Good afternoon everyone and welcome to a webinar highlighting the features of portal preferences in Flexmls.
My name is Amy Long and I am your Flexmls trainer today. So let’s go into directly what we are going to talk about today, portal preferences, which is going to show you, a, where you can find portal preferences in the system, how you can make adjustments to your default settings that you would use for all users. There are other ways that I will show that if you wanted to modify an individual, an individual’s, settings for a specific reason maybe, you can do so. But we’re gonna mainly focus on portal preferences and the ability to just make adjustments, for your default settings for portal preferences.
We are going to just kind of do an overview on the portal. So for those of you maybe who are newer to using the system, kind of an overview of what the portal is and does and looks like and all that. And then we’re just gonna go through kind of one by one and review the preferences. We have a couple new preferences that we’re going to highlight, and then there will be, some preferences that, are in the process of being kind of phased out or or removed from the system. So we’ll we’ll just touch on those too, but see how everything works.
And then, of course, towards the end, I just wanna highlight some of the help features as they pertain to portal preferences, that you’ll be able to utilize and access should you run into any questions while you’re making any, settings updates. So portal preferences. So some of the, these are just a rundown of the actual settings, and we’ll get into more of what, those settings entail.
But we’re going to just kinda go one by one through the various, settings or functions of portal preferences and explain exactly how it works, what you can do, that sort of thing. Okay? So allow me just to switch my screen now, and I am going to shift over to Bucks MLS.
And I am using, the NorthStar MLS in the Fargo Moorhead area, of the MLS. So some of what you see might look a little bit different than what you’re maybe used to.
And, understandably, you know, the processes and the functions that I’m gonna show you are going to be the same as what you have. It’s just we’re using a different system than probably what you’re used to for the purposes of demonstration. Okay. So I have just switched over. I’m in Flexmls, and I’m in what’s called my home dashboard right now. And what I want to do is I am going to, first of all, show you where you would find portal preferences. Now I have portal preferences for the purposes of this, training today, pinned or saved to my favorites bar. And with any function in Flexmls, where will you find you those functions? You’ll always find those, in the menu. So if you’re wondering, you see maybe some items that you don’t have or you haven’t noticed before and you’re wondering where those are found. You will find everything that you have access to within the system under menu, and that goes for portal preferences. So I’ll just start use I’ll use the search bar. I’ll just start typing in portal, and you’ll see that that stars check next to portal preferences, which is an indication that it’s been successfully saved or pinned to this favorites bar. For any and all functions that you might want to pin or possibly even remove from your favorites bar, it’s a pretty simple process.
You’ll just kind of highlight the function and check the star to remove it and if you want it removed or check the star to have it added. So I just put it I removed it and then I put it back. So, again, just just so you know where you can find, these functions or any functions that you will have access to in the Flexmls system, you will find all those functions under the menu, and you can either do a search or just kind of scroll to determine what it is that you’re after. Okay. Now with that said, what I wanna do before we get into the actual going through the actual preferences, I just wanna highlight what is a portal. So I have a portal set up and ready to go, and this is the home tab of the portal. So now just keep the keep in mind that this is a platform or a resource that you can offer your client, when they are beginning their home buying or home looking searching process with you. Okay? You can set this up for them and they will have access to searching in the MLS.
They’ll have access to any saved searches that you created on their behalf. So I’m just gonna hop from tab to tab, and they’ll have you know, they’ll be able to see listings on the map, and then they’d be able to sort and filter the same way you do using, the Flexmls system. They will have very similar access should you, set up portal access for your client. So if you haven’t yet done this, this is kind of a nice way to see what this looks like from the client perspective. So this is the search tab, and, again, your clients will have the ability to conduct searches and view listings.
They can if they find one that they are maybe really, fond of, they can contact you or request a showing, just from their portal. Okay?
The next tab is the saved tab, and this is where any, searches that you have set up within the Flexmls system, so going back and going into quick search and and creating a search and saving it and attaching it to a contact. Well, if they if your contact does use a portal, they are going to have that access to those, searches and thus those listings. You can also see within the portal and, again, this is the client perspective of things, so I don’t want you to say, well, I’ve never really seen this. You probably haven’t unless you’ve set up a sample portal for yourself or you’ve been able to view what you’ve set up for your client. But you can see with these two searches that they indicate that there is a subscribed. And what that means is that this client is going to receive this information two different ways. They’re gonna have access to these searches that you’ve set up on their behalf in the client portal, which is what we’re talking about today. But they’re also going to receive this information or these listings, I should say, via email, via subscription email, which means that actual, you know, a good old fashioned email is gonna generate and go to their, you know, their Outlook inbox or their Gmail inbox, and they’ll be able to look at new listings that meet the criteria that you’ve set up for them. So different approaches for delivering, information just to different methods really. Okay. Now we’ll come back to news feed in just a little bit when we’re talking about that setting. But the news feed, think of it a little bit like your social media feed.
So for your clients, anything that kind of maybe meets their criteria, there’s been a price change in the last twenty five minutes for a listing, or this is a new listing in the last three hours. There’ll be a little banner on that listing, and you’ll the your clients will be able to, you know, understand why this is showing up in the news feed. There’s been a change or something’s new, that sort of thing. Okay. So that’s just a real quick overview on the client aspect of the portal. Allow me to return to Flexmls, and I’m gonna get into portal preferences.
So again, I pinned this in preparation for today’s training to my favorite spa, but you will find this function and all other functions that are available to you as users in your MLS under the menu. Okay. So let’s get into talking a little bit more about the portal preferences. And we’re just gonna kinda go in aligned down, down this list. So first of all, at the very top, you’re gonna notice a couple links.
And what these links do is these are links to guided help, and this is gonna offer, interactive help that you could sign up for this webinar. I’m pretty sure that this would be the webinar that it’s referencing.
But if you have questions on portal preferences, this is a really wonderful, resource that you can utilize to get assistance without maybe, having to contact support or having to contact your MLS with specific questions. Okay? So if you see these, icons, don’t be afraid to click. They’re not going to, derail any work that you’re doing in the system or anything along those lines. They’re there to help you. And so just take a look and see what they have to say, and and if you wanna follow along on a guided tour, you know, going through the different, settings of portal preferences, you absolutely can do so.
But since you have me today, the the trainer, we’ll just stick with me and we’ll leave guided help for another time. So the first, the first setting is gonna be intro. And this isn’t necessarily a setting, but it’s an option to watch a video to learn about the portal. So if you’re wondering, how this all works, you know, I I gave you a quick glance of the client side of the portal. But if you’d like a little more information before you, you know, get going on setting anything up for your clients, this is a nice little video to watch. Okay? And then we can just, you know, close these out when we are done with them. The second item is gonna be for portal basics, and this is where you will control the name of your portal. So the system does recognize my portal name based on my username, and it’s nothing very exciting. I’m using a training account as I am a trainer. So it’s Flexmls trainer one two three. Pretty straightforward, I suppose. But if you wanted to and I I would recommend updating your portal name or making sure that your portal name is going to be, shared the way you would like it to be shared, you can modify that name here. I will, however, warn you. If you’ve already been, utilizing, the portal process for your clients and, you know, you have several clients that are using portals currently, If you change this, it’s gonna break any links that currently exist, which would mean that you have to set everything up all over again for your clients. So if you’re new to this and you’re excited about using, utilizing the portals for your clients and you have yet to set anything up, certainly, you know, make any modifications you would like. But if you’ve already been utilizing this, unless you feel very strongly about making a change, maybe bypass that option. Just definitely a a choice you’ll make, but that link will break if it’s already in use.
Now you are gonna wanna make sure that the portal is enabled by default. We can switch this from on to off, but I’m just gonna leave it on for right now. So that would be taken care of, and I don’t wanna, go without, highlighting the guided help link here as well.
So just by hovering over this link, we can, get more information on what this particular setting does and any consequence possibly of, modifying the name once that portal has been in use. Okay. Next, we’re on to the profile card. Now this is one of the newer, settings for portal preferences.
And what this is gonna allow you to do is you have the ability to sync your profile for your, portal from your profile within Flexmls.
Now I’m assuming a great number of you, many of you, probably use a member management program. There’s a lot of different ones out there, so I’m not gonna name anything off too specific. But if you do that, you’re just a little more limited on what kind of information you can you can update in my profile in Flexmls. A lot of those updates might have to be done through the member management program. Again, it will just depend on the MLS. So what you can do is you do have a choice of what you would like to display as a photo. So I currently have my profile photo in the system, and then I’ve also got a logo for Flexmls. I do have the ability to upload a photo from this screen as well should I want to. So I’m gonna display my photo, and then I can come down here and maybe display my logo, and then I would need to go ahead and update that, from this image. I’m gonna leave that one off for now, but you will have the ability to make those updates here.
Contact details, again, if you want to sync from the profile, my profile, you don’t have to necessarily worry about making any manual updates. But if you prefer to, you absolutely can just as long as that’s an available option within your MLS. Okay. Moving along, we’re gonna go into featured listings.
And featured listings will allow you to select from possibly your office listings, your personal listings, if you’ve got enough that it makes sense, or possibly a saved search.
And I would suggest that that might be the best option to use is, allowing those featured listings to be shared from a saved saved search. And then, of course, you have the ability to go through your list of saved searches and select whichever one, you think would be beneficial to setting up this up. And, again, you’re doing this as kind of as a default. This is gonna be the default going forward that you’re setting up.
We still can go into contact management at a later time and modify individual settings, but we’re we’re generally setting this up as a default for all, all future portals that we wish to set up for all users. Okay? Now my listings, I’m just gonna go right past that one because that’s one of the the items that’s gonna be, removed from the list. So we don’t really need to worry about that anymore. Just hasn’t hasn’t quite happened yet. IDX lead generation.
So this is a separate feature, and it’s a paid, a paid, lead generation, opportunity. So if you want to learn more about this through Flexmls, you absolutely can. Ready to get started, this will take you to a different link, and you can reach out to our IDX team. K? There are controls in portal preferences, but this is just a separate and, a paid service. Okay. Now moving along to the news feed. So the news feed, I’ve referenced that I would come back to this in the, actual portal to show you what this looks like. But you will have the ability to control by default which statuses are gonna be included in the news feed. So, again, think of it like social media. Do you want your clients to know that there’s been some withdrawn and canceled listings or do you not? I’d say maybe not, and same for expired, but definitely your preference. Coming soon might be nice to include those, kinda main statuses and and even close. So, you know, if it’s a more active market, they’re your clients are of the understanding that, you know, things can get a little time sensitive, and it’s best not to sit and wait and and, contemplate always. Right? Okay. So, again, the news feed when we are in the portal, indicating three results right now, although I’m only seeing two listings. So I’m not quite sure what’s going on there. But anything would appear that meets the the statuses that you determine should appear, based on the portal preferences, of course. Okay. Now we’re gonna move down yet again. I’ll close this one up. And just remember, it’s easy to go through all of these and then just kinda move along. You’re gonna wanna save your changes, and there’s a blue button for save in the lower right corner. So if you want to go each by each category and make sure you save the change just to ensure that the changes are indeed saved, you’re not a little bit like me and maybe you get distracted and move on to brighter things, Feel free to save and then come back to additional, settings to modify. Or just save them all at one time. Whatever is your preference. Okay. Now a couple of these are also gonna apply to subscriptions. And remember that a subscription, it’s gonna send out mainly the same information that you would have from, a search that you’ve created, but it’s sending it out in email form rather than your client accessing it via the portal. Okay? So slightly different.
But here, in subscription settings, you will be able to determine, which kind of statuses are gonna be included as well or what information should be included. So a back on market, that might be nice to have, available and then when there’s an open house available. And maybe there’s been an extension made. So we want to include all of these in our subscriptions.
Or you can opt to use your inherited defaults, and those will differ by each MLS just depending on what their, rules are that or what what predetermining, settings they had already, set up. Okay.
Listing content, this is going to show what is going to be available when you are in the portal. Do you want open house information included? Do you want any associated public documents included? Do you want tax information included? So for me, I would definitely welcome the more information, the merrier to my to my clients, but you have the ability to to determine that or make modifications as your default, with these settings. And then the last, option is the email listing links. So here we’re gonna be able to go, the the MLS default is gonna show the news feed, talked about the news feed, this newest things go happening in the MLS with, listings as they pertain to their search.
Email listings, so if you’ve sent out any emailed listings, those would appear, or you can go with your saved search. I might since they have access to the saved search in their portal as well as if they’re receiving a subscription, I might just go with that news feed option. Okay? Alright. Now I wanna click on save. Make sure to do that. Otherwise, all the changes or lack thereof changes will not be saved, and we definitely want them to be saved. And you’ll get that little green pop up indicating that you are successful in saving those changes to those preferences. Okay. One of the last areas I’d like to highlight before we get into some of the help features is going to be in contact management. Now I actually opened a tab in contact management, with one of my contacts, and I am in Adam’s profile currently, and I’m on the portal tab. And this is what I wanted to show you.
So if you are working with maybe your clients and maybe your, portal has been turned to off, You wanna ensure that it’s turned their portal’s off. You wanna switch it to on.
You can make the manual change, directly in their profile within contact management. You also have the ability to update settings, and that would be found down below.
So portal settings and this is similar to what we just did.
However, this is gonna impact just this individual’s portal settings, not the default settings, which is what we were doing when we were working in portal preferences. So just keep that in mind.
And there may be times that there are some that, it’s necessary to have very specific settings for an individual. Maybe you only want them to have access to coming soon and active and nothing additional. And you only want them to have, the ability to view, based on a saved search and not necessarily in the news feed. So you would be able to save those individual settings for that particular client. Okay? Let us now, close out that profile. Before I jump into the help, I also wanna go into general preferences real quickly, and I am going to go into contacts. Now I, again, am working in a, training account.
So I’m in here a lot doing different things, and I have already, enabled reverse press oh, excuse me. I didn’t want reverse prospecting. What is it that I was after here? I apologize. I got a little ahead of myself. So general preferences, if you’ve never had a moment to review, the information in general preferences, there’s some really kind of fun stuff to look through and maybe make any modifications. I think I jumped ahead of myself here thinking of one thing and doing another.
But by all means, take a look, if you wanna make any modifications to the way that you set up, any of these settings for just your own use in your own account in Flexmls, by all means, go ahead and do that. I’m gonna hop out of general preferences because what I was thinking of is not in there. So, hopefully, that wasn’t too much of a distraction for you. Okay. So the last thing I wanna do is I want to discuss, some of the help features. And I’ve talked a little bit about guided help. So when we were in portal preferences, there, of course, is the, guided help, links at the top.
And then depending on the type of, setting that we’re working in, there are some, guided help links that you can kinda just hover over, see what they have to say, and hopefully help you, understand what that particular setting does just a little bit better. And the main source of guided help is going to be in the kinda top center of your screen just to the right of the quick launch bar. But wait, there’s more. There is additional help available. There is Flexmls help and the Flexmls academy. There’s also help with this page where the system has the ability to, identify where you are within the system, and you can view written documentation pertaining to whatever area that you happen to land on. And in this case, it’s going to be portal preferences which is what we’ve been working on.
So if you run into any questions and you’re just maybe more, of a written documentation type of, learner or you prefer that type of resource, this is a really great, really great one to utilize. In addition, there is Flexmls help. And I’ve pulled up Flexmls help and typed in portal, and we were brought to this screen. So this is going to go, side or down the list of all of the, settings that we’ve just kind of gone through and going to detail exactly what they do. So if you, you know, walk away from today and you maybe you, you know, don’t get around to setting up your portal preference settings, for another week or something, you find a little downtime, and you wanna just kinda review what I went over, this is a really great resource to utilize just to make sure that you are setting up those default settings in a way that’s going to be helpful. Okay? Now I was going to do this in the very beginning, but I got, right down to business.
So if you are following along, which hopefully you most of you had that opportunity, and your portal does not look like the portal that I was highlighting. That means that you are use utilizing the classic portal and what we recommend is to try the new portal. Okay?
And what that will do, it’s just going to be a better user experience for, for IDX, for, mobile platforms as well. So it’s a much better experience for your clients, which is ultimately who you’re looking to share this information with. So if you end up seeing this, by all means, I would recommend switching from the classic portal to the new portal, and it will allow your, clients just a much better experience, overall while utilizing, the Flexmls portal and getting the information that you, are looking to share their way. So that’s going to take us to the end of our time today. Thank you all so much for attending. I hope you have a really great rest of the day.
