“Missing” Your In-progress Listing? We Can Help! What’s Coming to RMLSweb Next Week

“Where did my in-progress listing go? I’ve entered it three times and now I can’t find it again!”

The RMLS™ Help Desk frequently receives calls like this, and we’re happy to announce that one of the new features being released on RMLSweb Wednesday, May 27th should solve this frustrating issue.

In-Progress Listing Changes

Help Desk Technician Joanne Fulgaro reports the Help Desk receives over 50 calls a month from subscribers unable to find a listing they had saved in their in-progress list. “This was not only time consuming, but frustrating for our subscribers,” she notes.

After Help Desk staff describes a work-around to access the correct listing, the subscriber could then continue their work where they left off. (At this point, multiple in-progress listings for the same property would exist.) As of Thursday this work-around will not be needed, as the in-progress listings page will function differently, displaying the most recently saved in-progress listing at the top (above).

Sidebar Improvements

Subscribers will also notice changes to the right sidebar of the RMLSweb desktop page starting Thursday. A new tabbed interface allows users to toggle between sidebar features without scrolling. The system will keep the last accessed tab at the top, so if a user only uses a certain feature of the sidebar, the tab will remain on top when they come back. A front/back toggle button also means subscribers utilizing custom columns on searches can send the sidebar behind their search results if needed.

Responsive Menu Bar

Finally, on Thursday we’ll be changing the way the RMLSweb menu bar behaves. Users who tire of scrolling up each page to access different parts of RMLSweb will rejoice, as the menu bar will remain fixed at the top of the browser window for convenience. This was a project prioritized for 2015 by the RMLS™ Board of Directors.

We’re always trying to make RMLSweb better for subscribers, and hope this latest round of changes will be helpful. Subscribers can always contact the RMLS™ Help Desk at (503) 872-8002 or (877) 256-2169 with questions or suggestions for future improvements.

DON’T FORGET: the monthly RMLSweb outage usually scheduled during the last Wednesday of each month from 10pm-2am Thursday will be a little longer this month. RMLS™ technicians will not only be executing new features to the site and performing system maintenance, but also replacing hardware. RMLSweb will be in maintenance mode from 10pm Wednesday, May 27th until 4am Thursday, May 28th.

How to Access Listing View Counts

See how often your listing is viewed!

After hearing requests from subscribers, the Listing View Counts feature is now available on RMLSweb. This means that listing agents are now able to see how often the public and other subscribers are viewing their listings.

In addition, listing agents can share the impact of their online marketing efforts by showing their clients the Listing View Counts report. Agents can also use these statistics in listing presentations and to see if a listing is being considered, but not shown.

To access Listing View Counts, follow these steps below:

1) Access your listings in Listing Load under Back Office. You will see the Listing View Counts button to the far right (lower) of the screen.

2) You can select the “View Counts” button to see a quick snapshot of your listing view counts.

3) Then, you can select the “View Counts Report” button to see more detail on listing views. For example, you can see more detail on listing views from the day before, 7, 14, or 30 days back, and the life of a listing (as far back as 8/1/2010).

4) On the Listing View Counts Report page, you will see the ability to convert to PDF or print in the upper right corner of the screen.

Remember, each time a report is viewed counts as a listing view and listings are not counted when they come up in a search, but when a more detailed report is selected.

Take a look at these tools below for more information:

Help Document: How to Use Listing View Counts

Help Document: How Listing View Counts are Calculated

Tutorial: Accessing Listing View Counts

For additional information or to attend a class on the RMLSweb system, please contact RMLS™ Training at 503-236-7657 or access the RMLS™ Training calendar under the Toolkit option. For immediate assistance you can contact the RMLS™ Help Desk at 503-872-8002 (toll free 877-256-2169 or via e-mail at helpdesk@rmls.com).

RMLSweb and Non-IE Browsers

Other-Browsers

We know there are a lot of you out there who use Web browsers other than Internet Explorer… and as you are well aware… RMLSweb primarily supports Internet Explorer (IE).

However, we do want to clear the air about this situation, because things have changed a bit.

RMLSweb is now accessible utilizing most browsers. By accessible, I mean that you can log in and use the website, but we still highly recommend that you use Internet Explorer. We haven’t talked about it much because you should bear no expectation of being able to do all the same things that you can when using RMLSweb on Internet Explorer. But you can do many things and here is a list of what.

One omission you’ll notice is Listing Load. We aren’t allowing access to Listing Load in non-IE browsers because we know it has some limitations and we don’t want the listing content to suffer.

For Simplicity Sake: Scenarios When You Shouldn’t Use RMLSweb on Another Browser & When You Can
– If you want to get down to serious business (send reports, create a CMA, run statistics, enter a listing, prospecting/hotsheets), you should still use Internet Explorer.
– If you’re using a non-IE browser and just want to view a listing, do a search, or view a document – you should be okay.

But Why? Why is RMLSweb not compatible with all browsers?
Our focus has been and continues to be on updating RMLSweb in ways that will benefit all of our subscribers. But, while we’ve been doing that, we’ve also been working on browser compatibility – we’re just not doing it in one fell swoop.

RMLSweb was originally a system that we purchased. We then brought on our own development staff and through the years, they have been making RMLSweb our own system. However, there are still parts of it that are all written in the original code – which means those parts don’t work with other browsers.

However, each time we update something (like the recent mapping upgrades and new Forms & Documents search) we are writing it in code that should work with Firefox and other browsers. And, we still have some big updates to do, including CMA & statistics, which we tentatively plan to release in the next six months.

In other words, we could spend time rewriting the dated features of RMLSweb in code that will make it work with other browsers – but why spend time reinventing a dated product? Instead, the approach is to improve our existing product, and as we’re doing that, we are taking steps toward compatibility with each improvement.

You Can Help!
While we continue to work toward compatibility, there is limited functionality on non-IE browsers and we have not officially tested anything on them. So if you use a different browser and notice any issues – please e-mail those issues to helpdesk@rmls.com.