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Rapid Response
By: Michael Wurzer,
flexmls.com
Posted: Sunday, October 7th, 2007, 9:13 pm MST
Category: General Information
FBS announced its contract with ARMLS on Friday, and this site is up on Sunday. That’s one of the strong points of this new world being created on the web, you can react quickly, try new things and quickly see what works and what doesn’t. I know this site is going to work, because users supporting users is a powerful idea. FBS intends to participate as much as the community wants, and hopefully answer questions and provide a voice to the company behind the new system.
I know one of the early questions is going to be: When do we get to see the new system? I posted a milestone schedule over at the FBS Blog in announcing the new system coming July 1, 2008. Quickly after making the announcement, though, I realized that with this site coming up people are going to want to see the system earlier or, more likely, now. Traditionally, however, when someone wants demo access, we usually just ask permission of one of our existing accounts so that the person reviewing sees a live system and not some lame demo. That works well with very small groups of people but it clearly isn’t going to work with 39,000 members of ARMLS who likely want to see the system now.
To address that need, we’re going to work on developing some videos highlighting some of the key functions in the system. We hope to have these available in the next couple of weeks. One of the challenges we’re going to have producing these videos is that we’re just a few weeks from one of our major releases on November 1. We typically have two major feature releases a year, in the spring and the fall. (Actually, we release new code every couple of weeks in response to specific client requests — what we call “immediate” release issues — but major feature upgrades are scheduled twice per year.) With the fall release looming on November 1, we’re jamming to get everything wrapped up for that right now and so we’ll have to work to get these videos done in between. The great thing is that the tools available today to create video make things much easier than before, so we should be able to have some good stuff to you soon. In this new world of rapid response, you should expect nothing less.
October 7th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
Michael -
I’ve had several agents pose two questions about FlexMLS.
1) How many pictures will be able to have? ARMLS currently allows a very lame six.
I don’t know if this is a limitation of the current Tempo system, or a restriction imposed by ARMLS. I hope with the new system we won’t be limited to six photos.
2) Tempo provides a “Client Gateway” — a “web page” we can set up with search criteria and sned to clients for their use. Will FlexMLS have a similar function?
October 7th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
Excellent. We can FAQ this stuff as we go along.
October 8th, 2007 at 5:30 am
Jay, no limit on photos. In this day of cheap disk, we’ve never understood those arbitrary limits. We store three copies of every photo, a higher-res image (basically the original re-sampled to no bigger than 1 MB while preserving the aspect ratio), a reports size (300×200), and a thumbnail. The higher res photos make for a nice photo tour for those paying attention.
Regarding the client gateway, is the client assigned a login or just an e-mail link? Either way, we have the latter now and will have the former by the time the ARMLS system goes live. As I write this, we do not have the ability for agents to assign clients a login/password but you can e-mail the entire search results page to your client, so they can play with the map, look at the media (photos, virtual tours, video or any Flash or Java or other embeddable object), sort, print reports, etc. Our spring release, though, should have full login capability, where the agent can allow clients to save searches, favorites, ask the agents questions on the discuss tab, set up showings, etc.
We really need to get those videos or at least some screen shots out so you all can visualize what I’m talking about. That’s my top priority today.
October 8th, 2007 at 10:08 am
I agree with Greg - some video clips of user screens would go along way to helping us see how flexmls works.
I see a number of elements to the flexmls system; are all of them to be available with the ARMLS implementation?
October 8th, 2007 at 11:04 am
The video clips would be great for letting us see the system in action.
Another feature I would like to wonder about: Searching via a map? Can I draw an area on a map and search for listings in that area? Currently our new tax system allows us to do this, and I’m dieing to be able to do it directly in ARMLS. It really fixes the problem of people not entering in valid subdivision information. I’d also like to save this drawn area, of course.
Which leads me to another question: What features, if any, does your system have that will allow better data integrity? The number of human entered fields that should really be system only populated in ARMLS is astonishing. I suppose I’m saying we should rely on the tax system for data population, which may or may not be all that accurate either, but I’d like to see the new MLS impose a bit more data integrity, if it is possible.
I could go on and on, but I’ll stop here for this morning.
October 8th, 2007 at 11:29 am
Steven Groves: All of the features in flexmls Web and Wireless are part of the contract. Our IDX solution is available as an individual choice.
Steve Belt: Yes, searching by map (radius, rectangle, irregular polygon and intersection of areas) is part of the system. In terms of data integrity, we do auto-populate from tax records and the system has what we call related scroll list fields to prevent mutually exclusive selections (e.g., choosing a city and zip code that don’t exist together, both for data entry and searching) and MLS-definable reasonableness constraints to test the reasonableness of fields at the time of entry. This latter function helps prevent bad data from going in, which we’ve found is much better than letting the bad data in and then fining for it later to get it corrected.
We’ll have some stuff up soon to give you a preview of the system. Either that or we’ll conduct a webinar for the group of contributors so you can see it in action.
October 8th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
The search by map function in FlexMLS was the best that the ARMLS MLS RFP Task Force tested! The radius intersection search is absolutely brilliant! Say you have a client who wants to be no further than two miles from their child’s school and no further than fifteen miles from their office. Set up your search criteria and then simply draw a 2 mile radius from the school and a 15 mile radius from the office… place a check mark in the “intersection” box (in the control panel) and VOILA!… your search results will be plotted in the intersection of the two radiuses (or is it radii?). Or… draw your shapes first and then enter your search criteria. Happy meals for everyone! Another fabulous feature… you’ll be able to draw MULTIPLE (as in… NOT JUST ONE!) irregular polygons, radii, and rectangles… and plot your search results within. All map searches can be saved…. WITH the rectangles, radii, and polygons intact, viewable (or not… at your option)… and they’re modifiable too (that’s a lot of ables!). Having killer maps is an absolute must for this function to really shine and I am going to push hard for them and for us. FBS has a new mapping module with dynamite street maps that are part of the system. The rest of the layers are our call… and our expense (ARMLS’). I’d love to have a Google aerial map layer (they have awesome 4” resolution!!!). We can layer the ever useful county shape file vectors too! I hope that I’m not stealing your thunder, Mike…
October 8th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Oh, Gary, you’re a phantom from my dreams… We’ve thought about this stuff for years…
Michael:
Multiple non-intersecting polygons? We work in the somewhat separated historic districts of Phoenix.
Possibly too much to ask: I tend to think in C/C++ terms: Can we have modular or object-oriented search elements? IOW, imagine I have done a map-based isolation of multiple non-intersecting polygons. Can I save just that as either a module or an object, then apply it by inclusion or encapsulation in other searches that I might build later?
Another example: A pool in my opinion is a private pool that is not an above-ground pool. Could I save that definition of a pool to use whenever I might want to apply it to a search?
October 9th, 2007 at 7:25 am
Yes, the system allows mutliple non-intersecting polygons. Currently, the only way to re-use search areas from search to search would be to start from a previously saved search. However, allowing users to recall search areas is a perfectly great idea that I don’t see a lot of problems implementing.
Very related to this is the “my maps” functionality we’ve been working on, which will allow users to define areas and add points of interest to the map, like Google’s “my maps” functionality. We’ll also be adding inheritance and sharing functionality into these maps, which will allow the MLS members to define and enhance neighborhoods. Adding the ability to recall polygons into a search should be straight-forward based on this work.
Regarding the pool example, am I correct in assuming that you have two data fields, one for “private pool” and one for “above-ground” and your desire is to treat these as a single phrase within the where clause, e.g., “AND private_pool NOT above_ground”? The answer to this is the same as above, you’d have to start from a previously saved search to re-use that specification. I’ll think about how we can add this “phrase” functionality.
This is somewhat similar to an issue Gary has raised, which is the desire to search for “5 bedrooms OR (4 bedrooms AND den)”. The query for this is simple, what’s tricky is designing the graphical user interface that allows this nested query. Older systems often had this functionality, because it is very easy to express in straight text with parentheses to order the terms and phrases. The challenge comes when you are trying to make it graphical and allow drag and drop and re-ordering and yet keep it simple.
We’ve been working on a couple of UI ideas for this type of searching, and I’ve told Gary many times that we’ll get it figured out before the go live date. Hopefully we’ll also be able to integrate your desire for a saved complex terms as well. I definitely see that the concepts are related.
October 10th, 2007 at 6:37 am
As a member of the ARMLS RFP Task Force, I would first like to say “Congratulations” to FBS - you blew our socks off! As the managing broker for 300 agents, I can’t wait to get a video of the system to share with our agents - it will certainly help build excitement for the new system, alleviate at least some fears on the part of agents (after all, there are always people who fear change!) and generate even more discussion about features and functions that would improve both flexmls and the lives of Phoenix area real estate practitioners.