Today we’ll be talking about customer flyers in FlexMLS. So these are quick, easy to create flyers. Once you’ve created it, you can then use it when you’re emailing clients. You can use it when you’re printing listings. So I’m going to show you the absolute fastest and easiest way to get these flyers made and custom so they display the information that you want displayed.
Before we begin, if you have any questions, feel free to use that GoToWebinar control panel. There is a section there where you can type in your questions and I will have those questions open. And I think we’ve also got Kendra on the line who will be responding to those questions as well. So you’re currently muted, you will stay muted. I’ll be the only one you can hear but we will be checking those questions periodically and responding to them.
Let’s go ahead and begin and I am just going to pull up FlexMOS. So the very first thing that I want to do is just show you where these flyers are going to be accessible. So I am going to just go from, for an example, from a quick search page and just for the sake of the example today, I am going to put in some very limited search criteria because I just want to see a few listings.
When I’m viewing listings on the detail page, for example, you’ll see I can select the listing as always on the left hand side and it shows me a listing report here. One place I can use the flyers that I’ll create today is to view them here while viewing listings. I’ll be able to click on the report, click on any of the flyers that I make, and view the listings that way. Now this is a flyer that I made without filling in all of the information. So this one is scant on information. We’ll put in a little bit more info today.
Other places I can access this, when I am printing a listing, I can go in and on that detail report on the left hand side, as I’m getting ready to print the listing, I can select which report I want to use. So if I want to use detail with branding here, I can click in and preview that.
And then I can go ahead and print that, create it as a PDF, email that out to a client or any of those other functions that are available from the printing screen here in Flex MLS.
So this is the type of flyer that we’ll be creating today.
So I am going to just come back out to my dashboard and let’s discuss where do we access the flyers first. Well, before I access the flyer, one thing I want to point out, know I was teaching at an MLS recently and there were some members that weren’t sure when I displayed a report. They said there’s your listing or primary photo, my own profile photo. They didn’t have their profile in their record. So if you don’t have your profile photo on your member record yet and you wanna make sure that it prints on things like listing reports that we’re about to do, I’m going to quickly show you how to make sure your profile photo is available for those reports. I am going to go to my menu and I’ll use that search bar at the top and just type in profile. So I’m under menu, start typing in profile and there is my profile that’s available. When I click on that, I am going to see some options and in the lower left corner is your personal photo and logo. So if you click on this, I just clicked, and if you do not see any photos available, then you’ll want to make sure to add that to your profile. So I’ll I’ll go through that process, very quickly right now just to make sure you can have your own profile on your listing reports.
I’ll click on new and then you select what type of photo it is. I want this as my profile photo so I make sure this option is selected. It says photo of yourself or office. This is the one that we want.
And then we’re just going to call this, I’m gonna call it the example that I’m using today. I’ve already got one in so I don’t actually need to do this but I’ll show you that process. I’ll click on choose file. That opens up my computer so I can go to wherever I have my photos hosted. I just selected, I double clicked on my profile photo. Now you won’t see a preview of it before clicking add. So once you select the photo by clicking choose file, just click on add. And that is going to you’ll see this is the one I just added, bring that out right here. So now my profile photo is on my record. So when I’m printing a listing report, I’ll make sure, that my profile photo is there. This is also very handy when you’re sending emails. It’s part of your email signature by default. So if you’ve never done that before and this is blank, make sure that you have that done. I am going to remove the one we just added. I like this one. It’s zoomed in just a little bit. So I’ll keep that as my profile photo. So now that I’ve made sure to add my profile photo, and it’s going to be available when I print those listing reports, we’ll go in and we’ll create that listing report, that customer flyer. So I am going to go again to my menu and I’m going to type in my reports. I just typed in MI space REP and you’ll see my reports comes out here. These are not statistical reports or anything like that, it’s under preferences. These are customer flyers and listing reports. So I am just going to click on that and you’ll come to a screen and on this screen you may see several reports at the top that say inherited. Those are ones that are defaulted and inherited to everybody in the MLS. You may also see a section down here for customer flyers.
If your MLS has already inherited out some customer flyers, you may see, them available here. If you have any ones that do not say inherited, I’ve got this one right here that says custom summary flyer. This is one that I made myself. I put the word custom right here, but you’ll see it does not say the word inherited. That’s how you’ll be able to recognize ones that are defaulted for you. And if it does not say inherited, that’s one I’ve created myself. Now I’m going to show you a couple of things here.
First, I’m going to start by clicking on new. So instead of selecting one that exists already, I can click on new at the bottom and you’ll see at the top of all of my options, the very first one is customer flyer. And the customer flyer report is what we want to work with today. This is the absolute, simplest way, to create a flyer with the types of fields that I want.
So I’ll click on that and then it takes me to a page where it says select a template. All of these templates are the templates that are available. There are not additional templates. You can’t create your own template but I can modify the contents of all of these templates. So you’ll see something like a three column flyer, a five photo flyer, a seven photo flyer, flyer with map, flyer with long remarks, summary flyer if you wanna print summary information, one line if you wanna set it up to print, one line information for comparisons. For today, I’m just going to click on this flyer option.
You’ll see it should have a large photo, my profile photo, and then different containers that I can put the fields that I want in those containers. So here it is. I’ve started one from scratch. I clicked on new, I selected a template, and you’ll see all of these containers say edit this container and they are blank. So that’s a way to start this from scratch.
I’m also going to just point out and I’m going to open a new tab right now and I’m going to go back into my flyers that my reports to get down to my flyers here.
If I go to the customer flyers and I want to edit one that says inherited, I can click on one of those and just click on edit. And when I bring that up, you’ll see these fields are the ones that have already inherited and each of these containers already has fields available there. So I can edit one that already exists and just modify what’s going to be in these containers Or on my first tab, I can start from scratch and just begin and put in whatever I would like in these containers. So either option is valid. For today, I’m just going to start right here. I’m gonna start from this blank one. And the very first thing that I want to point out is that these containers are all fixed in position. I can’t drop and drag to change where the detail container is or the dimensions container. I can’t change that. They’re all fixed and that’s because these flyers are all designed to print on a single page. So to ensure that it always prints on a single page, Everything is basically fixed in position as far as the containers are concerned on the page. So let’s begin. The very first thing I like to do when I get here and I start creating a flyer is I know that I’m going to be using this. I want to print these out. I want to have them available to hand out for the public in whatever context, whether it’s at an open house or whether I want to email this to one of my clients. So at the top, you’ll notice there are all these options for the flyers. I’m going to change this one that says private and I’m going to change that for public. And the reason I’m doing that is because when I start adding fields to these containers, I only want to see what the publicly available fields are going to be and add those publicly available fields. So it defaults on the private version, but really the most common usage for these flyers is not as a detailed report for me as an agent, but for as something that I want to display publicly. So I make sure that says public. You’ll also notice there’s the option to select a theme right next to public, and that just changes the coloring of the report. So there are default themes built in. I’ll change this one to shades of blue, and so now you’ll see those headers are in blue. So we’ve changed that theme as well.
Let’s go ahead and start looking at some of these containers. And the first one I’ll point out is this remarks container. You’ll see it’s highlighted in kind of a pinkish color and it’s got an exclamation point next to it.
And it’s got a default listing in here for me to view just so I can kind of see what listing information looks like. And one moment.
So to see what the information on the report looks like, I it’s got a default listing. I can change and I can input any listing number in here if I want to preview a specific listing. But the thing that I notice is that there’s this exclamation point by the remarks, which means that if I were to print this listing, there’s actually more remarks in this container than are going to fit on the screen. And I am going to then change this. I don’t want the remarks here. I’m gonna put the remarks in this large container at the bottom of this screen.
So I’ll click on edit this container and I’m going to you’ll notice that when I clicked on edit container, this white pop up shows up and it says the title of the container. I’m gonna change this to remarks. And it’s set at two columns, I just want this as a single column right now.
And then I tapped in this search bar. Sorry, I got ahead of myself right here. There’s a search bar on the left hand side. These are all of our available fields. I just typed in this search bar to narrow down what I’m looking for. And it says public remarks. That’s what I want to put in this container. So now when I click on update, you’ll see the remarks in that container at the bottom of the screen. So now I’ve got this remarks container that I don’t need the remarks here, I’m gonna edit this one. So I’m going to click to edit this container and I might change the title on this since it’s no longer contains remarks. So I might say property information or maybe info. And maybe I want this one instead of having a single column, I can set the number of columns here. And since I no longer need to display the public remarks here, on the right hand side, these are the fields that are currently there. On most of the other containers, it would be empty. But I’ll just get rid of the remarks by clicking on the x. So once I click on the x, now this if I were to update this, I’ll just quickly click on that, you’ll see it’s entirely empty. But it has been renamed property information.
I’m going to come out here and now I’m going to click to add the fields. So I clicked where it says click here to add fields. Now I can go in and start adding fields. So maybe I want to add my subtype. Let’s scroll through. I am going to put in the current price.
I am going to put in maybe subdivision, and I’m not sure if this is populated on the listing that we’re currently looking at.
And then I’m gonna start looking for a few other fields. I’m gonna type in bedrooms. So total bedrooms and type in bath and total bathrooms. And maybe I want to break down and add full baths, three quarter baths, half baths. Maybe I wanted some of the other bedroom information as well. So I’ll type in bedroom again and put master bedroom on main floor. So I’ve got that selected. I’ve got two columns if I want to see what this looks like.
Click update and now you’ll see it’s split into two columns and I can see those right here behind this where it says edit container. If I actually want to preview what that would look like when I’m seeing it on a screen or when I’m printing it, I can leave this edit mode by going up to the top of the screen and clicking on preview. And so that lets me just preview that. You’ll see now those containers no longer say edit the container, it just shows the blank container beneath that. I see my remarks. So I’m going to go back into the edit mode by just clicking where it has the pencil and click on edit right at the top.
While I’m previewing that, it’s defaulted looking at the print mode. So it’s showing what it would look like on a single page where you see it as a page width and a page length. I can see what it would look like on a screen too because when somebody is viewing one of these reports on a computer screen, it’s responsive to that screen size. So when I click the screen option, you’ll see it fills the it stretches to fill the screen. The dimensions of the photos stay the same but the containers change width to fit the size of the screen. And so if I change it and move this back and forth, it’s responsive to the screen size. So when I email it to somebody, that’s how they would see it in the email version. When I print it, that’s what the print version is going to look like on a single page. I can go back into edit and there are a few things that I want to point out here.
And the very first one is that when I come to a field, let me click on my detail field. So I’ll click to edit this container and the type of container it is at the top, it says short text container. If I click on dimensions Oh, that’s also short text. Let me come out here, property info. Property info says long text container. And so I’m just seeing that at the description of the container. The type of container will determine how fields can be entered here. So there is just a little bit of a difference. So short text containers, I’m going to go to our other tab that we opened and I am going to go to an add listing screen. Now this add listing screen will probably look a little bit different than your add listing screen. I’m using the Fargo Moorhead MLS database as an example so they might have different fields than your MLS.
But when you’re adding a listing, you’ll notice there are main fields that have these long text containers like remarks or that have things like status. With the main fields, only one thing can be selected. There are also detail fields and detail fields have groups like showing instructions. I might be able to select multiple options here for showing instructions. Or accessibility features. So these groups can be added as an entire group to a long text container. Only individual options can go in on a short text container. So things like main fields would go in those short text containers.
So just to show you what that looks like, I’m going to come out here and I’m gonna type in to edit that and click on accessibility features. Instead of clicking to add individual options under the accessibility features, I can click because this is a long container, I can click on the group itself. And so any of those options that are selected would be listed here under accessibility features. So when I click on update, we’ll see right now it’s currently blank for the accessibility features. Let me go in and see.
Maybe we’ve got Another group down here.
So I’m gonna add that showing instructions group and just see nope.
Oh, I’m looking at the public version so that’s going to be let’s see if it has any miscellaneous options on this. There we go. Just so you see how that looks, I’ll click on that preview.
So it says miscellaneous and then it lists any particular items in that entire group right here. On the detail container that was a short text container, if I come here and type in miscellaneous, it will not let me. I’m trying to click on that column header, it will not let me add the entire group. I could only add individual elements or more probably more appropriate than that is in the short text containers, I would like to add fields that are those main list fields because any of those main list fields could be added in these short text containers. So again, I can go through here and select what I would like to add.
Maybe list price per square foot, lot size, total size.
Click to update that and you’ll see those updated here. One other thing before I move on from here and talk about how to access these once we save it. As I go in and I edit a container, I may want to change the order of the fields that I have added. For example, here I have total bedrooms right here, but master bedroom on main floor is after my bath information. To change its place in the order, just drag and drop that to the position that you want it in and that will change that’s position in the report. So top to bottom, left to right if there are multiple columns is the way it will be split. I can also click on this. That’s an awful long name right here, master bedrooms main floor.
If I wanted to change that and just say master bed main, I just clicked on the name itself.
And so maybe I wanna just call that master bed main. So it doesn’t take up quite as much room. You can relabel these and that will apply to its label on this particular report. And then I’m going to click update and now you’ll notice total bedrooms followed by master bedroom main that I relabeled, yes, and reordered and put that here. The miscellaneous group has been added here. Now one other thing that you’ll notice is that this defaults to your primary property type which is probably going to be for your MLS residential property type for most MLSs.
If I wanted to set up this report to show specifically land listings, I can go in and I’m gonna cancel this right now because I haven’t saved my changes yet. But I could change the property type. So I could build flyers that are specific to different property types in your MLS. I’m showing the residential because I think that’s the most common usage of a report like this. But you could go in and select a different property type. Those different property types obviously have different fields that would be available to use. Now once you’ve set this up the way you want it, and I didn’t fill out all of my containers here but just enough for an example today, I’m going to go up and click on save report. I’ll click on that. I’ll name this one custom flyer. Just so I know that it’s a custom one that I built, I put that in just to keep track on this training account that I use. But you could name that whatever you would like. You don’t have to call it custom like I did.
Click on save and now it is available for me to use whenever I’m viewing listings or printing listings.
So if I ever want to get in here and edit it, maybe fill out the rest of these containers with more fields, I’m just going to quickly show you when I go to menu and go to my reports, is where we found that previously.
I can come in here. There’s my one custom flyer. I would just click on edit to make additional edits to come and keep on working on this. And then I would come in here and change the title of this particular container, add the fields that I want, set the number of columns that I want, and click update. Once I’ve made those updates to this, if I make an update to the report template itself, rather than saving it as a brand new report, click on that drop down. I can click on save to resave it, or if I want to save it as a brand new report, I could click save as. So if I wanted it as a different type of report, I could save it as an entirely new report that’s able for me to use.
So I’ll just click on save and so it would make those updates. Now again, to get to where we can actually use this, I’m going to just begin on a quick search screen.
Any search results screen is going to have this available for me to use and for so I can view it. I’ll just put in some quick search criteria. And again, like I pointed out initially at the beginning, I can set this right here if I want to see what that looks like just inside Flex MLS. I can come and view it that way, and view the report here. I can also say, okay, this I want to print out this listing, seven thirty seven Riverbends, and maybe six thousand and ten Silverleaf Drive. I’m going to print this out or email this. So I’ve selected three listings. I’m going to go into that print function at the very top of the screen and then I am going to select my detail tab because that’s where the reports are found on the detail tab itself. And then I’ll scroll down to my customer flyer and I’m printing the public version. I can preview this and I’ve got this set right here. Now, some things that you can do from here, some MLSs allow you to edit reports before printing or sending them. So if your MLS does do that, as I preview the listing, you’ll see this edit option right here. So maybe I want to go in and add in some additional information. I’ll click on edit, and that just lets me manually, before I send this out, I can put that in right here. So if I wanted to update my phone number because I wanna put this not as my office phone but as my just regular phone. Maybe that’s my primary phone that I want them to contact me at. I could do that change right here instead of updating my profile information. Or when I look down here and I see total square footage and it says nine thousand eight hundred sixty seven point zero, maybe I don’t want that point zero in. I can just delete that out to get rid of those decimal points that I don’t want here. And you’ll notice I still have the ability to print or email this particular report from here as well. I’m gonna go back to my search results and I’ll also point out, let’s go in back to our print option. I’m gonna select a different not the one that we just created, maybe I’ll select one of these seven photo flyers. Oops.
Oh, well, let’s see.
I wanted to get one with multiple photos out here. Let me see if I can preview that. There we go. I’ve got multiple photos on this particular report.
One other thing, if you’re allowed to edit your reports before sending them, when I click on edit, I was looking for one with a report that had multiple photos because in this case, maybe I don’t want to print this photo. These are all landscape and this one’s in that portrait mode. I want to change that photo. So I can click on that photo itself and then you’ll see I can go to my photos but I’m going to go to the listings photos. So I’m going to select here and then I’m going to select the photo that I want to swap out that particular photo. That’s a repeat of that photo so maybe I’ll try this one instead. There we go. So now I’ve swapped out that photo. So when I’m editing this, as long as your MLS does allow you that editing option from that print screen, you can go in and swap out the photos. So if there’s a better one that you think should be, most MLSs have certain requirements on the primary photo. But since you’re printing this report out, if there’s one that you want featured here, you can change out that on here. It doesn’t affect the listing itself, it was just the listing report.
Or if I wanted to print out some of the interior shots of this because I’m printing this out, for one of my clients who I know will enjoy the kitchen, maybe I want to go in and click on the photo, click on the listing photos, and find those particular interior shots that I may want to share. So I’ll select that.
And so now you’ll see I’ve got that set out here. So I just wanted to cover a little bit about editing photos because I know I do sometimes get a few questions on that when people are printing the photos. So today we covered well, first we covered making sure you have your profile photo in by going to menu and searching for my profile, clicking on that very lower left option, personal photo and logo, and making sure you have your profile photo in. So it’s able to be used on emails and those listing reports.
Then we covered the actual process of going to my reports and either editing one of the current customer flyers or clicking on new and beginning a new customer flyer from scratch.
When we did that from scratch, we were able to select a specific template and edit those fields. Covered a few options here such as changing that just so it’s going to show the public version so I see what my client will see while doing this. Changing our themes, selecting the property type, residential should be the default for most MLSs out there who are viewing this.
Previewing this, editing the containers, relabeling those containers, adding fields to a container, selecting the number of columns in the container, and then the difference between what a long text container can display versus a short text container. The short text containers cannot display the entire group names or the entire groups, it would only display individual elements.
And then lastly, we talked about saving that and using that when we’re viewing search results or when we’re sharing listings and printing listings, to share those listings. And lastly from here, we discussed editing those listings when I go in and preview those.
It’s not editing the listing, it’s just editing oops, editing the particular report that we’re using. So this would be not changing the report itself, just changing this printed version that I’m using if that edit option is available for your MLS.
Once again, I want to thank everybody who has attended today. This session has been recorded and we will send the recording to you in approximately twenty four hours. Have a great rest of your day.
