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Showing posts from 2013

Have your real estate company set up online within 3 days!

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We blog about them so much but they really are probably the most cost effective and all-inclusive real estate websites out there. Our templates are used by many many real estate agents in South Africa and the orders for them are non stop - proving to be effective and giving results. If you are an estate agent and struggle to decide which route to go we'll make it easy for you.  Sign up to use our Office Management System , send us your logo, a piece of text to welcome your visitors to your site and choose an image from our stock library that matches what you do. Three days is all we need to set up your website and you can start to sell real estate without having the troubles of going back and forth with your web designer and developer.  We specialize in real estate, we understand how it works and know that having this footprint online is critical to your business. A long time client of ours re branded his company and we set up a new site for him in no time.  The old Eltec

11 new portal partners including ImmoAfrica

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  Estate Agents using our OMS can now advertise to ImmoAfrica for free ( http://www.immoafrica.co.za/ ), the interface went live today – all your listings from at least the last 6 months are advertised for free daily. Then there are an additional 11 optional portals available at extra cost ranging between R339 and R555 per month. This includes Immoscout24 - Germany's real estate portal with over 10 million visits/month. Please enquire from our helpdesk for more info

OMS geocoding accuracy improved

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We’ve loaded a small update that will improve the accuracy of the map marker when you click on ‘geocode from address’ after you’ve entered the property address. The update will better pinpoint the location of the property for some listings where it previously struggled.

OMS upgrades including new online marketing view

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  1. New flat user interface Tweaks were done to create a more consistent and cleaner user interface throughout the system:   2. Improved online marketing page with status and links to external portals You can now view the status of your property listing on external portals presented by different icons as illustrated below. Should there be an error (e.g. the Private Property icon below) you can hover your mouse over the icon to get an icon description. Reference numbers with links are also included next to the portals to quickly locate the listing. Where you see a ‘denied’ sign your listing does not appear on that website (where in most cases you don’t have a contract with them).   When you load a new listing and shortly after you’ve listed it, it will show a pending orange icon as illustrated below until the system picks up that it is listed:     3. Quicker area and agent selection You can now type in an area/agent in a dropdown box to locate the entry faster:   4. N

New Property Slideshow Youtube service to improve your search engine rankings

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Have a real estate website? Improve your SEO rankings with the new MyProperty Youtube service. This service will automatically create Youtube videos from your property listing photos and insert the description and link to YOUR website. This provides you with better ranking in search engines with external backlinks from Youtube to your properties (and the added benefit of additional Youtube exposure!). Search for property in your area, there is then a chance that people will find an additional Youtube search engine optimized link in the search results, as can be shown here on page 2 of Google’s results for a search. Clicking on the link will showcase your listing, with an additional link to your website, pretty clever! A video is created within 5 to 120 minutes after capturing the listing and a link automatically inserted on the listing. Here is a sample of what it looks like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl0kDhYYuz0 1 - Note the link here is to MyProperty but if you o

New Geo-Targeted Advertising launched on MyProperty

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Introducing Geo-Targeted advertising for Estate Agents on MyProperty South Africa . Promote your estate agency permanently on the left-hand side of MyProperty's search results in specific locations. Very cost effective if you are operating in specific suburbs. Click here to learn more or contact our team to provide you with a quote: http://www.myproperty.co.za/advertise.aspx#advertise

OMS & website thumbnail order problem corrected

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In some cases changing the photo order on a listing didn’t update the thumbnail correctly in the OMS property quick search and fr some website search results as shown below. The problem has been resolved. Did you know you can drag and drop the photo order in the OMS? Have a look at the sample video below. There is also no need to resize your photos before you upload them, plus you can upload an unlimtted number of photos per property listing.

Maximise your exposure on the new Draw-a-Search

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The new Draw-a-search function is now live on MyProperty South Africa. Read more about draw-a-search here . More focus will be placed on this over time which will results in more visitors using this feature to find their home. If you geocode (map) your properties in the OMS, it will display like this on MyProperty if people use the draw facility: If your properties are not geocoded, it will not display in these searches, and you could loose out on valuable traffic . If you are prepared to make the property location available, simply click on the ‘make map location & address available on web’ checkbox on the property details. Also make sure the property is correctly mapped by clicking on the ‘show on map’ link to view it. The other benefit is that Google Streetview and driving directions is automatically available for properties that are geocoded.

New Draw-a-Search feature launched by MyProperty

See the press release here: http://www.myproperty.co.za/news/7977/New-Draw-a-search-feature-launched-by-MyProperty.aspx#close  

OMS Calendar appointments now with more time selections

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Agents work longer hours and some events need to be scheduled outside normal business hours. The OMS Calendar now supports selecting times from 7am to 11.30pm in the dropdown list. Before you had to enter time time manually if it was after 5pm: The OMS features x3 calendars that are colour coded for easy identification: 1) My Calendar : personal appointments only you can see. 2) Office Calendar : events everyone in your office can see. 3) Group Calendar : events everyone in your group of offices can see. Only managers and administrator with the correct user rights can load office and group calendar items. You can setup reminders that will show once you log in to the OMS and also set recurring events (e.g. weekly office meetings).

OMS Small bug fixes including Notes, Files, Performance Reports

We’ve squashed a couple of small bugs in the OMS, this includes: 1) Deleting links from the property files & links section sometimes threw an error. 2) Adding notes on a new contact and then immediately opening up another contact shows the 1st contact’s notes (this was just served from memory so all notes were saved correctly). 3) Performance reports per agent for national groups. This sometimes didn’t display statistics for all agents. 4) Update agency logos in setup: This is now limited to office administrators and manager user roles. 5) Office members editing for national groups: fixed an issue where members where sometimes duplicated in the view.

New: setup sales tracking templates in the OMS

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As mentioned in our previous blog post , new sales tracking functionality is currently being rolled out in the OMS and today the sales tracking template configuration is made available. PROVIDING A HIGHLY FLEXIBLE TRACKING SYSTEM A flexible tracking, reporting and collaboration system is critical to provide a smooth and stress free property buying & selling experience and keeping everyone involved in the property transfer process up to date. We realize that every agency or franchise group operate differently and need to define and optimize their own processes related to the sale of a property. If you have admin access to the OMS, you can now configure and play around with the new sales tracking templates and provide feedback. New commission tracking, offer to purchase capturing and tracking reports will also be rolled out. Access the template setup in the OMS at: Setup / My Office / Sales Settings. TRACK OFFER TO PURCHASES WITH VARIOUS TEMPLATES You can configure multipl

Reinvent sales tracking for your office – join us on this journey!

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We've reinvented property search with the New MyProperty . Our next task? Reinvent sales tracking for the real estate industry and your office. Here is a unique opportunity to provide feedback as we gradually roll out the newly developed sales tracking functionality in the OMS . We'd love to get your input to ensure this adds as much value as possible to your agency or group. Watch this blog space and our Facebook page for updates to follow where you can then comment and provide suggestions. And if you have any thoughts right now on sales tracking, you are welcome to email us on solutions@entegral.net

Overview of the auto listing expiry, notifications & reports in the OMS

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How does the auto-expiry work? The OMS automatically checks listings about to expire every day and notifies you through the Live Inbox. If you are the listing agent you will receive an alert 1 week before the listing expiry date. Office Managers/Administrators can also view mandates about to expire for the whole office. Simply click on the notification to open the listing, or click on the checkbox to action it as ‘read’. When the mandate expiry date is reached it will auto-expire the listing and remove it from websites: The expired property is still accessible from the advanced search menu and if you sign a new mandate you can easily re-enable it. There is also the expired listings reports in the ‘Quick Search’ on the OMS you can use to view expired stock for individual agents or the whole office: Under the stock reports you can also draw PDF style expired stock reports and define how you want to group and sort the report:

Share files on any property listing, with anyone

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Following on the new OMS document library file sharing , you can now also share files attached to any of your property listings with anyone. Simply open a listing’s files & links, click on a file and hit the ‘ share’ button: Now add any other files if you want and click on the link to go to the sharing screen. From here you can select how long those links should be available for download. Simply copy and paste to your email, or use the ‘show direct links’ to copy and paste links to an instant messenger program like Skype: The time limit feature allows you to share files only for a selected time frame you set, ensuring those sometimes confidential files you share don’t live in cyberspace forever. Once the time has elapsed anyone trying to download that file will get an ‘access denied’ error. This feature is quite useful if you want to share internal files associated with a property with clients e.g. buyer, seller or attorney. Sending files the standard way through e

Share files with anyone, with the new OMS document library enhancements

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Now you can share files from your OMS personal or office document library publicly anytime, anywhere, with anyone, they don’t even need to have an OMS account. Simply go into a folder, select a file (or multi-select multiple files with the ctrl key), right-click and select the new ‘Share File(s)’ option as shown below: You will be taken to the next screen where you can select how long you want to share those files including 1 hour, 1 day or 7 days options. This security feature allows you to safely share files with selected people for a certain time period only. Once the time has elapsed, the links you’ve shared will no longer be available to download. The file links can be copied and inserted anywhere you like including email or shared direct in for instance an instant messenger application like Skype. For this you can click on the ‘show direct links’ link if you want to send someone the direct file link. The new sharing function allows you to easily share selected large

Separate Flatlet and Pets Allowed fields pulled through to MyProperty

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The Separate Flatlet and Pets Allowed fields captured on the OMS Property Details screen will now pull through to MyProperty . This will work for new property listings loaded today or listings being updated.

Private Property interface – rentals update

We’ve updated the rental interface to Private Property where rental listings will now delete correctly from Private Property if it is deleted on the OMS. Capture once, list everywhere Entegral interfaces to all the major property portals in South Africa and Namibia including free and paid partner portals: http://www.entegral.net/content/p179_products-property-portals.aspx We are currently negotiating a free interface to a new partner property portal for possible launch in October. We will keep you updated and make an announcement closer to the time.

MyProperty featured properties tweaks

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We’ve lowered the minimum price for featured properties on the MyProperty home page to R1.5M while the rental section has no minimum monthly price limit set. We try to filter for only good quality listing here, so make sure you load high quality photos and descent property description and details. We are also updating these featured property listing more frequently now. If you have a unique property you would like to suggest featuring on our Facebook page (already liked by over 22,000 people) please let us know by dropping an email to our editor at news@myproperty.co.za

The New MyProperty POI search, the technical challenges we faced

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The new MyProperty has a unique Point of Interest search facility as demonstrated in the video below (or just try the property search yourself with this link ). We wanted to reinvent property search and make it easier to find your next home by simply typing in anything close to the area you are interested in: This was quite a tough technical challenge to solve. A visitor can search any suburb, road or place (as indicated by the search heading) and we had to find both geocoded and non-geocoded properties in that area. At the same time the embedded Google map will show the location after it is selected and in many cases even highlight the area, e.g. Hermanus below: The challenge, how do you ensure fast searches? Property portals (and other websites where any type of search is done and visitor traffic is significant high) would normally cache search results and serve up the same content from the web servers’ memory for everyone for time periods, rather than querying the datab

Improved news articles editing with thumbnails

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We’ve improved the layout of articles editing in the OMS with key fields including title and summary in one tab, and the content in another tab. A new thumbnail feature was also added that allows you to upload a thumbnail image to your news articles as shown below. The system will automatically resize your photo. Thumbnails can be integrated on news articles for websites hosted by Entegral. It is free of charge for template websites while custom websites will carry a small upgrade fee. Here is a sample of how this thumbnail feature looks on MyProperty’s featured property news articles:

Corrections on property notes, brochures P.O.A and office setup

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PROPERTY NOTES We’ve corrected a problem with the notes formatting on properties, and should now display your notes correctly: PROPERTY BROCHURES Some property brochures didn’t display a P.O.A correctly (and only a 0), this has been corrected: OFFICE SETUP The office members page will now show all agents/users on a single page to make it quicker to edit for offices with a larger number of agents.

Performance upgrades OMS & Client Websites

We’ve done general upgrades on the OMS and all client websites on Tue & Wed & Thursday this week (Aug 2013) that should see improvements in page rendering speeds. This would be noticeable on slower internet connections.

The new MyProperty website goes live – property search reinvented

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We are proud to announce the launch of the new www.myproperty.co.za With industry first new search features including radius, place and road search we help home buyers discover more areas and find their dream home quicker than ever before. And with larger (and unlimited) photos, viewing homes online or on your tablet becomes more enjoyable than ever before. More awesome updates to follow throughout 2013 from South Africa's largest independent property portal.  Watch this space for a detailed overview of the new website.  

The #NewMyProperty profile pages will give you more exposure – check your office profile photos

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The ‪#‎NewMyProperty‬ launch is imminent... with improved profile pages for your office and agents, you will receive a lot more exposure. Make sure you sell a professional image by getting a consistent look-and-feel for your entire office. The new OMS profile upload function will help you achieve this by cropping photos to the correct size – there is even an instructional video: http://productblog.entegral.net/2013/05/improved-profile-photo-upload-with-crop.html  

On Show reinvented with the new MyProperty website

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Imagine searching for properties on show in a radius any point in South Africa? The new MyProperty receives a brand new on show section and new easy to use on show search functionality . Properties marked on show will get a lot more views on the new website, so make sure that you mark your properties on show in the OMS for your show days! Plus...if you geocoded your listings visitors can get driving directions directly to your showhouse...and even add the dates and details on their calendars.   Watch this space - the #NewMyProperty is launching soon!

Milestone - New MyProperty Beta website goes live

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After months of hard work and lots of prototyping we are pleased to announce the launch of the new MyProperty website in beta format. You can visit the website at: http://innovate.myproperty.co.za/ Click on the ‘ discover’ tab on the site to learn about the most important new features and upgrades which includes: · Search any suburb, road or place in South Africa. A unique and industry first feature. · Search in a radius from any point and include surrounding suburbs. Another industry first. · Improved filter functionality and better performance. · Unique new flat user interface design. · New Property Rank algorithm. · Bigger photos, maps and street view. · Easier driving directions on geocoded properties. The site is about 75% complete and with feedback received from users and the last few items to complete, will officially launch in August. Quite a nice feature that we’ve built in is the mapping of popular towns on the integrated Google Map available at search:

New OMS Performance Reports

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We’re making the OMS more intelligent with the new Performance Reports available under the report menu. Our aim is to help you achieve your strategic goals by bringing in performance measurement statistics. It allows you to draw key statistics and performance criteria based on your own data, that of the office or your national group. We are launching with 15 reports grouped as 5 different report types per user profile (standard user, office administrators and group administrators) as follows: 1) All listing counts breakdown 2) Al listing counts breakdown per agent 3) All listing counts breakdown per suburb 4) All listing counts breakdown per town 5) Show days per month and Show days per month per office Key metrics include minimum, average and maximum prices, commissions, counts etc. More reports will be added with time and we welcome suggestions on what reports and statistics you would like to see for your office or group (based on all your data captured in the OMS). T