Good afternoon. My name is Josh Hernandez, and today we are going to have a webinar on map overlays. Let’s look at today’s topics. First, we’ll look at how do we create and save a map overlay. Then we’ll look at how do we use an overlay that we’ve already saved.
And finally, if you need to edit an overlay or maybe you want to give that overlay to somebody else within your office, you can do that as well. So we’ll cover all three of these today. Now I am going to just shrink this screen down a little bit so I can have Flexmls open. And we’ll go into Flexmls and look at our first topic, which is creating the overlay. And I’m going to actually create it from the quick search.
There are ways different ways you can get to the overlays, but I’m going to just do it from quick search today, and that’s the easiest way. We’ll start by drawing a shape, and you can draw a shape that’s relevant to your market.
So if there are golf courses, neighborhoods, school districts, subdivisions, something that maybe isn’t defined by your MLS fields, but you want to have a record of it as a shape that you can use on the map. So let’s just look at drawing the shape first. So I’m going to go into Flexmls and I am going to begin by clicking on the quick search. I’ve got that here on my favorites.
When I click on quick search, I, of course, have my search templates in the upper right. Yours may be slightly different than the ones used in this association. And you’ll also have the map of listings over on the right hand side. And if yours has a pop up here, that just means there are over one thousand active listings. So you can either put in search criteria or you can just click dismiss to get that pop up removed.
But under a thousand listings and they start populating on the map. But what we want to do today is we want to draw a shape on the map, and we can use this shape again and again. We’ll show you how to save it so it’s not just a one time shape. If you’ve gone through the trouble to create it, we want to be able to use it anytime you’re starting a search. So I’m going to just zoom in on my map. I’ve got my mouse on the map.
I’m just going to drag it around a little bit. I’ll use my scroll wheel, zoom in on the area that I want to start drawing in. And then I’m going to go to my map tools, and they’re in the lower part of the screen on the right hand side. And the tool for drawing on the map, a freehand shape, is this third blue one right in the center of the shapes or at the bottom of the three shapes here in the center.
So it’s this free form polygon. When I click that, now I’m able to start drawing on the map. And when you draw, every time I click, I’ll click once, I’ll click again, and you’ll notice it just draws a line connecting the points that I click on. So I’ll click, click, click. So I’m able to draw a shape.
Maybe this isn’t necessarily something that’s defined by the MLS as a neighborhood or a subdivision, but it’s something that I want to be able to use anytime I’m starting a search. Maybe this is brand new and it just hasn’t been added to the MLS shapes yet or the MLS fields, excuse me.
And as you’re drawing this shape, every time I click, as we see, it sets another point so I can, of course, get this exactly how I want it. When I’m done drawing, make sure that your lines are not crossed over each other. And once I’m sure that my lines are not crossed over, just double click, and now I’ve drawn this shape.
Now, of course, I could use this shape in a search that I’m creating right now, but what we want to do is after drawing the shape, we want to save it so we can use it again and again and again. So if you come back here to our outline today, saving the overlay, we’ll click on the shape, we’ll click edit, and we’ll save to map overlays. And we’ll take a look at this because the overlay is actually a folder that can contain multiple shapes.
And once we have these shapes drawn, we can use them in searches for our contacts. We can use them in searches that we’re running for ourselves. If we wanna run statistics, we can use these shapes in all kinds of places. So let’s save it. So as you saw, the first step was clicking on the shape itself. Just click on the shape that you’ve drawn, not on one of the listings, but just on the shape itself.
And once I do that, you’ll see it just says there’s a polygon here and click edit. Now I can name that polygon. I’m gonna name this shape whatever I want. So for today, let’s go ahead and call it area fifty one. If you want to change the color, maybe I want this to be purple, I can click here and change the color there.
Once I’ve named it, if you want to select a color, you can or you can keep that default blue.
The third thing we’ll do is click save to map overlays. So when I click on this, it says, do you have an existing overlay or brand new? And remember, the overlay is kind of like a folder where I can put multiple shapes. So I’m just going to say, name this overlay areas. And then underneath that, it says I’ve selected one polygon to put in there, area fifty one. So I’ll click save.
And now I’ve got this polygon called area fifty one. And I created an overlay, an overlay folder actually. I could put different shapes in there as well. So just as an example of that, let me draw maybe area fifty two. So I just clicked in my search criteria. The shape was there, and I clicked to remove that.
And I’m going to bring in, we’ll call this area fifty two on my map. And I’m just going to draw another shape.
Now I’m not gonna make this one too complex just for the sake of time. We’ll come through and all come in here. And again, this is a brand new shape. You’ll see it here. It’s just called polygon, but I can save it to my areas overlay that we just created by clicking on the shape, clicking edit, and then I changed the name. I said we’d call this area fifty two.
And then we’ll save this to our map overlay. And now I can say, we’ll add this to our existing. We have one overlay called areas. We’ll add that. You’ll see it selected in here, and I’ll click save. So now that I’ve saved these overlays, we can actually use them, like I said, for our contact searches, but I can use it on any search that I’m creating.
If it’s for myself, if I’m saving it for a contact, maybe I want to look for comps within this. I could look for closed listings within this. I can use it on any search that I create. And so just using that overlay, we’ll use the location bar. And so I’m just going to begin a brand new quick search. So I’ll click on quick search again, start the whole process from scratch.
But to use one of those overlays that I’ve created, at the top of any search template, it doesn’t matter which one I use, residential, maybe I want vacant land and lots, commercial, residential lease, whatever your MLS has.
If I select one of these templates, I still have at the top of any search template this location bar. And you’ll see my mouse hovering back and forth. It says type in an MLS number, address, or map overlay. Now I’ve only got one overlay called areas with two shapes in it. You could have more areas. Maybe I want areas. Maybe I want a golf course. Maybe I want a school district that I can create.
I could add more. We’ll take a look at that just at the end. But we’ll say area fifty one. If I double click on that, it gets added, and you’ll see it come in here. Now we’re looking in vacant land lots. We created that on a residential search, but the overlay can be used for any property type, any search template.
And if I wanted to add in area fifty two, just click up here and we’ll click area fifty two. Double click on that, and now you’ll see both of them have been added. Zoom out a little bit. Both of them have been added. Now there are no listings that are appearing. There is no vacant land or lots in area fifty two. And now I could continue my search as normal.
If I was doing this for a client, put in the price, maybe bedrooms, bathrooms, if I was looking for residential listings. And then I could, of course, save the search to do whatever I want with that search. If I’m doing a search and I say, well, since this one doesn’t have any listings in it, you can get rid of one of these. Now I’m not getting rid of it entirely.
I’m just removing it from the search. I’ll click on that x next to its name. Let me zoom in on my screen so you can see that a little bit. So right next to the shape name, click that x, and you just remove that shape from here. Now, again, I can continue my searches as normal. So that’s great. So now I can reuse this anytime.
Or if I want to take a look at this and say how many active listings pending and closed are here and just get some quick stats. I’m looking at the stats within that shape I’ve drawn. Go to your stats tab.
I can see that twenty six active, two closed, get some basic information on those as far as statistics are concerned. Lot of things I can do once I have that shape drawn. The very last thing we’ll look at for after editing or after using them is editing the overlays. So I can edit an overlay on the fly from a quick search. Let’s just look at that first.
On a quick search, if I just say, I want to come in to area fifty one, I’ll double click.
And if I click on that shape and I click edit, I can click edit shape. So if I wanted to get this just a little bit zoom out here. I’m able to come in and edit that. Now where I prefer to edit shapes though, is not from the search itself. I’m just going to click leave edit shape mode. And I’m actually going to go into my menu.
And I’m going to type under that menu search overlay, start typing in overlay, and you’ll see under preferences, my map overlays. Now I’ll put a star on this for today just so we see it pinned up here. If you don’t come here very often, I wouldn’t put it on your favorites, but just so we can remember what I where I went. I went to my map overlays.
And now you’ll see that one overlay areas, it’s it’s here. And it tells me there are two shapes within here. And so if I click on this and click, I could rename this, but I can click edit, it opens up this. This is these are all of the shapes that are currently within that areas overlay folder.
And if I want to edit one of the shapes itself and save this, I can click area fifty one edit and, of course, change the color, but we’ll edit the shape. And this lets us just click and drag those orange dots just like when we kind of did this on the fly. I can put them anywhere that I want.
When I’m done editing this shape, click leave edit shape mode at the bottom. I don’t have to click save. I’ve edited the shape and now that shape’s been permanently changed. Same thing here. If I want to edit that area fifty two, just click on edits and edit shape will pop up. And again, I can come in and use those orange dots.
You’ll also notice there will be one orange dot that’s floating, not connected to the lines. That just allows me to move the shape around itself if I didn’t have it centered correctly. And once I’ve changed the shape, leave edit shape mode. You could also add additional shapes from here. Just click on that free form polygon, and I could draw additional shapes here.
So if I wanted to come in and we’ll call this area fifty three and click to edit it, give that a name, area fifty three. And we’ll change the color on that one as well. And now that’s area fifty three. I’ve got three shapes in this area overlay now, area fifty one, fifty two, fifty three. I’ve changed those shapes.
I can use those shapes on any search that I create for myself or for my contacts. And when I click save, that’s going to be at the top right of the screen where my mouse is hovering.
I’ll click on save, and I’m just resaving this to areas. I’m not adding a new our new overlay or new shapes. I added a new shape to this existing overlay. So I just click on save. And when I come I clicked on next to save, edit another overlay and got my overlays pop up. I could start one for school districts or golf courses.
But what I wanted to show you here, the very last thing is when I select some shapes in one of the overlays. So I’ve got this overlay areas with three shapes now, tells me when I created that and last edited it. I have the option to give to somebody. So I could give that to somebody within my office.
Now I don’t think I’ve got other training accounts here that I’m going to be able to give that to, but you’re able to give that to other members within your office. You can’t give it to somebody outside the office.
But when you give it to somebody within your office, then when they go to a quick search, I’ll click on quick search to demonstrate, and they click on that location search bar, they’ll see those areas available. Or in this case, areas, but whatever you name the shape, they’ll see those available.
If you’ve given an overlay that has many, many shapes drawn, you’re only going to see about the first ten or so overlays that you’ve saved as far as the shapes are concerned. So you can all also begin typing in what you’re looking for. So if I type in area fifty one, that helps you sort through and find any of the overlays that you’ve drawn if you have a lot.
And if you give that to somebody else within your office, they’ll also be able to go through and type in what they’re looking for and use that on any search that they’re creating. They’ll also be able to see that under my map overlays as well. Since you gave that to them, they’ll have that entire overlay there and they could edit it for themselves if they want.
So that is a quick look at creating overlays, using the overlays and editing and giving those overlays to somebody else. Again, you can use those now on any search that you create. If you save a search for your contact, you can use those overlays there as well. So these are nice for popular locations that might not be defined by an MLS field.
You can just use your overlay, save the search for a contact, set them up with a subscription or save it for their portal as you normally would and use that on any search that you create.
Thank you very much and have a great rest of your day.
