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FlexMLS wish lists: You’re running into problems, so let’s share them and see about getting them corrected
By: Greg Swann,
BloodhoundBlog.com
Posted: Tuesday, July 29th, 2008, 6:47 pm MST
Category: Conversion, Wish List, flexmls Web
I’ll have a positive column about FlexMLS in West Valley sections of the Republic later this week, but I’m sure you all know that not everything is sweetness and light in the MLS world of Phoenix just now.
Here are three issues we’ve run into, so far. I encourage you to document anything you’ve found, as well. There are things I wish were different about FlexMLS, but it is what it is. From here, we need to help the developers in Fargo give us what we need to get our jobs done.
1. Right now: We need to be able to upload photos in bulk. If it’s going to take n minutes per photo, we need to be able to set up 10 or 20 photos in a batch and let it run for 20 x n minutes. I understand that FBS is adding servers, but the software seems to be inherently slower than Tempo. We cannot afford to waste time waiting for iterative photo uploads.2. There needs to be a logical NOT operator in any free form text field. IOW, I need to be able to say
! short sale
or
NOT short sale
in the remarks or the Realtor’s remarks, since that’s the only place a short sale is likely to be indicated. Right now, I can type short sale in the remarks box, then negate that in the summary. The problem with that is that I can’t OR and NOT in that field that way.
3. As I mentioned in a comment on the FBS Blog, the logic behind naming and saving searches is faulty. Is there a reason why this wasn’t done using a pure document-based solution? As with Tempo, it is wretchedly easy to clobber a standing search when you think you’re cloning it. This should not be possible.
Pitch in. What else needs to be fixed?
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July 29th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
I agree that there needs to be a method to eliminate short sales in Searches. As it is, if you eliminate “Short Sale” with wildcards in the Realtor remarks, you would also eliminate listings that have “Not a short sale” in the Remarks category. Those are actually the ones you want.
One potential way to solve it would be to have the developers add a mandatory Current Status field and have Normal, Short sale, Bank Owned, Auction, etc. as the acceptable input similar to Parking has 0, 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3 for example. That way, you could search that specific field for Normal AND Bank Owned which would eliminate Short Sale and/or Auction.
Just a wish list item, IMO.
July 30th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
Greg, when we first started this blog with you, I thought it was a great idea and I still do. We want nothing more than to have good conversations with smart people. Your recommendations above are spot on.
Photo uploads: We need to do an Adobe AIR or some other type of desktop accessible app to allow drag and drop of folders of photos for uploading, labeling and organizing. Browsers suck for uploads and file management, whether it’s one or six at a time.
Boolean searching: You can exclude text items in a series by using a minus (-) sign in front of the text item and separating items by commas. You mentioned in an email that this function may not be working correctly. Let me know the details and we’ll look into it.
Saving: I also agree about saving searches and carts. We can improve those interfaces. I’m not sure what you mean by a document-based solution but I am sure we can improve the UI.
There are tons of other ideas, too, some of which have already been discussed here earlier and hopefully we’ll get past the core issues in the next few days so we can focus on the fun stuff. I’ll definitely be here to participate.