Ask Technical Terry: Orientation, Mapping Changes

Ask Technical Terry is a series RMLS™ aims to offer once a month. RMLS™ subscribers will drive the content—submit any question about RMLS™ to Technical Terry in the comments or by emailing communications@rmls.com. Don’t be shy—we won’t identify you by name.

Dear TT,

I sent one of my new REALTORS® down to RMLS™ in Eugene to join up. They came back and said there’s a new mandatory orientation class that takes four hours to complete! She said there were quizzes and everything! What is up with that? Don’t you realize we REALTORS® are super busy? Why would RMLS™ make us take that much time out of our busy day to attend a stupid orientation class?

Curious in Cottage Grove

Dear CCG,

Great question! RMLS™ complies with the National Association of REALTORS® model rules for MLS operations. Included in those model rules is a carveout of up to eight mandatory training hours for orientation training. That language has been in the RMLS™ Rules and Regulations since its inception. Given the ever-evolving complexity of the real estate world—and frankly, keeping a close eye on the social behavior of our industry—prompted RMLS™ to take a more aggressive role with orientation. The new orientation format is four hours of training content, including some quizzes intended to really galvanize an agent to understand that content. While it may seem like a lot of time for orientation training, I’m confident our new subscribers will realize the benefit many times over.

Technical Terry

Hey TT-

What in the world did you guys do to the RMLSweb mapping system? I logged in one morning and it had totally changed with absolutely NO warning. And now one of the best pieces of the old system is missing, the birds eye view. Why did you mess with it?

Manic Over Mapping

Hey MOM-

The earlier version of maps on RMLSweb was based on a version of Bing map layers and controls that Microsoft announced they would be retiring by the end of June 2017. Microsoft made this announcement in March 2017! That compressed time frame created a challenge for anyone using that version of Bing in their system.

The RMLS™ development team was already knee deep in the forms change project when the announcement was made. They scrambled to come up with a functional replacement in a very short period of time, and that’s what you’re seeing today on RMLSweb.

As for the birds eye view, there is some functionality from the old version of Bing that has yet to be released for the new version. That doesn’t mean it won’t return, it simply means our developers need some additional time to rebuild it for the maps on RMLSweb.

We did try to provide RMLS™ subscribers as much advance notice as we possibly could. We had an overview video available through an article on the RMLSweb desktop a week prior to the switch, as well as an overview on our blog that was featured in the RMLS™ Weekly Report before the switch. We’re sorry to hear these didn’t reach your eyes in time, but we’re confident that the new tools provided by Microsoft will result in a better mapping experience in the near future.