Archive for the ‘Product Updates’ Category

Accounting Features

Arguably one of the important features in any Apartment Management Software is accounting. CF was slightly behind in this regard. Not anymore.

In the next few days, you will be able to experience the world of money management for your Apartment Community. We at CF have developed an easy to use feature to keep track of your income and expenses along with your bank accounts in place. We call them Income Tracker, Expense Tracker and Bank & Cash.

Income Tracker & Expenses Tracker

A basic and simple Income Tracker & Expenses Tracker to track the income of the apartment community. Once you start using it you will get to see from where your money is coming/going, quickly and easily. You can easily search from the loads of income details about that particular information you are looking for. You want to sort the details, it happens in a jiffy. You made a mistake while entering the details, fret not, you can always edit the same. You want to delete, just go ahead, and delete it. All this should happen like a breeze.

At any point of time, you will get to know the total income and total expenses without any effort. You can’t miss the big ‘total’. Do you have lot of bills/receipts lying around? Just make it digital, scan them and upload them with each entry of the expense/income. You can do that with just couple of clicks. You can download the same for later reference.

Money

Bank & Cash

A feature to add bank account details of your Apartment Community.  Whenever you get any money to your account, we help you keep track of it and when money goes, you will know from where it has gone. We have ensured that you don’t have to remember such trivial things. CF will do that for you efficiently. Don’t you worry about the petty cash that you handle, we will handle that as well.

We plan to add many features in the coming releases. It is all in the pipeline. Just wait for few more days to come.

Keep visiting the blog for more updates about the feature list.

Full SMS services resumed

Hi Friends,

We have resumed full SMS services to all our CF members.  Exempting from the previous announcement.

SMS

So feel free to send SMS to all your CF members for important announcements.

Cheers!!

Vikas

Proxy Email : Next level of Privacy Protection for Real Estate listings

Maintaining our tradition of keeping users interest first and their privacy as our topmost priority. We are now the first to have a Proxy email- A temporary system generated email id for the purpose of contacting you for your listing.

Q. What is a Proxy-Email?
A. Proxy-Email is a proxy email address of the user who has posted his/her listing on CommonFloor. This email id is given to agents for contacting the listing owners. It is unique for each agent – listing_owner pair.

Q. How different is it than a normal email account?
A. It is as similar to a normal personal email account as it can get. You can send emails, attach files or forward newsletters to this email address.

Q. Why not provide user’s personal email id.?
A. By providing this proxy address, we are safeguarding the privacy concerns of the user who has posted the listing and at the same time not harming anyone’s business intent. This email address is as good as the user’s personal email account. Therefore the user is free to exchange communication, by staying behind this proxy-mask untill he feels comfortable and confident of the business deal that he/she is going through.

Q. What if the broker tries to manipulate the proxy email addresses to reach out to more users?
A. It is practically impossible to manipulate the proxy-email addresses. We have taken utmost care to prevent such activity. The proxy-emal address provided is actually a combination of 4 strings generated though our private algorithm which prevents someone from guessing it.

Q. Can someone extract personal information out of the proxy email address?
A. No, untill there is a communication going on and the user choses to give such information to the agent, no such thing is possible.

Q. What if a broker abuses the email provided by sending spams?
A. If the user finds mail content irrelevant, he/she may choose to block further communication from that broker by clicking on the report-spam link included at the beginning of all the emails sent. The user may totally block mails from any agent by deleting his/her listing from CommonFloor, in the eventuality of which no further mails are sent to them from agents.

Q. What about the privacy of mail content. Does/Can CommonFloor eavesdrop on the mail communications going on?
A. As the proxy email addresses are on the CommonFloor domain, Yes, it is possible for us to monitor the content of mail. This is required just incase someone tries to abuse the service and use it for malicious intent. Rest assured, normally the mails are not monitored and both the parties are given sufficient private space.

Q. Known Issues, if any?
A. We have tried our best to provide a tool that should suffice normal exchange of communication between both parties. The only known issue is that these proxy email addresses cannot and should not be included in BCC list of your outgoing mails, as that may not guarantee successfull delivery of your message. We are working on the fix and shall soon be able to support BCC mails.

Ensuring peace of mind and clutter free Inbox for your property needs.

Cheers!!

CommonFloor Team

New Year, New Face: Happy New year 2011

Wish you a Very Happy and Prosperous New Year,

Its been a fabulous 2010 and now as we move in to the next decade, we bring you a new face of CommonFloor.com, your own Apartment Portal. A fresher, smoother, faster and Younger CommonFloor.

2011CfnewuiWith the advent of the new year and the decade, we are happy to announce one more feather to our cap.

After empowering 22,000 Apartment communities in 100 cities in India with the online private portal for apartment owners, residents and association members, we are launching an end-to-end online solution for property seekers to help them find their dream home in CommonFloor Apartment Communities.

More value for all of us at our CommonFloor:
1. Apartment Seekers: a destination portal for property buying and renting
- Find and shortlist properties.
- Get feedback from other seekers and owners.
- Track updates on the shortlisted projects.

2. Apartment Owners & Residents: apartment community portal
- Discuss, and resolve issues online
- Get Neighborhood Updates on email and mobile
- Celebrate events, find neighbors sharing common hobbies.

3. Apartment Association Members: an apartment management software
- Send Email and SMS notifications
- Simplify management tasks like issue tracking, accounting, and vendor management
- Get advice from experts and other associations.

And loads more coming your way this new year.

Thanks for all your support, trust and well wishes.

Lovingly yours,

Commonfloor Team

Festive Upgrades: Member Database- Reports, Custom Views, Property Manager access

Hello Friends,

After a Roaring success of Vendor Connect we bring you more goodies across the board and wait there would be more :)

This is a festive season and we are bursting crackers of Upgrades:

In a major upgrade to Member Database we have a lot of your needs addressed.

1. UI Enhancement to Member List: Now more easy to use and friendlier way of handling the information.
- Liquid horizontal scroll to see all the columns
- Select custom view for yourself of the Columns you wish to see
- Floating header of the table to understand each column of each record.

2. Custom Excel Exports: Most Flexible way of reporting
- Select records based on the filters
- Customize the column you want to see
- Export/ Print this information in one click.

3. Reports: Specific reports to help you manage your members database well.
- Housewise reports
- Memberwise reports
- Erroneous entries reports
- Missing Data reports
and many more

4. Property Manager access to Member Database
- Optional complete access to Property Manager to manage the database and keep it updated

So dear moderators go ahead and explore the latest of the upgrades and let us know what more you want.

Wish you a Very Happy Festive Season!!

Love,
Vikas

New: Vendor Connect – Vendor Management and Vendor Marketplace

My beloved users/moderators/Committee Members and well wishers,

I am glad to announce the launch of our latest upgraded feature “Vendor Connect”- India’s Largest Business to Community-B2Com, Marketplace of Vendors for services to Apartment Communities.

Enhancing our earlier feature “Vendor/Services” we have launched a full fledged Vendor Management along with a Marketplace(for Annual Maintenance Contracts and One time service needs).This feature in is intended to ease the pain of Handling vendor information and getting new vendors.

The objectives of the feature are:
1. To help you Manage your Vendors .

  • Who are currently Serving you, have served you in past or sent you a proposal
  • Manage the AMC(Annual Maintenance Contracts) due dates and Contracts.
  • List of communities where the vendor is serving
  • The Escalation Matrix(Service Executives at different levels)
  • Maintain Notes by outgoing committee about a vendor

2. To provide a Comprehensive Vendor list and Request for Quote

  • See the list of all vendors in your city
  • Request for quotation for services for your community
  • Know how many communities the vendor is serving

Login to your Commonfloor now to use this feature!!!

I thank all our communities from Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai and Delhi-NCR who have contributed their thoughts and requirements in making this feature very useful for everyone.

Do take it for a spin and let me know your thoughts, comments, testimonials and feedback.

Looking forward to an easier Vendor Management in your Community.

Cheers!!
Vikas

Sub Groups Upgraded

Hope you’re having a great time this festive season.

Your sub groups at CommonFloor are now available with:

a) Change of Ownership

Existing sup group owners can transfer the ownership another member of the subgroup. Notice the Section that shows who is the current subgroup owner and check out the change owner link just below the image.

b) Subgroup Members Quick Search

Many a times you require to quickly search if you have already added a member to the subgroup, you can now do a quick search by typing the members’ name in the search box just above the box showing recent members.

Do check these new enhancements and stay tuned for some really cool features that would redefine what Managing an Apartment Community is.

Psst..  Treasurers and Property Managers, there is good news for you, stay tuned.

Document Store and Files get Enhanced Control for Admins

As you would know, CF very smartly stores the attachments going with email discussions and Notices – and the Document Store keeps accumulating files, making it your online archive for handy anytime access.

The much requested Enhanced Control on Document Store is now live to let Admins Delete, Moderate and Move-in-out-of-folder any Document present in the Document Store and easily organize the Library for more effective usage.

Enhanced Document Management in your Library at CF

Enhanced Document Management in your Library at CF

To help you easily share your feedback with us, we have made a “Easy Feedback” gadget live.  Do check it out too.

(My Mood:   Loving the cloudy weather and enjoying Masala Tea + Samosas)

New Feature: Advanced Moderation of Activity

Our motto is to help Community leaders have better and easier ways to manage information. To further our progress in this ultimate goal, we have recently made the moderation of activity feature live.

Admins  can visit the “Floor Settings” for their CommonFloor and switch ON/OFF this feature anytime.

Link to “Floor Settings”:

For Admins Only: Link to reach "Floor Settings" on CF

For Admins Only: Link to reach "Floor Settings" on CF

Snapshot of  Moderation Settings:

Communication Settings for your CF floor.

Communication Settings for your CF floor.

Currently, we have released Moderation for Notices (its was somewhat already there), Discussion Posts, Polls and Events.

Once moderation is ON, all new polls, notices, discussion and polls from non-admin users will be subjected to admin approval.

Below is a snapshot for Pending Discussion:

postings-for-moderation

Pending Discussions

You can add more Committee Members and share distribute admin responsibility with them to have a transparent management at your CommonFloor.

Do let us know you feedback on this feature.

Other new features released:

New Feature:”Post as Admin” is now available

New Feature: Community Calendar

New Feature: Community Calendar

With a lot of fun filled community events lined up this festive season, we thought of doing an early launch of our Community Calendar Feature.  Be it New Year Celebration in Clubhouse, Children’s Dance Competetion in the Lawns or your Quarterly General Body meeting, just create an event on the Community Calendar and get the following benefits.

Goody things about Event Calendar:

  • Allows you to Post Notice about the event.
  • Instant Notification about Event on Email.
  • Schedules SMS and Email reminders for that Event.
  • Group Level Events

Refer the snapshots below:

Link to reach Events Calendar on Top Navigation Bar

Link to reach Events Calendar on Top Navigation Bar

Event Calendar Landing Page and highlighted link to Add Events

Event Calendar Landing Page and highlighted link to Add Events

Let us know your feedback on this new feature..

Wish you a happy holiday season.