BookAShowing.com Blog

BAS Holiday Hours - Closed 12/24 and 12/25

2009-12-23T10:57:00.001-06:00

BookAShowing.com support will be closed for the holidays on Thursday December 24th and Friday December 25th.

Trouble logging in? Check your date/time

2009-11-05T15:21:00.001-06:00

If you are having trouble logging into BookAShowing.com with Internet Explorer, make sure to check the date and time of your computer for accuracy. If you are unsure how to do that, here are some instructions.

BAS Text Message Reminder

2009-07-09T15:58:00.004-05:00

Just a reminder to agents/clients using the text messaging feature in BookAShowing.com - you cannot reply to the text message! In order to update/change/cancel a appointment, you must login to BAS. If you're on the road with a smart phone, you can always use BAS Mobile.

In the future, we may allow updating appointments directly via text message but for now, we don't allow that for security reasons.

BAS Mobile updates

2009-06-18T14:06:00.004-05:00

When we recently updated BAS, we also made some changes to the BAS Mobile site.

1. Add an appointment calendar for easier viewing of your schedule. Clicking on any of the appointments for a specific day will bring up a detailed list for that day.

2. Improved the interface for iPhone/webOS users for improved touch support and graphic styling

3. Added the ability to edit a listing from Mobile

4. Added the ability to add/edit clients from Mobile - including the client settings

5. Added the ability to edit your account from Mobile (email settings, text settings, etc)

6. Improved Google maps capability for iPhone/webOS devices with integrated Google maps

7. Added the appointment notes to the appointment detail screen.

If your MLS allows direct login to BookAShowing.com with a username and password, you can access BAS Mobile by just visiting http://bookashowing.com from your mobile device (no special URL needed). If your MLS does not allow login to BAS, you can access BAS Mobile directly from the mobile MLS website.

Recent BAS Updates

2009-06-17T14:29:00.004-05:00

On Sunday, June 14th, we released some updates to BookAShowing.com for both agents and office staff. Below is a list of some of the changes. Please note that depending on which MLS you are a member of, some of the changes may not be available in your account.

Agents/Office Staff

Added a new listing "Contacts" option allowing up to 8 additional entries per listing

Added a new "contingency settings" area to the edit listing page. Setting the "Contingent sale" option to Yes will show the options of "Inspection", "Sale of another property", "Third party approval of terms" and "Other". A contingency notes field is also available when the setting is set to Yes. The contingency settings will be displayed AFTER the appointment is requested by the Showing Agent on the confirmation screen. The "Contingent sale" option is required to save listing changes.

Appointment conflicts now default to Yes for all RMLS/NorthstarMLS customers. To control this on a per listing basis instead, you can turn this setting to No in the Settings page and the option to set the "Appt Conflicts" per listing will be re-enabled.

A new "status notes" field has been added to the Edit listing page when the listing status has been set to any status except "Active" and "Inactive". This note field is displayed to the showing agent during the appointment scheduling process along with the listing status.

The appointment details pop-up window (available from the calendar or reports) now includes a new Appointment header allowing quick view of appointment type and price along with quick access to the listing contacts and calendar (for your listings only).

The "Agent Type" field has been relabeled "Representation" and the options have changed to Buyers, Sellers, Dual and Facilitator

The "Email past showing agents" page now includes the ability to include a copy of the message to the Listing agent and the Seller. The formatting of the email sent has also been improved and allows better formatting (including line breaks) from the Message text field.

The "Phonebook" has been updated to allow searching Clients in addition to Agents in BAS and now also includes Office ID.

2 new icons have been added to the Appointment details screen next to the Showing agent's name. The first option indicates whether the agent will receive an email alert and the 2nd option indicates whether the Agent will receive a text message alert. Green icons indicate they will receive an alert, red icons indicate no alert

A "send request" option for feedback has been added to the Appointment details page

Selecting the "denied" or "cancelled" status in the "Update this Appt" box will now clear the text in the Notes field. Make sure to select the status first and then edit the note text.

Overall system performance has been improved through Application and Hardware load balancing modifications

When sending the feedback report to the seller, Agents use to select their seller from a list of their active clients. Now, only the sellers for that listing are available. Agents now have the option to exclude the comments section of the feedback forms and also copy themselves on the email being sent.

The links in the Agent emails have been improved to work more efficiently with non-html compliant email providers/formats.

Changed "Final Walk-Through" to just "Walk-Through."

Agents Only

The list of feedback forms waiting to be completed will now scroll after 10 instead of pushing the page length down and causing the agent to have to scroll down to see tentative requests on listings.

The address search when adding an appointment in the Agent account now includes a "loading" indicator.

When switching accounts (Agent -> Office Staff for example), you can now switch back to the original account without having to re-login from the MLS.

A "Decline" option has been added to the feedback form for agents who do not wish to fill out the feedback form. Using this option will notify the listing agent that you declined to provide feedback for that listing.

BAS mobile has been updated to include an appointment calendar view, edit listing page, add/edit client page, and an edit account page.

The text message settings now includes options to control which text messages you receive. The options are "New Appointments", "Updated Appointments" and "Out of Office Agent" alerts.

Printing in the Firefox browser has been corrected to allow printing multiple pages correctly.

Agents now have a "Sort" function when setting up multiple appointments that allows them to rearrange the order of their showings.

Office Staff Only

Updated office staff home page layout for better multi-user support. Includes quick access to listing calendar, quick access to listing Contacts (new option), and improved usability like a padlock icon for quick view of what staff are looking at specific appointments, and Appointment type and listing price now appear in header bar.

A new report labeled "Office Totals" has been added to the Office staff accounts. This report includes the total number of appointments scheduled for a specific date range selected.

The "Office Appointment Activity" report in the Office staff accounts has been updated to allow sorting on each field.

Planned upgrade tonight - 12:30AM Central

2009-06-14T23:49:00.002-05:00

We'll be shutting down BAS access for a short time starting at 12:30AM central time to install some upgrades. We shouldn't be gone long and we'll update here with some of the highlighted changes.

BAS Welcomes Warren County!

2009-04-08T20:55:00.003-05:00

BookAShowing.com has partnered with the Warren County Association of REALTORS® to allow their agents and offices to begin using BAS starting in April 2009. Training for agents and office staff will be held at the association office April 14th, 15th and 16th. Sign up now!

Welcome Warren County members!

BAS launched for RMLS agents!

2009-03-11T03:33:00.003-05:00

Starting today, March 11th 2009, all agents of the Regional MLS of Minnesota, Inc. can schedule showing appointments directly from the MLS! If you haven't signed up for a training session yet, please do so or check out the many self help resources available to you in your BAS account.

BAS Live on NorthstarMLS!

2009-02-18T12:58:00.003-06:00

Starting today - February 18th, agents and office staff administrators can access BookAShowing.com through the Matrix MLS system. For more details, please review the "news" section of Matrix!

Appointment scheduling is currently disabled for agents and the anticipated "live" date for that is March 5th. Use the time between now and then to configure your account settings, add instructions to listings, set-up listings for automatic showing confirmation, etc.

BAS Launch on NorthstarMLS

2009-02-11T16:31:00.004-06:00

Starting very soon, agents and office administrators of NorthstarMLS will be able to access BookAShowing.com through Matrix to setup your account. Appointment scheduling is currently scheduled to be enabled on March 5th, 2009. More information for office staff is available. Agents - watch the news section on Matrix for updates!

Upgrades and Enhancements

2009-02-10T22:46:00.004-06:00

We've updated BAS and added lots of new features and enhancements. Several of these changes include (broken down by account type):

Agents:

1. We updated the calendar views and "compressed" the view a little to fit more appointments.

2. You can now turn off "conflict checking" in your account. BAS always blocks existing appointment timeslots but if you want to allow overlapping appointments, head over to the Settings page -> Listing Defaults section and change the "Appt Conflicts" to YES.

3. If you are part of NorthstarMLS, you can enable Showing Solutions from the Settings page -> Listing Defaults section. Note: You must already be an existing Showing Solutions customer!

4. You can now setup default client options for anytime you are adding a new client. Look in the Settings page -> Listing Defaults section

5. If you don't want to use BAS for showing feedback, you can turn feedback off at the Settings page -> Feedback Defaults section. You can also change the "frequency" - the number of days after an appointment to send a request to the showing agent for feedback.

6. You can now setup a number of hours required for appointments. For example, if a listing requires 24 hours notice for showings, check out the "Set Appointment Availability" link from the edit listing page. You can set this from 1 hour to 48 hours. A message is displayed to the showing agent when they are filling out the form if they don't give enough notice.

7. We added lots of new tutorial videos. From your account, check out the Video Tutorials link at the bottom of any page.

Office Staff:

1. We updated the calendar views and "compressed" the view a little to fit more appointments.

2. You can now add "custom activity messages" to save keystrokes and for consistency. Look for the "Add custom activity messages" link in the showing activity box. Custom activity messages can also be set to email the showing agent, email the listing agent, set a waiting for call back icon or approve an appointment.

3. We added a new "waiting for call back" icon in the appointment header bar (what you click to hide/show the appt on your home page). You can click the phone icon to turn it on (shows red) or turn it off. If it's on, you can hover over it and find out exactly when it was set. A custom activity message can also be set to turn this on automatically.

4. You can now customize the feedback questions for your entire office from the Settings page -> Feedback defaults area. You can also customize feedback questions for an individual listing from the edit listing page.

5. When editing a listing and choosing a seller from the drop-down list, an "edit" button will appear automatically. You can click the edit button and save any changes necessary without having to save the listing and go back just to edit the seller.

6. You can now setup a number of hours required for appointments. For example, if a listing requires 24 hours notice for showings, check out the "Set Appointment Availability" link from the edit listing page. You can set this from 1 hour to 48 hours. A message is displayed to the showing agent when they are filling out the form if they don't give enough notice.

7. A new "listing defaults" area on the Settings page give you the ability to disable conflict checking for your listing agents, setup default client options for when you're adding new clients and if you're a member of NorthstarMLS, you can enable Showing Solutions for your listing agents.

8. The "showing defaults" area has been renamed to "Showing/Activity Defaults". You can also add/edit your custom activity here.

9. A new "feedback defaults" area has been added to the Settings page. From here, you can disable BAS feedback for certain listing agents (they can do it to from their account now) or customize the standard feedback forms for you entire office. The custom feedback questions will then be used for all listing agents and listings - as long as the agent has added their own or the listing doesn't have it's own questions.

10. The "weekend response" is being renamed to "Out of Office Response" since it can often be used other times besides the weekend. Functions exactly the same, just a new, more appropriate name.

11. If you don't want your agents to be able to "edit" listings (showing instructions, assign sellers, etc) you can put them in "read only" mode from the Settings page -> Office Settings area. They can still request appointments and do everything they normally could, they just can save changes on the edit listing page.

12. We added lots of new tutorial videos. From your account, check out the Video Tutorials link at the bottom of any page.

There are lots of other new features and enhancements too, many too trivial to list. Let us know what you think!

Holiday hours

2008-12-19T11:13:00.003-06:00

During this holiday season, the business hours for BAS will be:

Wednesday, December 24th - Open until 12PM Central
Thursday, December 25th - Closed
Friday, December 26th - Open as usual (8AM - 5PM Central)

Wednesday, December 31st - Open until 12PM Central
Thursday, January 1st - Closed
Friday, January 2nd - Open as usual (8AM - 5PM Central)

As always, you may contact us anytime at our website for help. Just because we aren't "open" doesn't mean we won't help you if we're available!

Northstar MLS Beta period begins!

2008-12-17T12:58:00.004-06:00

Today, Wednesday December 17th, the Northstar MLS beta period for BookAShowing.com begins. You can access BAS through your Matrix Staging account to setup showings and test out all the features. Don't worry about anything setup, it's just our testing/staging environment. We also welcome your feedback during this period.

Holiday Hours - Closed 11/27/08

2008-11-26T16:02:00.002-06:00

BAS offices will be closed on Thursday November 27th, 2008 for Thanksgiving. We will be open as usual on Friday so if you have any questions, please contact us.

BAS Welcomes NorthstarMLS!

2008-11-10T11:06:00.004-06:00

BookAShowing.com has signed an agreement with the NorthstarMLS (Regional Multiple Listing Service of Minnesota - RMLS) to allow their agents and offices to begin using BAS starting in early 2009. NorthstarMLS neighbors 2 existing BAS customers, the St. Cloud Area Association of REALTORS® (SCAAR) and the REALTORS® Association of Northwestern Wisconsin (RANWW), and this new agreement will allow members of these associations to schedule showing appointments across MLS systems.

We are currently working with a number of Showing Appointment call center vendors to integrate BAS into their systems. If you are using such a system, please stay tuned to this blog for more details. If you are using another application (desktop or web based) to manage showings or feedback, you should know that BAS can be a full replacement system - at no cost to offices! We can also work with vendors to provide showing appointment information to other systems - contact us for more information.

Welcome NorthstarMLS members!

A message from a happy agent

2008-11-07T14:31:00.004-06:00

We hear from agents that use BAS from time to time and I just wanted to pass this experience along for those that are considering BookAShowing.com for their Association!

"Our son was playing in a Bloomer Football playoff game on Saturday and we received a call that an agent wanted to setup 2 showings in BookAShowing. Unfortunately, we did not have BAS setup to send a text to the seller's cell phone at that time...if it had been the agent would not have even needed to call!"

"We looked the showings up via the BAS mobile website on the cell phone and they were for the next day. So we then looked up our sellers contact info that is
also on the BAS mobile website (a feature not even available in our MLS mobile site)."

Showing #1
"Sellers also had a son playing in the football game and were there but we were not sure where to find them so we called one of the cell numbers that we had entered in BAS. The sellers knew that we were also at the game and could not believe we were setting this all up right there. They gave the ok and we approved it on the BAS mobile site."

Showing #2
"These sellers were at home so we looked up their info and called them and setup up their showing also. Gave the approval on BAS and went back to watching the game."

"Without BAS mobile it could have easily taken 30 minutes to drive back to the office and get these setup and then drive back to the game. We never missed a bit of the playoff game and our sellers were extremely happy to have plenty of advanced notice. We will let you know if they get an offer!"

"We have another playoff game this Saturday which will be an away game and feel much more at ease knowing that we can set it all up without going back to our office."

"Thank you and keep up the great work!"

Mike and Brenda

If you've got a story to tell, let us know!

Client text messages

2008-10-16T15:50:00.000-05:00

Due to a technical problem, buyers and sellers are unable to receive text messages from BookAShowing.com. We are working to restore the feature and will post an update here as soon as the feature is repaired.

Updated Feedback Email Frequency

2008-10-06T10:47:00.002-05:00

We've made a change to the initial feedback reminder email sent out for showing appointments to be sent right after the scheduled appointment time. We used to send the first feedback reminder email on the following day early in the morning. Now you'll see a feedback reminder email right after the scheduled time which should allow for even quicker feedback responses to listing agents and sellers.

We will continue to send reminder emails each day until the feedback form is completed (or for 30 days max). As a listing agent, you can also change how many days a feedback reminder email is sent if 30 days isn't good for you. Check out the Settings page, Feedback Defaults area

New BAS Updates

2008-08-28T21:05:00.005-05:00

We've added a couple new features and fixed a few outstanding issues tonight. As for what's new, we've added a way for office staff to confirm showing agents when selected from the auto-populating search box. Some offices expressed interest in needing to see all contact information for showing agents (pulled from the MLS) when adding an appointment. To use this new feature, look for the "Confirm Showing Agents" option in the Settings page.

Another new option is the ability for agents to set how many days a feedback form is sent for appointments (default is for 30 days). While we've always had a large number, you can set it anywhere from 1 day to 30 days. Look for the new option (agents only) in the Settings area of your account (under feedback defaults section).

Automatic Listing Update Email Alerts

2008-08-22T10:02:00.003-05:00

We've added a feature to BAS that will automatically notify showing agents of listing status changes or listing price changes. If your listing status or price changes and an agent has an upcoming appointment scheduled, BAS will automatically send them a listing update alert email. As a listing agent, you can turn this feature off in your Settings area if you wish.

Custom Smart-Frame IDX Search

2008-08-12T11:51:00.003-05:00

Is your Association looking for a custom IDX search to offer your brokers/agents? If so, we've developed a custom IDX search for the Northwestern Wisconsin Multiple Listing Service (NWWMLS). To take a look at an example site, check out our demo site. Contact us if you are looking for a similar solution!

Summer 2008 Newsletter Available!

2008-08-12T11:42:00.002-05:00

Our summer 2008 edition of the BAS newsletter is now available.

New BAS Lite for Individual Offices/Agents

2008-08-01T08:00:00.000-05:00

We've released a new version of our popular BAS Lite system for offices or agents who are not part of an Association/MLS participating with BAS. Take a tour of the new system and sign-up for a free 30 day trial period!

New! Custom Feedback Form Options

2008-05-20T10:30:00.004-05:00

I know some of you have been waiting for this feature and it's finally ready! We've updated BAS to include custom feedback questions and options. As an agent, you can now customize the standard feedback form that BAS generates to remove any of the standard questions, hide or require the comments box and add up to 5 additional questions. For each new question, you can choose what type of answer you would like to recieve (1-5 Rating, Yes/No or a Text field) and the additional questions will be required when an agent fills out the form.

You can customize the feedback questions for all your listings from the Settings page. Just click the "Customize Default Feedback Settings" and you can create a new feedback form that will be used for all your listings.

You can also customize the feedback form for just a particular listing (or override your default custom questions) from the Edit Listing page (clicking the Check Mark icon). Click the "Customize Default Feedback Settings" and you can create a custom feedback form for that particular listing. It will override any custom feedback form you set from your "Settings" page of your account.

We hope you enjoy this new feature and that you capture even more great feedback! Speaking of feedback, if you have any for us let us know!

RANWW - Cellular One customers

2008-05-12T12:09:00.003-05:00

If you're a Cellular One (now AT&T) customer wishing to use the text message feature of BAS, be sure to leave the text message carrier setting on "Cellular One". While AT&T recently purchased Cellular One and it would seem logical that you could use the "AT&T" carrier setting, that won't work and you won't receive text messages from BAS.

We have no explanation why this is the case and it may change in the future. If we hear of any changes to this, we'll let you know on the blog.