Release Notes – 2017.11.30

Release Notes – 2017.11.30

 November 30, 2017

Features

  • New Admin Menu Design (new customers only)
    The new admin menu is mostly a re-skinning of the existing structure and functionality. Only a few items have moved. Otherwise, the same navigational structure is used. This is important to prevent existing customers from getting confused when we switch them over. The look and feel, layout and navigational structure matches TurboLeads desktop so that when switching between apps there are predictable design patterns. Only new customers will see the new admin menu initially, but we will be gradually rolling the new design out to existing customers in the coming weeks.
  • Unique Authentication User Per Email
    One of the changes we made several months ago was to start using a system called Keycloak for our authentication system. It operates similarly to how you can use your Google account to login to various places or your Facebook login. That is, it allows you to use a centrally managed authentication account (username and password) to login to multiple applications. We need this in order to allow our customers and their agents to share a common login across our applications: Elite and TurboLeads.
  • Stricter Username/Password Handling
    Keycloak also properly encrypts passwords, serves as a central place to handle authentication and imposes best practices around password management. Some implications:
    1.) Passwords are never visible
    2.) Only the user themselves can update their username and password
    There are some exceptions to these rules – for instance, when an Office account owner sets up an child agent they may choose credentials on their behalf. After all, an account owner needs to have control of their agents.
  • One User Can Own Multiple Websites
    In our Office package you can create a child website for each of your agents. However, many times the office account owner would also create an agent profile for themselves and attach a child website – creating duplicate agent records. Now, a single agent (user) can be given a role of owner for multiple websites. This makes sure that users are edited in one place and aren’t duplicated. It also creates a much more scalable system for managing websites, users, and permissions going forward.
  • User/Agent Profiles
    Traditionally our agent management page has been very complicated and overloaded. Some simplifications have already been made. For example, agent ordering has been moved out to be a setting of an agent roster page.
    Any logged in user/agent should be able to update their own profile and settings:
    1.) Username/password
    2.) Name, photo, contact info
    3.) Their roster page bio information and settings (office context only)
    The Edit Mode Profile tab (per website) is in the process of being replaced by this profile editing screen (per user).
  • The App Switcher
    In the upper right hand corner of the new admin menu, there is an app switcher icon – the same as how you switch between different Google apps. We’ll be showing tooltips to help customers get started using this to jump back and forth between their Website and LeadTracker (soon TurboLeads).
  • Multiple Phones, Emails, Addresses for Contacts
    Clients have been renamed Contacts like in TurboLeads and are now structured the same way as in TurboLeads. You can attach multiple emails, phones, and addresses, each with their own type – e.g. mobile, home, work, etc.
    One implication: it is now possible for a single contact to be registered more than once – with different emails on the same site, or even on different sites within the same office context.
  • One LeadTracker Account to Rule them All (for small teams)
    Instead of each agent having their own LeadTracker account, they are now set up as a user on the parent account’s LeadTracker. They will still be able to see and manage their leads the same way, but this allows the office account owner to have greater visibility and control.
    Leads captured on the broker site can be manually assigned or setup to automatically round-robin assign to an agent (just like before)
    Leads captured on individual child websites should automatically be assigned to the agent who is set up as the “owner” of that website. (Just like before.)
  • Contact De-duplication
    Contacts will be UNIQUE on both email and phone number, and can only be assigned to one agent at a time within a given office account scope. This is markedly different than what happens now with each agent (website) having their own fully autonomous LeadTracker account. In TurboLeads this is an essential pre-requisite for communications routing, lead assignment and accurate reporting.
    The concept here is that the contact is a single person (a single lead) and only one agent in your office should be working that lead at a time.
  • Reseller Office Accounts
    This model breaks down for larger offices that act as “resellers” – where their main focus is on recruiting independent agents and providing a system and back-end tools for them. For this case, each agent will need their own leadtracker account (like we do now). We only have an estimated 20 accounts or so that fall into this category. An example is Platinum Realty. We don’t have a solution ready for this use case yet.

 

Updates

  • Stop Drip Emails for Incomplete TDs
    We no longer send our standard marketing emails to Test Drive account holders unless the account setup was completed. This prevents most cases of new customers and prospects receiving multiple instances of the same marketing emails when account creation errors occur
  • Better delivery for IDX Agreements forms
    The marketing website IDX agreement form was updated to bypass list management (ignore “unsubscribed” status) when sending its email.
  • Mailchimp flag for contact website user data
    Utility functions and supporting features were added to allow interrogation of mailchimp status through the website user model.
  • “Sold” overlay for all IDX widgets
    Extended the sold icon that is used on Featured listings and Featured listing widgets to be used on all IDX search results and widgets

Bug Fixes

  • Padding Issues For Template Series T071
    Padding was inconsistent for different rows in series T071. Padding has been made uniform in all rows
  • Turboleads Account not auto generated
    Autogeneration of TurboLeads accounts was temporarily disabled while we investigate related issues. This account had to be generated manually.
  • Registration page fields built incorrectly
    New test drive accounts had extra form fields on the registration page for a period of time after the last production release. Performed testing to verify that the problem is fully resolved
  • Turboleads Account not auto generated
    Autogeneration of TurboLeads accounts was temporarily disabled while we investigate related issues. This account had to be generated manually.
  • Real Estate News RSS feed invalid
    All accounts using a now defunct default RSS news feed have been updated to use a replacement feed.
  • TL notices on wrong emails
    Corrected an issue where a CSR login could clear the dormant flag on a TurboLeads account.
  • Starter CTA widget – unreadable black text
    We recently noticed that new accounts have black button text on the “Starter CTA” widget. In most cases this looks pretty bad – not enough contrast with the surrounding background color. This was a symptom of a larger problem where widgets were linked across accounts. The issue is now resolved
  • Wrong listings importing to listing manager
    Investigated an issue with MLS agent codes getting mixed up.
  • Clients Cant Register
    Database issues from a month or so ago damaged some customer’s registration forms. This customer’s form has been fixed.
  • Unable to create agent site
    Unrelated code changes created a situation where a piece of debugging code was breaking the agent website creation process. This has been fixed.
  • Unable to delete agent profile
    An edge case in agent profile/user deletion was breaking. It has been fixed.
  • QA: Problem Switching Back To Office View From Child
    Account switching for office account owners was broken, and has been fixed.
  • Contact details: long form details have no line breaks
    Formatting of notes on contact details pages in the new material design Admin UI has been improved.
  • Unable to fix contact email on child sites
    Certain child accounts were unable to update email addresses due to complications with TurboLeads syncing. This has been corrected.
  • Error when switching between domains on the toolbar selector
    Account switching for office account owners was broken, and has been fixed.
  • Leadtracker: build utility function for contact email/website pairings
    A collection of utility functions was added to the contact model to assist in building lists of existing and available website users for that contact.
  • 404 on Turboleads login
    An account with mismatched user information between Elite and TurboLeads was fixed manually.
  • Create new authenticated user/effective user authentication library functions
    Library functions have been added to more cleanly, efficiently, and effectively access and manage information about the authenticated user.
  • Stage: welcome email alt text
    On the welcome email that goes out when you sign up for a new testdrive, none of the images were showing in the message, and alt text was not helpful. We have added appropriate alt text to display when images do not load
  • Leadtracker: checkbox from dream home finder form isn’t in leadtracker
    The emails and contact notes that report and record custom form submissions were not properly representing selections in multi checkbox inputs. This has been fixed.
  • “View All” Buttons overlapping text
    Fixed a template styling issue that caused “view all” buttons to overlap the widget heading text
  • Can’t link mailchimp to stage account
    Corrected the stage configuration for Mailchimp, and cased out some deprecated code to prevent issues on the Mailchimp linking screen.
  • Office Accounts unable to create websites
    Agent names with apostrophes broke the updated “add website” button on the admin menu websites management screen. This has been fixed.
  • 500 error on agent roster page
    In rare circumstances the agent roster page could throw an undefined object 500 error. This has been fixed.

Stephen Gruenholz

By Stephen Gruenholz

Stephen serves as both Graphics Manager and Product Manager at iHOUSEweb. He graduated from Cal Poly with a BS in Applied Art & Design and has been working as a Web Designer and Developer since 1998. He relentlessly pushes himself and the rest of the team to learn, grow, and innovate.