Many of you have asked for the ability to automatically email agents when making announcements.  We are finally able to add this feature into the system for you.  You will now see a checkbox Email Agent? in the Make Announcements page.  When you check this off while making the announcement, your message will be automatically sent to all agents in the system.

When we we did a feature survey a while back, the most common requested feature was the map based search interface.  Now, we are happy to announce that we have released version 1 of our map based listings search interface.

The new map search allows users to view listings visually on a map,  so users can get a sense of proximity of listings to locations.  It is very effective when looking up listings close to a point of interest.  Please note, that listings will only show up on the map if they have valid addresses that can be geocoded by Google.

You will see a new View dropdown in Listings page.   Selecting the Map View will bring you to the new Map Search page.  While on the map search, notice the “Jump To Address” field?  Entering a valid address in this field will center the map to that address.

As with any new feature, we are planning on improving it often based on your feedback.  Please don’t hesitate to give us your opinions.

Hope everyone had a merry Christmas.

In preparation for the next rental season, and to make sure we can provide you with reliable services, we have taken this opportunity and moved our servers to a new hosting company.  Our new hosting company is one of the largest in the country and have the reputation to provide the most reliable service.  We are hoping this preventive measure will help eliminate/reduce any downtime in the coming rental season. Chances are you will see slight speed improvements as well.

We experienced some difficulties yesterday after the move, we apologize for inconvenience it might have caused you.  We are still fine tuning some settings, which we expect to finish today.  Starting tomorrow, everything should be back to normal.

Based on client request, we added the ability to NOT display the transportation section in your ads.  Sometimes for popular locations, displaying T/Bus stops is not necessary and clutters the ads.  Now you have the choice to not display it by changing that setting in your Profile page.

Based on your valuable feedback, we are making improvements to the new deals feature.  We just added the ability to give deal access to multiple agents.  With this new feature, you can have agents collaborate on a deal, give access to an assistant, or transfer a deal to another agent.  You’ll see a new “Share” link on the deal page.  Clicking on it will allow you select which agents have access to this deal.

Please try it and continue to give us your valuable feedback.

We also added the ability to search for canceled deals in the Deals tab.

Due to client requests, we added the ability to customize your ad and hide your phone number from being displayed.  You can turn this setting on/off in your Profile from the Dashboard.

We also added the ability to cancel your deal.  You’ll find a new “Cancel Deal” link in the deal page.

We just added the ability to share your template with other agents in your office.  You’ll notice a new “Share” checkbox when you update a template.  Checking it off will give other agents in your office access to your template.

We will continue to make small improvements to the Template Builder.  Please give us your time to improve and your feedback is appreciated!

Based on client suggestions, we added agent name to the leads results.  Now you can easily tell which agent a lead belongs to.

Starting today, YGL will be keeping a copy of your non-watermarked photos.  This way if your business ever change name or need access to photos without watermark, we can give them to you.  Keep in mind this only applies to photos upload from today and on.

We made a few small improvements to the ad templates.

1.  Combine the old Standard Profile / Standard No Profile templates into one template.  The two versions will be automatically selected based if there are photos in your listing. The reason behind this change was to prevent it from being auto selected too much.

2.  Combined the different templates into 2 groups: Custom Template vs. YGL Templates.