MLS Upgrade and Outage
The Minnesota MLS was upgraded on Wednesday night with many new features including the following:
- CMA Wizard: A new and easier way to create your CMA’s step-by-step.
- Speed Bar: A quick search bar available from wherever you are in Matrix. Use it for quick shorthand searches of listings, tax records, open houses and agents. You can even create your own shortcuts!
- My Matrix and Contacts Management: Redesigned to better organize everything by client with special filters to help you work more efficiently.
- Price Search: Search for prices in “000’s” meaning you no longer need to enter the three zeros at the end. For example, to search homes in the $200,000 to $350,000 range, you will enter “200-350″ instead of “200000-350000.”
- Drop the asterisk: When searching Street Name in listings and tax records, you can drop the asterisk at the end for wild card search. The system will automatically assume it there.
- Search Criteria on PDF Reports: Your search criteria will now display at the end of any PDF Report you run. No more writing them in by hand! (Note: This is currently available in Single Family and Multi-Family, except the ”Comprehensive Report” and will be configured for the other property types and Comprehensive Report later today.)
Unfortunately, the upgrade does not appear to have go so well. Users of the MN MLS experienced a 4 hour outage on Thursday afternoon of various parts of the MLS system including Homebase, which is used to upload new home listings and make changes. Today we have experienced another complete outage of the entire system for about 2 hours starting at 11:00 am.
I firmly believe these upgrades will be worth the pain, but it would be nice to have the outages limited to the night time. Being a former IT Director myself, I can understand the stress level of the computer department at the NorthstarMLS!
