Good morning! Welcome to favorite searches. My name is Amy Long and I am your Flex MLS trainer. Today we are going to talk about searches and more specifically how to create favorite searches to use as a base for future searches. Basically, by favoriting a search, you have the ability to create a pre made and reusable search to build future searches on. A lot of searches in a sentence, but we’ll get to how this all works. Let me start with a couple of examples. As you will see, I am currently on the Flex MLS home dashboard page. Mine might look a little bit different than what you currently have. Every MLS is different and you certainly have the ability to customize your dashboard as you use it. But for now, I am using the Fargo Moorhead MLS. Within the area of Fargo Moorhead we have three main cities: Fargo, Moorhead, West Fargo. Today, for one of my two examples, I am going to show a search for North Fargo and how we can create a favorite search to build on for future searches. My first step will be to start this in the Quick Search, which I currently have Quick Search saved in my Favorites bar at the very top. If you do not have Quick Search in your Favorites bar, you can simply go to the left side of your screen where my mouse is hovering for menu. We can click on menu and just type in the search bar saved searches.
If I hover over saved searches, it is not oh excuse me I did not have this favorited I thought I did my apologies I am going to favorite saved searches so I have this available in my favorites bar as well as I have quick search in my favorites bar. We are going to use quick search to begin this process. I’m going to click on quick search, and the first thing I will do is determine what type of property type I am going to use for this particular search to create this favorite. The first template I’m going to click on is residential. I’m going use residential for the purposes of today’s webinar. The next step would be selecting the status what type of status you are seeking. For the purposes of today, I am going to stick with an active status. I’m then going to continue to build my search, and I’m going to select subtype in my field categories here. For this particular search, I’m going to choose single family residence. I’m going to continue and I’m going to select city and I’m going to click on Fargo. The last area I want to include for this particular search is a map area. As you can see, the city of Fargo is fairly expansive, north south, somewhat west. I am going to click on map area, and I know the specific area of North Fargo I’m wishing to base my search on A for North Fargo. This will take me to a very specific area of Northeast Fargo. That will bring my results to twenty seven. If you will follow me to the right hand side of the screen, these are our action buttons here. What I’m going to do is click on save, and I’m going to save the search, which will require me to name it as a new search. It’s not an existing search. I’m going to call this North Fargo Single Family. If I wanted to put any specific description information below, I can. I don’t feel like it’s necessary for this purpose because I’m building this as a base. Then if I wanted to add a new or existing contact, I can do so below. I won’t do that quite at this moment, but what I am going to do, I’m going to make sure I click Mark as Favorite, and that will favorite the search, which is what the intention of this webinar is today. I’m going to save this. Now you will notice I have a yellow star next to North Fargo single family. I have saved that search and I’ve saved it as a favorite. Let’s go over real quickly again how I did that. I’ll create a second search. Then we’ll go into a little more detail of what we can do with this and how we can assign it to a client. Again, I went to my quick search. I selected my property type, which is residential. I chose a status of active. I chose a subtype, and I’m going to change my search since I’m creating a second one for a different area of town for a slightly different clientele. I am going to use this for West Fargo, and we’re going to do a townhouse and twin homes, which are two fairly popular types of housing in our area. I am going to select the city of West Fargo, and I’m not going to do anything with the map zone. West Fargo is pretty specifically West. I don’t feel like I need to separate a particular area of the city. Again, that yields seventy six results. Now I’m going to go back up to my action buttons and I’m going to click to save this search. Save search, just what we did a few minutes ago for the North Fargo search. I’m going to call this West Fargo Twin Home.
And I’m going to save this search. I almost didn’t click to mark this as my favorite and that’s what I want to do. I want to save this as a favorite search to build my future searches on. Now what should we do with these searches? A couple of things: I added the saved searches function to my favorites bar. Again, if it wasn’t on my favorites bar, I would find it under menu and just do a quick search for saved searches. I’m going to go into saved searches, and this is where you will find all of your searches, possibly searches that are very specific for a client, and then our favorite searches, which I’ve created as a base search.
Another area that you are able to find this information, I’m going to, just above menu and to the left of the Quick Launch bar, is the blue Flex MLS Home button. If I click on this button, it will take me to my home dashboard no matter where I am working in Flex MLS.
On this dashboard, you will see that we have many different gadgets. I have information from my board I can conduct a new search, MLS links, Hot Sheets, and so forth. I also have a gadget for saved searches. We can customize this gadget by clicking on the three dots on the right hand side, going into settings, and I can indicate whether I would like it to be for all searches or just my favorite searches. I’m going to click save, and now I have only my favorite searches listed here. So, the next step I’m going to take, I’m going to go into the North Fargo single family search that I created just a few minutes ago, and I’m going to click on Edit. This will bring me into my saved favorite search. We can see that it has the star, and now we can start building a more specific search. I don’t have to go and take the extra steps ensuring I have active status, the subtype, the city, the area of North Fargo. If you’re working in a particular area, frequently this can be a really handy tool just to make life a little easier and take a shortcut. What I’d like to do now is I’d like to include a list price, and I’ll start off at about three hundred thousand dollars I’m going to go to my bedrooms, and I’ll put a minimum of four bedrooms and a minimum of, let’s say, three bathrooms and see where that yields results. So we’re sitting at five results for this particular area. That would work for me. If we wanted to view our results, of course we can click View Results, view them on the List tab, detail tab, and photo tab. What we would like to do right now is I’m going to save this particular specific search. I’m going to click on my action button of save, then click save search. Now, it’s already telling me that I’ve saved this search already. This is an existing search, which is true, but I’d like to make it a new search because I added more specific criteria for my client. I’m going to click New, and I’m going to call this North Fargo, and I’m going to assign this to my client, Adam, who’s looking for a home in North Fargo. There’s no, again, need for me to add anything to the description, but I would like to assign this to Adam. Where I have the contact information below, I do have Adam as an existing client. I’m going to click existing, He’s one of the first to pop up. I’ve added my client to this search. The next step I’m going to take is I’m going to unmark this as a favorite. Because I’ve made this more specific towards this client, This is not something I want to use as a base search. I want to keep my base search the North Fargo single family, and I can modify that as I need. I’m going to click save.
Now, the system is offering me a couple different options if I’d like to email these listings to this client at this time, or field the listings to select what I’d like them to receive. I’m just going to exit out of that. Now you’ll notice the name of the search has changed in the upper left corner. It’s now what I named it: North Fargo or NF for North Fargo and Adam. What I’m going to do next is I’m going to go into contact management. I do have contact management as a frequently used function of FlexMLS, so I do have it saved in my favorites bar. If I didn’t have it saved, again, I would just go into my menu and I would type in contact management. You’ll notice the star is next to it and it’s yellow. If I didn’t have it favorited, I can simply click on the star and it is gone. But it’s a pretty useful function and I’d like to have it available. I’m going to click on Contact Management. I can now click on my client, who I just added the search for. And Adam’s got a few searches that are assigned to him. But Adam, North Fargo Adam search, which I just created, is now assigned to this client. I created this search based on the favorite search.
Again, this is just a shortcut that is available to you when you are working in FLEX NLS and need to there’s different areas of your area that you’re working in and you would like to make your life a little bit simpler by having some shortcuts and some pre made searches that you can build on.
Going into the West Fargo search that we created, now when I click on that from the gadget on my dashboard, I am in the search, Now I have the ability to really build on my search criteria, fine tune the results, and find the right group of listings for my client, and either save that, email those listings out, or start my client on the subscription.
For any other information, I’d like to refresh the help functions that are available within user guides, video training, what is new, and upcoming trainings. If you click on the link for upcoming trainings, you can get registered for all upcoming webinars that might pertain to what you’re looking for, and video training.
Anything from quick video tips such as this one, coffee break webinars, to webinars on the full CMA or getting started in Flex MLS will be available to you as well. Again, this was a coffee break webinar on creating a favorite search.
I hope this was helpful today and I thank you for attending our favorite searches webinar. Thank you so much!
