Good morning and good afternoon everyone and welcome to a webinar highlighting QuickSearch in FlexMLS. Today we will review various options while using QuickSearch in Flex MLS. My name is Amy Long and I am your trainer. So we are going to cover today, QuickSearch and this webinar is intended to provide kind of a refresh for those who are seasoned users of FlexMLS.
So if you’ve been using the system for a while, this is gonna sound pretty familiar and might offer some areas that you are already familiar with. Hopefully you’ll gain something from the webinar I am going to go into a few more kind of specific details of how to create a custom search template and a view a little bit later in the webinar. Today we will cover in QuickSearch how to create a search, just kind of a basic multi status search. We will save that search and assign it to a contact. We will, start again with another search and use more of the map for searching with that search and then we’ll dive into creating a custom view and tie that custom view to a custom search template which, can be extremely helpful, to kind of fine tune things and customize the system a little bit when you are, conducting your searches in FlexMLS.
And then, of course, towards the end, we will highlight some of the help features that are available in the system so let me hop out of my screen and I’m just going to shift over to Flex MLS and I am now in my home dashboard and for today’s training I am using a training account in the Fargo Moorhead Flex MLS and that is where I’m based that is where our company is based is in Fargo I am using this MLS to conduct the training today.
So while it might look a little bit different than what you are used to understandably, please keep in mind that the steps that I show you are going to be the same regardless of what differences may be visible in appearance so we are going to begin by talking about quick search and quick search is the first function that is available in my favorites bar. In my favorites bar, hopefully you’re familiar with that, and that’s available kind of at the top center of your screen. And when you save a function to your favorites bar, it’s gonna be always available and visible to you. So just to start this session out real quickly here, this is the menu. I just clicked on menu. And this is where you’re gonna find all of the functions that are available to you as users in the FlexMLS system and if you find that there’s functions that you use all the time adding that function as a favorite is easy to do and it’s going to be visible to you so I’m just gonna as an example click on add listing I don’t see that in my favorites bar at this moment I’ll turn off that little warning and now you can see that add listing has been added to my favorites bar. If you find that there are some functions that are have been added previously and and maybe you don’t use them frequently enough or you’d like to remove them, removing that function is as simple as also clicking that star just on the left hand side of the function. So just keep that in mind, and the reason I’m pointing that out is because I’ve got that quick quick search, front and center in my favorites bar. So let’s begin and we are now in quick search which hopefully you’re familiar with and if you’re not, this is quick search where everything, you need to create a search is available on one screen. So we always have our map that’s visible and on the right side of the screen, and then our property type, and the property template for all the fields is on the left hand side of the screen. So everything we need is right here. We can work on one screen, create a search, and then view results. So I’m going to begin this process by conducting a multi status search in the property type of residential and you’ll select your property type at the top. As an example for this MLS, there’s the option of residential, multifamily, vacant land lots, commercial, etc. I won’t go through the whole list but you always want to ensure that you select the correct property type for what you are searching for as that will allow for the correct fields to appear and then of course those corresponding listings. So this is an important first step that if you’re ever wondering if you have questions on what you need to select, this is your property type and this kind of blue bubble to the right and just below, Just some help features that are built into the system with guided help that will kind of guide you through the process and help you if you have any questions with regard to property types. Okay now with that said, we will begin our search and I am going to kind of go through this process much like an outline. We’re going to start at the top work our way to the bottom and then view our results from left to right. So for status I mentioned that we would do multi status so I am going to select active and pending for my search here.
Now the nice thing about this when I selected pending the off market dates fields will populate and this will allow me to adjust the number of days or months or however I wish to kind of fine tune my search with that pending status so if I click these little arrows just to the left of this field I can have the option to enter a date a range of dates so if you have a very specific date range in mind you can certainly enter that range otherwise we can click that those arrows again and return to where we were and in this case I can enter the number of days that I’d like to go back or I could even go months back or years back but in this case I’m just going to focus on days so I’ll click that one more time and I am going to select maybe ninety days I don’t want to go back any further than that now we’re just going to continue to move down the list I have my current list price the list price, and then the current price whichever field I prefer. If there’s been a price adjustment this field would be applicable. Subtype I’m going to select single family and I’m going to focus this search.
I am in again Fargo Moorhead and we have kind of three cities that make up our metro area Fargo Moorhead West Fargo. So I’m going to select Fargo and West Fargo. Those are the two cities that are located in North Dakota. For those of you who do not reside in this wonderful state, Moorhead is in Minnesota. So I’m gonna focus on North Dakota cities for my search and I will stay out of listings across the river. So now I’m going to continue to move down. I’m going to use my bedrooms field. I’m going to put in a minimum of three bedrooms. I could put in a max number if I had a real specific limitation maybe the buyers that I’m working with have a reason that they do not want anything more than four bedrooms so I would put in minimum of three maximum of four but in this case I’m just gonna leave it blank and that would allow any listings that have anything over than three plus bedrooms to be included in my search same concept will go for the bathroom in this case I’ll put in two total baths and leave that max field alone And then I’m gonna come down a little bit further. We’re in the upper Midwest, so garage stalls are pretty important here. So I would like to ensure that whatever properties I’m looking for for my clients do indeed have, a double at least a double garage now if you find that there are some fields that you use pretty frequently or maybe on just a very occasional basis but you do not see them in this list you’ll find add a field to your search and in here you can just scroll through and look for exactly what you’re after or you can just type in this field and start to search So maybe in this case we want to look for central air. We’re kind of in that transitional time of year here, but central air in the summer is pretty important. So I want to ensure that any properties that I show my clients do indeed offer central air. Okay. So now we have our kind of list of our listings here, and I’ve got Fargo, West Fargo. The only thing I didn’t put in is a list price, so I think I do wanna do that. I’m gonna come to current price field, and I’m going to select, maybe we’ll do four hundred to five fifty. Kind of a broad range but we’ll see what kind of listings we end up with there. So that’s gonna bring me to a total of a hundred eleven listings with those two statuses. So I’m gonna click to view these results and that’s a lot of results.
If you find that you want to fine tune even more, all you’ll need to do if you’re, you know, kind of looking through this list of all these various listings looking at some of these details and you just kind of wanna fine tune things or maybe you forgot that they had a preference of kind of the style of the property. I did not include that field.
Maybe a two story or a one and a half story is not a good option. And they were specific and they asked for just a one story. So in that case, that’ll probably fine tune our results significantly. And now we’re looking instead of a hundred eleven, we’re looking at twenty eight results. And always remember your results when you are working in this template are gonna update in real time. So your number will change every time you update something in the search template. So we immediately changed from the one hundred eleven to the twenty eight results.
We have our pending statuses at the top and as we move down we have active so we can sort that if we would like so we’ll go descending so we have active first and then pending will follow So here is our we are now on the list tab so this is going to provide information in the view. This is what’s called our view and I’m going to show you in just a little bit how we are going to make a custom view to see only the fields that would be beneficial when you are looking at listing information. Currently these are the fields that are included you can kind of see for yourself I’m not looking at sold status so there would be nothing that would populate in these particular fields because of the status that I chose. If we shift over to the detail tab now, this is gonna provide the detail reports.
If we select report, a list of all the available reports and they do have quite a few reports that are available will appear and there are two versions of the reports there’s a private version and a public version just always remember that and those versions are helpful depending on who you’re sharing the information with. Lastly, I’ll just hop over to the photos tab and this is what you will select when you are wanting to just take kind of a glance through the listing look at those listing photos if there is a video or a virtual tour those images will be the first two in the strip at the bottom it does not appear that any of these listings offer either a video or virtual tour okay it doesn’t appear to be the case so what we want to do now is I’ve got these twenty eight results and I want to save this search so I can share it with my contact So the best way to go about this will be to come up to the save function which is this is kind of our actions row. You can share on social media. You can send out an email. Do a good old fashioned print print out a report or forms, or you can save. And I want to save my search. So I’m going to save this search and this will be a new search.
So we’ll call this West Fargo, Fargo, one story did I say three bedrooms.
Okay I’m not very creative when it comes to naming searches as you can see so I’m gonna name this one and the nice thing about when you are using Flex MLS you just because you’re maybe creating the search for one individual you’re working with you can provide their name in the name of the search but you don’t have to this search could be possibly applicable to more than one client or contact buyer that you’re working with if it’s if it’s you know they have similar types of requests not always will that be the case but sometimes so I I typically don’t name names in my searches, but certainly you can. It definitely depends on what you prefer. And then we have the option, now that I’ve given my name for the search that will name the search, the option to include a contact. So I do have a contact that I added into contact management and they would be considered an existing contact. So I’m going to attach them to this search.
I’m going to attach Justin and I’m going to come down to the bottom and I’m going to save this and now I get a little notification that my search has been successfully saved and we can kind of identify that up here in the upper left corner this no longer indicates that this is an active quick search we are now in a saved search and this is the name that I gave that search. So we can find our saved searches in a couple of places one of them being saved searches which is a function that I have here.
We have all as an option or favorites and I did not favorite that search a favorite just means that there would be a little star next to it it’s kind of a theme throughout Flex MLS and and it makes it your search a little easier to find.
And again, if you are using a search that maybe you’re gonna use for more than one contact or or buyer or something like that, you may wanna favorite that so you can easily access and and modify as needed or or anything like that. Mine would probably be found under all searches, and here we go. It’s the first one in line. So there is my search. If I click on these three dots I can view these details if there’s been any subscriptions that have been tied to the search or I can rename it. So if I named this one Hansen Family Search and I didn’t want it to be named as that I would have the opportunity to rename it here or finally if you just want to delete a search or you’re cleaning out your saved searches you can do that as well another place you’ll be able to find this search and a little more information is in contact management and I have my contact Justin and we can see here by opening his profile under searches and subscriptions that he does indeed have this search that I just created tied to his profile so you you can take that once you do assign something you’ll be able to view this also through contact management that indeed that search was successfully tied to that contact. Okay let’s get back to talking about searching and I’m going to return to quick search and this time we’re going to talk a little bit more about the map.
Again, the map will always appear on the right side of the screen So at this moment, I’m not going to worry quite so much about some of these fields. I am going to stick with the residential property type, but what I’m going to do is I’m going to focus a little bit more on kind of fine tuning an area of this map. So what I want to do I am going to maybe focus on the east side of the interstate in North Dakota but I’m going to stay in North Dakota and not cross this river This river is is the boundary between North Dakota and Minnesota and it kind of weaves throughout our metro area. So, I am going to use my map toolbar on the right hand side of the screen and I’m gonna click on the polygon and I’m gonna blow this up just a little bit that got a little big but I am going to now click on the polygon and you’ll notice that my mouse will have a little blue tip on the end which tells me I’m ready to begin drawing and if you have used this tool before it’s a really great way to conduct a search and if you haven’t it might take a little bit of getting used to when you begin to draw when you’re ready to start drawing you’re gonna click your left button on your mouse just once and that’s gonna allow you to draw and you’ll notice that blue line is just gonna kind of follow you and then every time you click you will make a point. Okay So I’m going a little slow here. So I’m gonna come down to fifty second Avenue and that’s gonna be the point where I do not want to go past and I of course I don’t want to go into Minnesota so I’m going to stick with this side of the river. So I’m kind of getting pretty creative here with my drawing. It looks like I’m in a green space or possibly a golf course over here. And to end my drawing, you’ll notice that if I don’t do this, this is what I’m gonna end up doing all day. To end my drawing, I’m going to need to double click my left mouse button so double click and now I have successfully created a shape for a specific area that I want to search in now you can use this several ways if this is an area that I want to look for listings in or maybe I would like to conduct a CMA and I want to change my status and look for sold listings in this area that is an option you can also use this shape or any shape for whatever purpose and you can modify how you use it So maybe I want to instead of searching within this shape and I don’t have two shapes so my intersection will not work at this moment but maybe I want to search anywhere but that shape So it zoomed me out a bit. I’m gonna come back in.
So now there’s my shape right and now I’m able to search everywhere else and I can fine tune that as well but everywhere else but that specific area so if there’s an area that you like to avoid possibly for whatever reason this is a nice option that you can use to avoid a specific area from those listings from being included. And it’s quite easy.
You can adjust how you use that shape either not within or back to within and then I can view those listings as well so that is another way that you can use the map to conduct a search in quick search and then of course now that we’re back in the shape and we’re searching within the shape we can use any of the fields in the template or even adding additional fields as needed. Okay.
Now let’s talk about creating a custom view and we’re gonna tie that to a custom search template. So what I’m gonna do next is I am going to take, well we can just kinda continue where we are. We don’t have to start over. So I’m gonna take these forty results that I have just in my shape with the status of active I haven’t done anything more than that to modify the search and I’m not really worried about that at this time either that’s not the intent of what I’m about to do so I’ve got these listings but what I want to do is I want to change what I see here not all of these fields are applicable to my needs So I’m going to customize this just a bit. I’m going to come up to view and this is going to allow me to make some modifications.
So I’m going to go to well actually let’s see here maybe I’m going to change to my residential view I was already in kind of a custom view and I wonder if I can okay I’m gonna try and make some updates here so I’m gonna call this Amy Rez and I’m gonna update this view So I’m giving this a name and I’m putting an asterisk in front of Amy Rez because what that will do is that will allow this version of the views to be first in line so I don’t necessarily have to look through the whole list and dig through all of the available views. Show photo yes or no. I am going to select yes that’s the default because that will allow a thumbnail photo to appear. I’m a very visual person and that’s what I prefer. Now I am going to come into my fields and we are basing this off my residential view but we’re creating a new one.
So here is where we will want to make some updates to what is included. So I want to include and we’re basing this off of residential property type so you can always update your view for the property type you wish to use I’m sticking with residential so I’m going to add high school I’m also going to add elementary school. Well, maybe that’s not an option. We’ll stick with high school.
Then I am going to add look for fenced yard under exterior amenities.
I’m going to add both fields and then I want to add we have days on market on there Maybe we will add the listing office. Okay now I’m going to take a look at the right side of my screen and this is all of these fields that will appear and the order in which they will appear so you can modify this as well. So what I’m going to do is I am going to move my fencing up just a bit in the order and then I’m going to move the high school up because that’s kind of a big deal that will indicate you know, if you’re working with a lot of families, which district or where the kids will go to school. It looks like we have a total baths, a total beds field, we’ll move those closer together.
Subdivision I’m not going to use that field in my list laundry location listing office looking good otherwise so I’m going to keep everything else as it but if you find that there are fields that you prefer not to have you simply can click the red X remove that field from the view and it will not show up for you So now what I want to do is I’m going to save this and there is my new view and it’s at the very top because I put that asterisk in. So now let’s talk about how we will create a new search template. Okay. And the search template is what we see here. So we’re not gonna worry about, in this case, creating criteria or, you know, I’m not looking for particular listings at this time, the list price of anything. I’m more concerned with the fields that are included, and I’m going to eliminate anything that I don’t normally use and then make sure that I have all the fields that I do use on a regular basis. So what I’m going to do, I’m going to add field and I’m gonna come in and I’m to add some of the same ones I did for my view so they kind of correspond because they’re relevant to what the work that I do. I’m going to add my high school. Forget what I added now.
I am going to add the fencing both of those fields and then I am going to remove the subdivision.
Let’s see oh I think I did did I do central air I’m going to add central air if I didn’t do that Okay, so I’ve made some modifications to this list. So I’ve removed a field, I added a couple more fields, waterfront, I’m probably going to remove that field as well.
And now I am going to be ready to save my changes so I can come back to this every time I am running a search for a residential property type So what you want to do, and I want to stress this, so if you’re a little like me and maybe you get a little distracted like you were starting a search or you wanted to take a peek at some of the listings that first came up and you were clicking through photos that sort of thing the option that I show you to save this template will not be there so it might drive you a little bit crazy But if we go back to edit search so you must be on this edit search tab this is where those changes will be viewable and available. It must be on edit search cannot be on list detail photos etc. Then when we come back to save, I have the option to save quick search template. So just keep that in mind.
So we are going to replace the residential and I am going to give this the same name that I gave this. Oops actually my I’m going to give this brand new brand new template. So the default went to replace existing template and I did not want to do that.
And it looks like I already have one in here but we will try this again and I’m going to do two asterisks this time and I’m going to call this residential Amy and we are going to tie this to the view that I created previously and I am going to save it. And you can see that this is tying also to the property type of residential at the very bottom. So there’s no confusion if you think you were starting this process and you were in land property type or multifamily or something.
You’ll be able to see before you save it which property type will be tied to this particular template. So now I’m gonna save it and I’ll get that little notification that I was successful. So when I begin in my quick search there is my brand new search template and when I want to view those results it is tied to the view that I created with only those fields that I wanted to see. So that is how you can customize your view and your quick search template when you are using FlexMLS. Now let me move along just a little bit and I would like to return to the map and I want to talk a little bit about some more of the features on the map toolbar.
The next one I want to highlight is I would like to put in an address and we will conduct a radius search. So to do that you will use your map toolbar and we’re to come down to this little red pin And this is super helpful if you are well for many types of searches really but if you are certainly wanting to conduct a CMA and you’re going for a specific location. So I’m going to select I’m going to put in my address.
I’m going to locate this property and I’ll say use this location and remember you have some options when you’re on this map. You can switch to the satellite version which can really be helpful especially when you are focusing on specific properties on the map if you’re in an area that’s got a lot of green space around or maybe you’re in a mountainous area or near water, something like that, it can really help identify the exact location of a property. And this one appears to be pretty on target for being right on that property. But there are times that, you know, the mapping may plop you in the backyard or out kind of in the street or something like that. And when you’re on this version of the map, you’re really able to identify and see clearly that property. So we’ll use this location.
And from this point, we can create a radius search. And the default is set to one mile but maybe we would just want to do a half mile.
There we go.
So there is our radius and it’s showing that there’s only one listing in this particular alert area just based on the status of active but I really haven’t taken any steps to modify that so maybe in this case we would like to switch this and we’d like to look up closed and pending listings that go back we’ll stick with the well maybe we’ll go back one point five years so a little longer than a year. Oops that’s not allowing me to. We’ll just stick with one year.
And that’s only showing three results. So this is kind of a quiet area and half of my radius is in kind of a park area as well. So not picking up a ton of listings but hopefully you see the idea that you can use this red pin to pinpoint an exact address and create a radius around that to conduct a search.
So we’re coming close to the end of our time.
I would like to offer some additional information on some of the help features that are available in the system. The first one I’d like to highlight is our guided help And the main guided help you’ll find just to the right of the quick launch bar kind of towards the top center left of your screen. So this is guided help.
You will also notice throughout the system that there are a lot of areas with guided help shortcuts so once you start to recognize these little shortcuts here’s one one over here just over here they’re in all various different areas of the system but they’re shortcuts to guided help and guided help is a really great interactive feature that if you are having help with or if you are needing help with a particular task in Flex MLS this could be a really great feature to kind of walk you through step a to z So I am going to just click on listing searches which is what we’ve been mainly talking about today and if you have any questions about how to save a search or how to create a radius search which we talked about, Any other issues? Anything with the little hand on the left side is going to be an interactive module that will literally walk you through step by step. So I really encourage you to familiarize yourself with Guided Health. It’s a really great feature and it’s constantly updated to have the most current information and accessibility to the help features in the system the next item I’d like to show you is the Flex MLS Academy and you’ll find that under help at the top right of your screen and this will open in a new tab. But I like to highlight this because it’s kind of a one stop shop for a lot of help features in the system. So if you’ve got if you’re a visual learner and you enjoy videos, maybe you don’t wanna sit through a whole forty five minute to an hour long webinar, but you really do enjoy some of the content that’s offered and you’d like to just have some fast results, quick tip videos or short tip videos are wonderful. Usually about two to three minutes long at the most longest length and a lot of really helpful content in those short videos. Upcoming webinars, this is where you can get registered for general webinars such as the one you are on today. These are available to all Flex MLS users and are not specific to a particular MLS. And then also there’s a library for previously recorded webinars. I encourage you to take a look at these and if you again do appreciate the, you know, kind of taking this in, this one will be available in this library within about twenty four hours or so.
So if you wanna kind of, you know, have a refresh on anything, you will have the option to to view this webinar again. So again just a lot of help resource in the FlexMLis Academy. If you’re ever stuck on anything don’t hesitate to reach out to support, use the guided help feature, any of the many help options in Flex MLS. There’s a lot a lot available.
So that is going to take us to the end of our training today. I will check-in with Kendra to see if there are any questions that may need to be addressed and if there are not, we will conclude. I very much appreciate you all attending today and I look forward to the opportunity to train with you again.
