Welcome everyone. My name is Anne O’Shea and I’m your ReFlexmls trainer today. And today’s coffee break webinar is on custom search templates and views.
So today I’m going to cover custom search templates. These are really handy so you don’t keep having to reinvent the wheel every time you go into QuickSearch. So that’s a really nice shortcut and it’ll just make your life that much easier. Search results on that list tab. Custom views are those columns. I’m going to show you that and then while we’re in there I’ll go ahead and show you how to set up a custom sort if you like.
The key thing to remember about all of this is that number one you don’t have to do any of this. This is all customization and you don’t have to do them all at the same time. So you can just do one you know, just change your view or just change your template. I’m just gonna show you all of them because they can be layered and it’s just simpler and often, I think easier that way.
But you don’t have to do it that way. And another thing I’m going show you while we’re in there is that we have a lot of help. So if you need to come back to this six months from now, not to worry. You don’t have to remember everything I say. We have a lot of help. You can get to it. No problem.
So here I am in the training account in the Fargo Moorhead MLS which again might look a little different than yours but not to worry the process is the same. And first thing I’m going do is jump into quick search because I want to create a custom quick search template.
Now say I’m in residential templates and you can see all the property templates here and you could even see one that I created for land in the past that included zoning and price per acre. You can create one for every property type. You can create more than one for one property type. It’s entirely up to you so have fun! But let’s start with a basic residential tweak.
I just want to change this up.
These fields here, this list of fields here is the current default MLS quick search template for residential. Your MLS chose whatever fields that are in your list as they are the most popular in your MLS. But let’s say I never get asked about laundry location. I just want to kind of remove things I don’t use. I never get asked about new construction. I can take that off easily.
Also maybe I’m always asked about full baths. So let’s add a field just down here below here. Now you notice I’m not putting price or beds or baths or anything because I’m not setting up a search I’m setting up a quick search template which is this list of fields.
I’m going to click on add a field and up here I’m going to type in full because I want to add full baths and you’ll see a couple of things here but I want total full baths so I’m going to add that field to my template. I also want to add say fireplace so I can just come up here to this little search bar again and just type in fire and I can get fireplace. I can add the whole group because it has a plus sign here.
So I’m going to add the whole group fireplace. Because maybe I’m always asked about the fireplace and total full baths. I’m going to close this now. I don’t want to add anything else but you could certainly of course even just scroll through all the many fields that are in your MLS and have fun with that. But let’s say I just want to add these two.
You can add more, you can add less, you can just add one or you can just remove things that you don’t want to see every time. Whatever works for you. So now I have this list of fields and how do I save this so I don’t have to keep adding total full baths every time I do a residential search? And I don’t have to keep on adding fireplace every time I do a residential search. I come up here to the magical button that is Save which we love.
And up here I could save the search but I didn’t do a search. I don’t have any search parameters in here. No beds and baths and price and all that. I’m here going to save a quick search template. So now I’m going to save a quick search template and I have to give it a name.
It’s a new template and I’m going to call it, let’s see actually I’m going to put an asterisk so it’ll be at the top of the list and I’m going to call it MyRes.
I tend to name things that are custom to me with the word my in the beginning just so that I can find them easily. But it’s whatever you wanna call these, it’s up to you. And maybe I’ll call it fire full. So I know that it includes fireplace and full bath.
And the view, I can choose which view I wanna use. You can see any view that you’ve created but I’m gonna go with the basic view because I haven’t created a custom view yet for this. So I’ll just go with the basic default view that is in this MLS and click save.
Great! So now this is a template. If I come up here to my templates I can see my res fire full and I put residential. Res for residential because here I’ve created one for land. So whatever works best for you but I like to put the property type in there too. So let’s go out of here and we’ll come into quick search and there’s my template.
Now as you may have seen before in Flexible S if I were to run a search and then leave QuickSearch and then come back in the QuickSearch whatever I last used is still here. It will be kind of sticky. It always sticks to whatever you last did. So now that I’m going to, if I use this for a search it’ll remember that. But remember the view. That’s the list tab.
If I want to look at search results and again I didn’t do a search per se but my view is here on the list tab and that view is all these columns. And these again were set by your MLS. And if you notice beds and total baths are here but fireplace and full baths are not here. So how do you add full baths and fireplace to your view? You come up here and there’s your choices of view again.
You have lots of choices. This is the default from the MLS but I’m going to click on View and I want to point out real quick before we jump into setting up the view. There’s this fabulous little info bubble right here. The view controls which columns and lots of great information here and a guided tour. So that can walk you through the process.
So again if you come back to this six months from now, you want to create a new view, you don’t remember how, just come to the info bubble and we’ve got you covered. So I’m gonna click on View, edit the current view, and I’m creating a view. And I created a view and it uses the default that was there before, but I’m giving it a new name. So I’m gonna call it MyRes view just for fun.
I can put a header here. The info bubble will let you know. This would appear on the top of your printed or reports and things but I don’t need that. Show a photo. Yes, absolutely. I like that. Default for my listings or if you have office access you would have my office listings as an option. I’m not going to make a default for anything. I just want it my res view.
And then I come to the second tab and click on that. And here I can see I’m in residential so I want all the fields for that. But if I were setting up a view say for multifamily I would want those fields because every property type has slightly different fields. Like land doesn’t have bathroom, for example. And I want to add full. There’s total full baths so I’m going to add that to the list down here.
And I also want to add fire because I added fireplace to my quick search template. So now here’s the view and this starts from left to right as you look at the columns. Now right now I can see total full baths is down here and fireplace. Maybe I want total full baths up by total bathrooms. That would make sense to me. That would make my life easier. So I’m going to move it. I just click and drag it up here after total bathrooms.
And actually you can see because I released it, it’s letting me come in here and I can just edit the title at the head of the column. So I’m gonna just take out total. I’m just gonna call it full baths because I know it’s total. And I’m gonna click on this one too because that was a long header for such a short little bit of data.
So I’m just gonna say baths because I know it’s just all of them. And click done. So you can come in here and play with that. I also maybe want to move fireplace farther up. Maybe I’ll put it after total square feet. And I’ll leave it as that so I’ll just click done. You can also remove things here. Maybe I never get asked for residential lot acres.
I can take that out of the columns. I can add other things. You can search for lots of things. Whatever you want to do. Play with it. Click and drag and then click Save. Oh! Before I do that though, that would be saving my view which I love. But here’s that tab where you can create a custom sort. Click on that.
The default is always column order meaning when you’re in the list tab in your search results you just click at the top of the column and it will sort everything by that column whether it be ascending price or descending price or whatever it is. You can sort by area, zip code, whatever. Or you can create a custom sort which is fun. So let’s do that.
Now I don’t have any saved sorts so I’m going to create a new sort. And this sort will be associated with this view. So I’m going to create a new sort for this view.
And I’m going to go with let’s say full bath.
And I want to sort by full bath and then I want to sort by price. And I’ll go with list price.
And I’m going to come over here now and I can choose who’s ascending or descending by default. Now this doesn’t mean you can’t change it on the fly. You want to change things up. You can absolutely do that. But this just makes it when you walk into the room it’s already there basically. You know what I’m saying?
It’s already set up for you the way you usually like it but you can always change it for that one time that you need it a little different. So let’s say full baths I always want the most full baths listed first and then I want the lowest price listing first. So it’ll be full baths and then baths. So I’m gonna click save. Now again, you do not have to do a sort associated with your view. You do not even have to do a view associated with your quick search template.
I’m just layering it just to show you all these things that you can do. Okay so let’s click save.
And now you can see my residential fire full quick search template for my residential. And I can see that it has my residential view right here that I created. I didn’t have to create a new view. I could have used the basic one this MLS uses for residential. But I wanted fireplace on here and I wanted full baths on here. And you notice now total baths is a narrower column because I took out that full length header.
And by default it’s going to sort because I set up that custom sort associated with this view. It’s sorting with the most full baths first and then it goes down to three and of these the list price is lowest to highest. So of the full baths that are four it goes list price low to high and then I go to full bath three and then it goes list price low to high again.
You can have a lot of fun with this and you don’t have to do just a two layer sort. You can do a many layer sort. Or if you want you can always go back and change things up. So what if I wanted to go back and change something up? Let’s do that. So I’m going to come in here.
I’m just going to go back to my home button here, Flexmls, and I put some things up here in my favorites bar just so you can see what we’re looking at. Not everybody wants these in their favorites bar because usually you’re not going in to edit these often. They are here in the menu and you can find this all in Preferences. So My Views, My Saved Sorts, Quick Search Templates here under Preferences.
But I put them up here just for convenience sake today. So quick search templates.
I can come in here and I can see my residential fire full. Click on that and I can edit it. If you notice, can also delete it because maybe I want to start fresh with something else or I never use something so I can remove it. I can also give it to someone. So this is really cool. I can give this now to someone in my entire MLS.
So maybe I am a pro at making this template, or I have a friend in my office that really would love that template as well, I can give it to a whole office and give it to someone in the selected office. So that’s a lovely feature too. Especially for you office admins out there. Maybe you are kind of the guru and you want to set these up so that everyone can take advantage of that for your whole office.
In any case, you can also come in and edit. It tells you some basic info here. Let’s click on edit. There’s the name. I can change the name if I like. It’s property type of residential. The default view, if you notice, is basic info. Now it does remember, you know, it’s sticky. But let’s go in and select MyResView so it’s always linked to that one and click Next.
And in here in my quick search template called MyResFirefull, I can come in here and go you know what I really would rather know Waterfront was you know I don’t need that let me take it out.
I could edit things here and just click Save. I can also in quick search templates create a new one. Now you can create a new one here from scratch but it starts out with nothing and you have to add every single thing which is why I like to start it from quick search because that’s handy.
It’s already set up with a lot of the most commonly used fields and then you just tweak it change it up just a little bit how you like. For my views, again I can come in here and change my view. There’s my residential view that I just set up. I can edit that. Maybe I want dom to be up here next to status. And maybe I want to change that to cdom.
If your MLS uses CDOM, you might just want to call it CDOM instead of cumulative DOM. Change that up.
And again, while I’m in here, I can change it to a different custom sort. I can change this to ascending full bath, descending price, whatever I want to do, or just go back to straight old column order, whatever you like. Just be sure to click save when you do make a change. It’s up here in the upper right. And then my saved sorts. Oh, it’s not showing up yet, but my saved sort is in there too.
So it’ll show up I’m sure a little bit later. But you have all these at your fingertips. And again I think it’s easiest just to start in QuickSearch. Go in the property type that you like. Maybe you’re in multifamily a lot and you want to just change it up or add something here.
Whatever it is add a field or just click on the little X that when you hover to the right and remove something and then click save and save it as a template. Make your life that much easier. Again don’t forget we have guided help and you can just type in custom. Oops helps if I can spell custom. And you can find all sorts of things in here.
Of course now, there you go, customized search template. So you can have a lot of fun and again on the List tab you will see here next to View how to create a custom view guided tour right from there. Very handy. And of course there’s always help. Written help right here. The Academy. We have other webinars available on customization and this will be included in there.
Well thank you so much for joining me. I hope this was helpful.
And again, my suggestion is start in QuickSearch so you have something to start with. Edit what you like. Come up here, save it as a QuickSearch template.
And then once you have what you want in there go to the list and add or remove those fields from your view right here. Okay. Easy. Thanks again everyone.
