#SoftwareUpdate

Greetings everyone,

We\’re very excited to share the new updates to Pilera.  We continue to create new functionality and improve upon our features to give our clients enhanced and customized experiences as they handle day to day community management operations.  This month, our team has developed new functionality to make portfolio management simpler: powerful cross-community search, vendor search, and more.

New Features:

• Cross-Community Search
  • We’ve expanded occupant search to the global/client level.  Now, managers can easily search an occupant residing in another community while on the same page and be instantly directed to that community.
  • The occupant search displays additional information such as their email address, phone number, address and occupant type.
    
• New Vendor Finder/Search
  • Through the new vendor drop-down, managers can search vendors by full name and partial name.
  • Upon selecting a ticket category, managers can filter vendors based on that category and assign the ticket.  
  • Work order dashboards now have filtering capability for vendors.  Managers can select all vendors or select a particular vendor to view all tickets assigned to them.  Based on their selection, PDF ticket sheets can be downloaded and emailed.
    
• Board Member Display Name
  • A new field in the occupant profile called Title Name Override is available for board members to customize their display name on the community contacts bricklet.

Enhancements:

• Welcome Messages
  • The welcome message section in the resident profile provides better clarification on the message status and email requirements.  Last month, we introduced a new welcome message dashboard to make welcome message analysis & sending simpler!
    
• TOPS Integration
  • Added option for residents to view/update TOPS flex fields.

Important Notice about Document Library Permissions

Effective December 31, 2018, the “public” permission in the document library will be retired.  The decision to retire public documents arose from a larger project our developers are working on to enhance the document library.  Please contact Pilera Support ([email protected]) if you have any questions.

About Pilera

Pilera Software is a premiere community and property management suite that has helped thousands of community managers, board members, and back-office personnel enhance communications, improve customer service, and manage compliance and operations.  May we help your community achieve these success stories? Contact us today for any questions about our software or these new updates!

Greetings everyone,

We\’re elated to share our new release with you from the past month.  We\’ve introduced a new welcome message dashboard to help streamline your process for sending emails to your community members welcoming them into the community and getting started with the resident portal.  Additionally, we continue to enhance many of our existing features such as vendor management, work orders, and pet tracking.

New Feature – Welcome Message Dashboard

• The welcome message dashboard displays a table that depicts welcome message statuses.  Managers and staff can now toggle among the following options:
  • Residents with an email on file who has not yet received a welcome message.
  • Residents with an email on file who are registered in Pilera.
  • Residents who do not have an email address listed in the system.
• Welcome messages can be sent in batches within the community.

Enhancements

• Work Orders
  • The common area work order emails now include more fields such as Created By and Contact phone number and email fields.
  • In the unit view, managers can toggle between showing only open work orders and all work orders.
  • We’ve improved subject line of work order emails for better clarity.
    
• Vendor Management
  • The Vendor Manager, a new role within Pilera, can add, modify, and delete vendors.  
  • Emails are now sent to vendors notifying them of insurance expiration dates 2 months, 2 weeks, and 2 days in advance, as well as 2 days after expiration.
• Pet Tracking
  • When managers add new pet information, the unit-occupant’s name is now auto-populated in the owner name field.

Pilera Software is a premiere community and property management suite that has helped thousands of community managers, board members, and back-office personnel enhance communications, improve customer service, and manage compliance and operations.  May we help your community achieve these success stories? Contact us today for any questions about our software or these new updates!

Greetings! We\’ve had a great start to the new year by introducing new features and enhancements in the past month that we\’re excited to share with you! We\’ve introduced a new insurance tracking and advanced pet tracking, and enhanced many features such as forms, work orders, and more in our portfolio community management software.

New Feature:

Insurance Tracking

• Add a variety of insurance information to the resident profile such as policy type, contact information, and expiration date.
• Residents can manage and maintain their own insurance information.

Advanced Pet Tracking 

• Add a variety of pet information such as name, owner name, identification number, insurance information, pet color, pet type and more.
• Strong search capabilities include search by color, name/partial name, owner, and more.
• Export all community pet information into Microsoft Excel.
• Now managed and maintained by residents in the resident portal.

Lease Tracking

• For HOA communities, owners can now manage and maintain their unit\’s lease information.

Enhancements:

Portfolio Management & Operations

• Requests to add or remove communities can now be done within Pilera, via Resources > Pilera Resources page.

Resident Data Management

• The occupant search capabilities have been expanded to include full addresses.

Forms – Deep Linking

• Now you can easily grab a link to any forms, surveys, or elections from within Pilera and send it to residents.  The resident will be prompted to log into the web portal first before accessing the form. This important step enhances the security of the form and ensures that only valid residents gain access to the form.

Work Orders

• A new work order completed date field has been added for both common area and unit-level work orders.

Communications

• Managers can now purchase more communication credits on the Announcements and Messages pages, next to the number of communication credits that are remaining.

Pilera Software is a premiere community and property management suite that has helped thousands of community managers, board members, and back-office personnel enhance communications, improve customer service, and manage compliance and operations.  May we help your community achieve these success stories? Contact us today for any questions about our software or these new updates!

Greetings everyone,

We hope everyone is having a fantastic start to the year.  2017 was a great year for us as we released new features and enhanced many of our existing features, and we’re happy to share to those with you!  These new features and enhancements are largely shaped by feedback from our customers’ experiences using our software.  We wholeheartedly all of you for your continued support and providing us feedback that strives us to make Pilera a better product for you everyday.  Let’s dive right in!

Work Order Enhancements

The work order updates included many functionality and UI improvements.  Stronger integration with accounting software, email notification with a PDF generated in real-time, meeting reports and PDF print outs, new ticket fields, improved unit search capabilities, and more.   

Tickets

Tracking all your tickets in one place is now easier with our new Enhanced Ticketing feature for activity logs, work orders, and rule violations.  With our dashboards, managers can have a bird’s-eye view of the entire portfolio and also drill into the specifics.

Vendor Management App

We released a new vendor app that integrates with our work order systems.  Through the vendor app, community managers can track vendor information contact and insurance expiration information, rate and evaluate vendors, select preferred vendors, and create vendor sets that can be applied to multiple communities at once.

Communication

Our communications module now includes enhanced branding for emails and message testing prior to submitting the message.  

Documents

Document sending capabilities have been improved with multiple document attachments and the ability to add multiple categories across many communities.  

Knowledge Base

Enhancements to our knowledge base include improved export handling of records through Excel and updates to manager capabilities.  

Operations

We’ve made operating community and client admin tools simpler within the app.  Managers can handle community additions or deletions, communication credits orders, and office hours for communities.  

New User Roles

We’ve created and implemented new roles within Pilera for our clients and their communities to have greater flexibility and granularity in their user roles and functionality.  

We hope that you’re just as excited about these new features and enhancements as we are.  Last year, we also enhanced many other functionalities within Pilera, including the marketplace, resident portal, Easysite community websites, partner integrations, and more.  Do you wish to learn more about these new updates and see them live in action? Join our webinar on January 25, 2018!

As more communities and associations welcome their residents’ or owners pet(s) into the fold, a tracking mechanism becomes increasingly important.  Whether your management team needs to send a friendly reminder to residents of expiring insurances, enforce pet policies and address resident concerns, help a resident find a lost pet, or is planning a day out for community members and their pets, keeping all pet information organized in one place is of the essence.  Thus, one of the first features that we’ve released this year is better pet tracking capability for your community.  Here’s how you can manage information about your community’s furry (and non-furry) fellows in Pilera.

1. Add essential Pet information

   Within Pilera, managers can add many types of important information including:

   • • Pet Name
     • Pet Owner
     • Type of Pet – any pet from an amphibian to dogs.
     • Color
     • Tag Number
     • Breed
     • License – The license number and expiration date.
     • Insurance – The insurance policy number and expiration date.
     • Add any other notes that you need to so that management and employees are in-the-know.

2. Resident input

   Residents have the ability to add and edit information about their pet in the resident portal when required.  Additionally, they can add new pets to their account.

3. Advanced Pet searching and reporting

   Need to find specific pet information or a report of all the pets in your community?  With Pilera’s advanced search capabilities you can search pets by name, color, breed, pet identification number, pet owner, and pet type.  Conduct a search for all the dogs, cats, or amphibians in the neighborhood.  Additionally, you can generate a report of all pets in Microsoft Excel format and send the report to as many emails as you need.

Our advanced pet information and search capabilities coupled with our robust communications platform and rule violations can help management to better position themselves in handling resident concerns, communicating pet policies, and ensuring compliance.  For more information on our pet tracking module, contact us at [email protected] or to add pet tracking to your communities, contact [email protected].    

Pilera is a best-of-class, easy-to-use, comprehensive online community management solution for apartments, condos, and associations. Pilera provides the easiest, most comprehensive data management capability available to property managers, leasing agents, boards of directors, and back-office personnel. Quickly and easily access whatever you need, whenever you need it, from wherever you need to be with office or mobile phone connectivity. You are never out of touch. Act on the document/information accessed from the office or “on-the-road” with Pilera supported mobile capability.  Contact us today!

Greetings everyone,

We wish everyone a very Happy Holidays and New Year in advance!  Our development team has rolled out a new feature this past month along with some enhancements to our existing features.  We are excited to share those with you.  Our goal is to continually enhance our software capabilities to make community management easier for you, everyday. Without further ado, we\’ll dive into the new updates!

New User Roles (New Feature)

These new user roles have been created to provide our customers with greater flexibility.  These defined roles are:

• Company Administrator
• Vendor Administrator
• Community Manager
• Community Contact

To explore these roles further, take a look at our recent blog post, “Meet the New User Roles in Pilera!”

Work Order Enhancement

In the work order module, Unit and Common Area tickets were previously located in two different tabs.  Now, they have been combined for reporting in a single UI.  Additionally, when creating a work order ticket, you can select either the unit or common area ticket type from one UI.  

Emails

We\’ve added the ability for the community logo to be shown in emails sent from Pilera.

Enhancements to our integration with TOPS:

• Our customers with TOPS One accounting systems can now enable resident payment through Paylease.
• TOPS Flex fields are now enabled for all TOPS Pro users.

Other Fixes:

Minor UI enhancements to improve the visual look, feel, and user experience of Pilera.

Pilera is a best-of-class, easy-to-use, comprehensive online community management solution for apartments, condos, and associations. Pilera provides the easiest, most comprehensive data management capability available to property managers, leasing agents, boards of directors, and back-office personnel. Quickly and easily access whatever you need, whenever you need it, from wherever you need to be with office or mobile phone connectivity. You are never out of touch. Act on the document/information accessed from the office or “on the road” with Pilera-supported mobile capability.  Contact us today!

Greetings everyone,

We’re excited to share our newly implemented user roles and how your team can utilize them.  These new roles within Pilera are founded upon the feedback our customers provided to us and reflect the features they want to see in our software.  We thank them wholeheartedly for their constant support and feedback that strives us to improve our software features!  

Through these new roles, we aim to provide our community managers and staff with greater  flexibility and controls with more personalized, focused experiences.  Without further ado, meet our new roles!

1. Company Administrator

   The role of a company administrator is at the top of the hierarchy and will be able to assign roles to employees throughout the organization.  Company admins can delegate roles within their company, in one community, or within multiple communities at once.

2. Vendor Administrator

   The role of a vendor administrator within Pilera has company-wide access to vendor functionalities.  The vendor admin can add and remove vendors, update contact and insurance information, assign vendors to communities, and create vendor sets.  With vendor sets, vendor admins can quickly apply a pre-picked list of vendors to new communities.

3. Community Manager

   Community managers are responsible for handling the daily operations of their community(ies).  As such, the company administrator will assign at least one community manager to a community.  Have more than one employee managing community operations?  No problem – you can assign as many community managers as you need to. Within their communities, community managers will:

   • Receive emails when residents post to the Marketplace, change their contact information, and send registration requests.
   • Assign existing vendors to their communities in order to send those vendors work orders.
   • Assign other employees to community manager and community contact roles.  To initiate the setup, company admins only need to assign one person as the community manager.  Then, the assigned community manager can assign others to the same role.
     

4. Community Contact

   Who do your residents need to contact to confirm a clubhouse booking, request vendor services, or inform you of new contact information? A community contact serves as a primary point of contact for residents.  The community contact will receive and respond to resident’s question and comments.  Furthermore, the contact information for these designated individuals will be easily accessible to residents under the Contacts tab within the resident UI for the assigned community.

Pilera Software is a premiere community and property management suite that has helped thousands of community managers, board members, and back-office personnel enhance communications, improve customer service, and manage compliance and operations.  May we help your community achieve these success stories? Contact us today for any questions about our software or these new roles!

Greetings,

We’re excited to share our new updates and improvements to the work orders, the newly released vendor app, and more!  

1. Work Order Management

   • Work order notification and assignment e-mails include a link to generate PDF work orders.  What\’s the best part of it, you ask? Let\’s say you received a work order email five days ago, but only had the opportunity to take a look at it today.  The PDF generated is a live report, meaning that it has the most current information as of today, not five days ago.
   • Work order printouts now include manager and vendor contact information.
   • A visibility toggle has been implemented to show only comments in the ticket view.  Managers and staff can now easily switch the view between all “comments” and all “updates”.
   • Managers and staff can now add detailed instructions to job details when creating a ticket.
   • Physical location of a work order ticket are now pulled from the accounting software and can be updated if incorrect.
   • Company-level contact information field is now added to a work order.
   • Visual improvements have been made to the work order history section and the work order emails for better navigation and readability.

2. Vendor Management 

   • Automated emails to vendors now include a link to generate work order PDF reports.
   • Visual improvements have been made to the user interface to enhance user navigation and app performance.
   • Managers can now delete any unnecessary vendor sets that were previously added.

3. Resident Portal

   • When a resident updates their email address, Pilera now checks against a greater number of unique domains to verify the email address is correct.

4. Community Info

   • Managers can now update office hours to multiple communities at once to save work and time.
     

Pilera is a best-of-class, easy-to-use, comprehensive online community management solution for apartments, condos, and associations. Pilera provides the easiest, most comprehensive data management capability available to property managers, leasing agents, boards of directors, and back-office personnel. Quickly and easily access whatever you need, whenever you need it, from wherever you need to be with office or mobile phone connectivity. You are never out of touch. Act on the document/information accessed from the office or “on-the-road” with Pilera supported mobile capability.  Contact us today!