As always, the April episode of That’s #CRE #CREAGH was jam packed with terrific new enhancements and advancements to the RealNex Platform. In this most recent session RealNex lead developer Tim Creagh displayed a host of new tools just released as well as several items pending in May.
Last month, Tim showed how to build an Organizational Hierarchy using the Organization and Subsidiary fields on the Company record. That step enabled users to see all the subsidiaries, companies and contacts nested under one Organization. This month he took it a step further with the ability to now enable that same power to bring visibility to all the Properties owned across a portfolio. Now users can see all the Properties owned up and down an Organizational Tree.
The Development Team also continued to expand its deployment of in-line editing. The function is now available on primary Company and Contact tables. Next up will be Properties and Spaces. The powerful in-line editing capability is an incredible time saver allowing users to add and update information in the list view without having to “open” the record and access a pop-up dialog box. It makes for swift analysis of a spreadsheet like view to fix any anomalies or fill in missing data with ease. As a further enhancement, this technique automatically saves the data when you leave the record, but also now includes Save and Revert control buttons to lock in or undo entries if needed. In addition, address fields now take full advantage of Google addressing. Just start to enter a street address and a drop down appears. Pick the proper address and all the details populate. So, for example, start to type 123 Main and we then fill in City, State, Zip and even the precise geocode for that location!
A couple of small but important additions include an expansion of recurring events tools and the addition of a Greeting Field to add a Nickname to contact records. And, the duplicate checker can now update unlimited records. While we were limited to 100 groups of dups in the past, you can now scroll pages to manage duplications within your entire database at once.
In MarketEdge we have also added a geocoder. This is particularly useful for land parcels which are often difficult to pinpoint on a map. You can use Google to access the exact latitude and longitude and enter the details for precise mapping. You can now also add your own short form or long form Disclaimer to property listing marketing materials. And, we have added even more Presentation Cover Pages. As the library has expanded you will now also find a new Cover Page Selection Viewer with Thumbnails and visual examples of the option on a pick list. What’s more, you can even make certain Covers “Favorites” so they appear as a small group at the top of the Selection Panel. You can even find by name or filter by type to find your preferred option.
We continue to enhance and refine Customizable Pages as well. Even more formats are available and design controls have been expanded so you can build pages from scratch to display information exactly as you like. And, if we don’t the prebuilt page layout you need, let us know and we can tweak one just for you at a modest cost. A new feature is the ability to remove and save a Customizable Page for future use on that property. In the past if you deleted the page it was lost. Now it is saved in your reports tray for future use on that property. Coming soon is the ability to build a Custom Page layout and mark as Global so that it can be repeatedly used across all your properties.
Last, but certainly not least, we have added the bulk of the design and presentation tools from the MarketEdge Investment Tools Section to the Leasing Tools. And, the leasing reports have been scrutinized and updated from both a presentation and analytics perspective. Calculations have been refined and output has been expanded to provide even more detailed comparative analysis to assist in decision-making. We expect there to be a vast opportunity in renegotiating leases, so we wanted to be sure our clients had the best tools possible to present alternative scenarios to current lease structures.
To see how all of these new enhancements work please view the recording of the presentation.