a link within a subscription or manual email, it will extend that time frame 13 months from that date.

Receive a Private Link when You Manually Email a Public Version 

When you email a public version of listings and choose to send a copy of the email to yourself, you will be able to access the private version of the listings from your agent-copy of the email. From the manual email screen in Flexmls Web, select the Public version of the listings and check the option Send a copy to me. 

 
Note: Some MLSs only allow the public version of a listing to be emailed. 

 


As before, your contact will receive an email with a link to the public version of the listings. Your copy of the email will have an Agent Only section with a link to the private version of the listings.
Note: The Agent Only section only appears in your copy of the email; it is not included in the email message your contact receives. 

 


When you click the link in the Agent Only section, you'll be taken to the private version of the listings. 

Note: If you open the Agent Only version on the desktop version of Flexmls Web, you will be able to add additional search criteria on the Edit Search tab. If you open the mobile version of the Agent Only option, you will not be able to edit the search; you can access only the listings in the email. 

 


If you want to see the public version of the listings (in the same manner that your contact does), click the link in the body of the email.  

FLEXMLS - New Tax Search from MMT Coming August 29th

We are thrilled to announce a new and improved Tax Search program designed to provide you with enhanced capabilities and data.  This new system, from Metro Market Trends, Inc. (MMT), is called MMT Tax and will be replacing the existing Tax Search currently found in Flexmls.

While the MMT Tax search may be new to Flexmls, their data is not.  MMT has been providing the current NEFMLS tax system with data for many years.  MMT would send the data to Flexmls, who would in turn, update the property records.  By integrating the MMT Tax search directly into Flexmls, it eliminates this extra step of keeping the information current, providing you quicker access to the updated records.

The MMT Tax search also offers many enhancements over the current tax system:

• Offers an interactive map that will enable you to view both property parcels and listings/comparables direct from the MLS system complete with listing photos
• The listings/comparables found on the map will link back to the MLS system
• More Map Layers
• Radius Search
• Search by Transactions
• Full Report contains links direct to the county's Tax Collector and Clerk of Courts websites (county permitting)
• Foot Prints on the Full Report (if available)
• More report options will be available

Click here to view a variety of webinar dates and times.  We encourage everyone to attend at least one of the 1 hour sessions to become familiar with the MMT Tax Search.  


Be sure to call 904-394-9494 x 1605 if you would like to schedule an office visit with one of our representatives.

The new tax search will be available on August 29th. We are very excited to offer you the MMT Tax search and are confident you will you will find it easy to use and contain more information than ever before.

NEFMLS and MMT have had a long standing relationship and their data is the most reliable for the state of Florida.  Which is why, in 2010, NEFMLS acquired MMT creating a perfect partnership, allowing us to offer these benefits back to our members and why Florida Realtors is using MMT data for their Economic & Research department, Form Simplicity auto population, and reports in MLS Advantage.

New Zillow Dashboard for Brokers

On August 5th,  the Zillow Data Dashboard (ZDD), a new reporting platform, was installed in Flexmls under the Applications menu.  This dashboard is a Broker only tool that collects information on consumer activity, such as how many times the listing came up in a search or how many times it was clicked on, and reports that back to the Broker.

In the past, Brokers were able to obtain these statistics from a different source.  However, now Brokers select syndication preferences for Zillow direct from Flexmls (under the Preferences option) and may not be able to see this detailed level of activity anymore.  So, these new daily reports on the Zillow dashboard were designed to help you continue tracking how your listings perform on Zillow.

Get More Information in Search Results -August 17th!

On August 17, get ready to see more of the information you want in Search Results! Are there too many roof fields to display in the Search Results? Garage? Foundation? Heat? It used to take up one column per Detail field (like Comp Shingle, Metal, Slate, etc.) in search results, but not any more. 

Put a group of Detail fields in a single column. You’ll see only relevant information. Detail fields with no information are ignored. 

 

That’s great. How do I do that? 
You’ll need to create or edit a view. Skip the next 2 sections if you already know how. 

What’s a View? That’s what controls the columns you see in Search Results. 

 

How do I create a view? On the menu, select Preferences, then My Views. 

Click here to read a detailed description of how to create and edit views, or click here to watch a short video tutorial (less than 4 minutes). 

Then create a new view and try it for yourself! In less than 9 minutes, you can learn to use more power in Flexmls      (4 to watch the tutorial and 5 to create a simple view). 

How do I put Detail Groups in Views? When you’re adding fields to a view, look for the group of detail fields you want. Hover your mouse over the group name (e.g. Roof). 

If you see an info popup, you can add that entire group of Detail fields to the view. Click on the Detail Group name (e.g. Roof) to add it. 

 

How do I know it worked? Open a Saved Search (or use a new search) to get to search results. Then switch to your new View (like in the second screenshot, above). You’ll see a column with the Detail Group you just added. 

ONE MORE THING 
If you’re using the one line report AND there’s hidden information, you’ll see a “Show More” link. Click the link to expand the box and view all of the information.