Posidacious Blog

Additional Log page to show Logs not updated by a member of your team

We had a request (thank you Plymouth Homes!) to provide a page where the letting agent and their team members could show all Logs last updated by a tenant or contractor (third party).

Until today, you could view Logs updated by everyone and all Logs last updated by a tenant, but not Logs last updated by a tenant or a third party.

Now we have a new page which shows you all Logs not updated by a member of your team!

The logic behind this is if a Log was last updated by a member of your team (staff), then it is less likely that you need to constantly see it at the top of the recently updated Logs. You’ve already actioned it so why do you need to look at it again?

Obviously, it is down to the individual team member and the agent to ensure they don’t lose track of Logs even when they were last updated by a team member.

Hope this helps!

New front pages to our website

We at Posidacious have been working hard recently to present a new front end website. It’s now live at https://www.posidacious.co.uk/

Our business is growing in several areas and if we’re honest, the ‘old’ front end site didn’t really present what we do very well.

The main areas of our business that are covered on the new site are:

The System

This is, of course, the online maintenance management and communication system some of you are already familiar with. The new site goes into more depth about what the system does and how it can help letting agents, landlords and property managers deal with everyday maintenance issues on the houses they manage.

Maintenance & Projects

We now have a Maintenance & Projects division. All is explained on the new site too, however, in brief, we can now carry out preventative and reactive maintenance of all kinds. From small jobs such as repairing a gate or painting a room to larger projects such as roofing maintenance on a block of flats!

Web Design, Programming & I.T

We have introduced a new member of the team who is an I.T. and Web Design specialist. As well as Jonathan, we can now design and build websites of most types to suit most small to medium businesses. Check out the information presented on the new site.

Any thoughts or suggestions? Feel free to get in touch!

Like to know more? Follow the link on the new site to the Contact page and complete the form.

Many thanks from the Posidacious Team

 

PHP and/or iOS App Development

We are looking to expand our technical team to develop the Posidacious System. A good level of skill and knowledge will be required to move this project on.

We anticipate the project being a 3-6 month one. We could be wrong!

Two areas of development may be required:

a) PHP Development

We envisage two areas of PHP development.

1. The server-side scripting of the website needs to be brought up to our planned functionality level.  Version 1 of the system has now been live for a while and we need to progress to version 2 to allow for the expected business growth. Additional: Because this system will be “reading and writing” to a MySQL database, skills in SQL will be required.

This would naturally require front-end skills in HTML, CSS and so on.

2. An API needs to be developed to allow for third party applications to make use of the system. Initially, this will be smartphone apps. In the first instance, for iOS. This could be programmed in PHP or in another suitable (agreed) language.

b) iOS App Development

We are looking for someone who can develop our iOS apps. Initially for iPhone, then iPad. Much of the iOS development would reply on the API of course.

Who would suit this project?

We are open to ideas at the moment. Possible options are:

1. A student who has progressed to a good level of expertise. Perhaps someone looking for a project in which to expand their skills and experience.

2. A self-employed developer who is very interested in expanding his or her portfolio and who may want to contribute and become part of a growing company.

3. A company who will work with us to quote a price for the whole system and subsequent support.

The applicant should most likely live or work in Plymouth (UK).

Additional

It’s possible that other ‘real’ work on customer websites will be available. The work on these would be negotiated at standard rates.

About Posidacious

You can find out more by browsing this blog. However, in brief, Posidacious is a system that enables letting agents, property managers and landlords communicate with tenants and contractors to record and log activities relating to maintenance issues.

Finally

If you are interested in finding out more, then please email Jonathan on jonathan@posidacious.co.uk

Checkbox to Close Log

It’s a small thing but I’ve been wanting to do this for a while.

When I want to close a Log I might also want to update the Log with some text such as:

“Thank you for the update, I’ll now close this Log” or,

“That’s great, if it happens again, please update this Log which will re-open it”

it’s quite obviously really. You want to close the Log but also offer up thanks or a final comment while closing it.

You could do this in two actions. The first being the update you write (as in the examples above) and the second action being to close the Log by clicking the Close this Log link.

There are two problems with why that’s not a great way of doing things:

1. You have to make two actions and wait for each to complete: first the update, then the closing of the Log

2. The second problem is that two emails are now sent out informing all those associated with the Log of the updates. What a waste and potential annoyance!

Why? The users seeing the first email might sign in to Posidacious to see what the update was only to see that the update was a simple

“Thanks, I’ll now close the Log”

By receiving one email, this becomes unnecessary since the email update comes through as

“such and such Log has now been Closed”

So, what has changed?

Now there is a checkbox next to the label of “Also Close this Log:” like this:

Now you simply need to write your update and tick the box to close the Log as well as updating it!

Hope this helps 🙂

Regards, the Posidacious Team

Recently we added fields in the Edit Property pages to allow you, the agent, to include additional information about the property. Information that might be useful when viewing a Log for any given property. We posted about it here.

This information might include the landlords preferred contractors or the key number for the keys amongst other things.

All useful stuff to include, however it meant that the Log details section took up a lot of space at the top of the page. This meant that the updates to the Log were further down the page and therefore more scrolling required.

So, we’ve made a further change. The additional information is now hidden by default. if you want to view that additional information, you simply click the ‘View additional information‘ link and then the ‘Hide additional information‘ link when you are done.

See the screenshots below to see what we mean.

Happy Logging!

We had a great suggestion from one of our clients regarding additional information that would be useful in the set up of each property.

The information requested was:

• Whether the property was Full or Part managed
• Landlords preferred contractors
• Fire Alarm codes
• Key numbers
• Service agreements

We’ve now added the appropriate fields in the database and Add/Edit property screens (see screenshot below)

Of course, this information is no good unless you can have access to it when you are reading a Log. So we are now displaying the information from those fields at the top of Log like this:

Add a decent looking icon to your iPhone home screen

I really don’t know why I haven’t done this before! It only took 30 minutes!

So, for all you iPhone users, you can add an icon to your home screen to gain easy access to the maintenance portal.

Here’s a couple of screenshots to explain!

 

 

 

From 2Mb to 5Mb

Since many users of the Posidacious system are using their smartphones and these devices often take photos of around 3-4+Mb in size, we thought it best to up the size limit.

The limit is now 5Mb and we will consider raising it further if becessary.

We will amend this for cobtractor users also.

Uploading PDF files to a Log

As a staff member you can now upload PDF files to each Log. This is useful if you are using Posidacious to communicate with your tenants regarding safety certificates.

The majority of safety certificates are generated in Adobe PDF format so adding a PDF file to a Log could prove very useful!

Not using Posidacious to communicate about safety certificates yet? Try it now by creating a Log and choosing ‘Safety’ as the Log type.

Don’t forget you can then set a reminder for the Log for (say) 11 months time which will remind you to organise the following years tests.