GSBOR's Transaction Desk Help Desk

My Documents Are Missing!

I can tell that it's been a little over 3 months since we've taught the "DocBox" class.  I can only say that because I've received numerous phone calls this week from Agent's about how they can't find their documents in the DocBox...they've just "disappeared"!

No sweat, your documents have not disappeared...they are still there.  However, if they are not showing up, it just means that the document is now over 90 days old.  The default viewing period of Transaction Desk for DocBox is 90 days.  If you would like for the default to be set differently, then you can change it in "Settings" tab at the top of your Transaction Desk account.

To find your missing documents, go to your DocBox by clicking on the link at the top labeled "DocBox". You will want to change the drop-down box in "VIEW OTHER PERIODS" to change your setting from the default 90 days to further back.  Once you click "Go", your page will refresh and your disappearing documents will reappear for you.  This will NOT change the default of 90 days, so after you leave the DocBox screen, the 90 day default period will come back.  To change the default search criteria, you need to change it in the Settings tab. 

Free Online How-To Webinars!

Press Release from Instanet Solutions:

We are excited to announce that we are now offering pre-scheduled,  ongoing live webinars to all of our clients at no additional charge! These webinars will be  from 30-60 minutes in length and will be on a variety of topics. The longer sessions will be system overviews and the shorter sessions will be focused on particular feature areas. These webinars will be available to all of our end-users nationwide on an unlimited basis. By moving to a national webinar model we are now able to offer all of our clients and end-users more webinars, more often and on an ongoing basis.

I have included a link below so you can see our initial schedule. We will adjust the schedule based on demand and attendance.

www.transactiondesk.com/webinars

Need Help? Log A Ticket.

The GSBOR Resolution Center is now open.  If you have issues regarding anything tech related with your real estate business, then we have made it easy for you to log and keep track of your issues until they have been resolved to your satisfaction.  When you have problems with anything tech related including Transaction Desk and Rapattoni then there are steps to take to get your issue resolved quickly.

1)  Call the Tech Helpline. 1-888-829-1441.

2)  Scour this blog by selecting specific categories in the left column to see if this issue has been addressed.

3)  Schedule to attend a Module or Overview Training Course at The Board.

4)  If all else fails...log a ticket in the Resolution Center of the members section on the GSBOR Web Site.

To access the Resolution Center, you must be a member of the Greater Springfield Board of REALTORS.  Once you log into www.gsbor.com, click on "Members" and enter your NRDS ID and password.  Then select "Resolution Center" at the top of the menu list.  Enter the info in every required field of the ticket.  Once you click "Submit" there is a team of qualified people to answer your question the best that they can.  Just be patient, most questions are answered within 48 hours.

Backing Up Your Data to an External Hard Drive

During today's DocBox training class, several questions were brought up about backing up the data that you put into Transaction Desk.  We suggest using the Transaction Desk DocBox to upload any document for online storage whether or not it is related to a transaction.  Once you have those documents uploaded, chances are you will want to back that data up.  It's a good idea to have a place where you can back up all of your data and we suggest using an an external hard drive for your backups. 

Branding Tips & Tricks

Branding is uploading your personal photo, company logo and a banner so that all of your documents, forms, e-mails and fax back cover sheets are personalized with your name, contact info, and picture.  It is easy to set up your own branding within your Transaction Desk account.

To prepare for the branding process, you will first want to make sure that your logo, personal photo and banner is saved on your hard drive and ready to be uploaded.  Here are few tips to remember:

Tip 1:  Personal Photo and Logo Dimensions should be 145 pixels high x 120 pixels wide.  Most photo editing software on your computer will allow you to enter these dimensions and then resize your picture accordingly.

 

Tip 2:  Banner dimensions should be no more than 125 pixels high x 800 pixels wide.

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If you're struggling with creating a banner on your own, we have found a few web sites that are easy to use and that are FREE.  Within minutes you can create your banner, save it as a jpeg format, and then upload into your Transaction Desk Account.  You get directly to these web sites by clicking on the link here:

• www.cooltext.com
• www.mybannermaker.com
• www.etntalk.com/cgi-bin/bcreator/bcreator.cgi

Tip 3:  Photos, Logos and Banners are only accepted in the these formats:

.jpg
.bmp
.gif
.tif

Tip 4:  Save your photo, logo and banner to your computer's desktop so that it easy to find when you are uploading it into Transaction Desk.

After you log into the system, click on the "Settings" link.  Then select the box labeled "Branding".  Here is where you will upload your saved pictures.  Select each item and upload the photos and banner you saved to your computer desktop.  Once this is completed, all of your actions in Transaction Desk are now branded with your identity.

Making Sharing Transactions with Assistants and/or Other Agents Easy!

If you're an assistant or Transaction Coordinator to another Agent or Broker, using Transaction Desk can be frustrating if you're the one that enters in all of the transaction information and does all of the file maintenance for that Agent or Broker.  But here are a few tips to make it easy to share transactions.

Easy Tip 1, make sure that in both your account and your Agent or Broker account is set up to share transactions with each other.  You can do this by clicking on the "Settings" tab in the main TD home screen.  Then select the "Sharing" box and click "Continue".  Make sure that the drop down box next to "I Would Like To" is selected for "Create a New Share Group" and click "Go".  You can name the group whatever you'd like, but I suggest using the specific person's name for this instance.  Select the person from the box labeled "available users". 

    **Note: if the Agent's name is not listed there, it is because they have not yet logged into Transaction Desk ever, tell them to get with the program and log in at least once to get their name listed!

Select "Full" access and click the "Add" button.  Click "Save Share Information".  Make sure that you do this on both people's accounts so that transactions can be shared equally.

Easy Tip 2, now that the above steps are done...when you're starting a new transaction (whether you create it from scratch or if you import from MLS), as the Assistant or Transaction Coordinator you will go thru the Transaction Wizard.  In step 1 of the Wizard, the very last questions asked is if you are the listing or selling agent or neither.  At this point, you will want to select "Neither" and move on to the other steps in the Transaction Wizard until you get to Step 4 of the Wizard.  Here you will want to select the "Add New Transaction Contact" and click "Go".  Here is where you will want to add your Agent or Transaction Coordinator as Transaction Contact Type.  Therefore, if you list them as the Listing Agent, it will be their name that auto-populates as the Listing Agent on all forms that are prepared under this transaction.

Time To Change Your Toner Cartridge

The wonderful people who work so diligently in our Board's MLS department to process our faxed in listings everyday have placed a request.  They would like to remind all Agents to have fresh ink cartridges in your printer when printing out forms.  They are seeing a continual problem with page fading and it gets difficult for them to read the fax to input the information.  Please do MLS the favor of remembering to keep fresh cartridges in your printer.

Also, we recommend using black font and a minimum font size of 10 pt. when filling out forms within Transaction Desk.  Fonts that are different colors (especially yellow) do not print and do not fax well.  This is to ensure that all forms that are printed and faxed show up correctly in Rapattoni.

Here is how you can change your font sizes and colors:

1. From the main Transaction Desk home screen click on the "Settings" tab.
2. Select the "My Preferences" box and click "Continue".
3. From the left hand column, select the link labeled "Form Settings".
4. In the right hand box of Form Settings, you will see the default font size and colors. 
5. Select BLACK from the Font Color drop down box.
6. Select Size 10 (or 12) pt from the Font Size drop down box.
7. Click "Save Settings" at the bottom of the page.