Many of you have no doubt seen this already, but We recently redesigned the logged-in homepage to make it cleaner and easier to navigate. We changed the Flyer and Widget Dashboards so that they’re both accessible within the same frame via different tabs and added an Image Dashboard where you can easily upload images and access images you’ve already uploaded and enhanced using our Watermark Plus image enhancement program. In addition, we added a News Feed to give you updates on what’s new with vFlyer and a feedback widget so that you can send us your questions, comments, and suggestions right from your account.

We hope these changes make your experience of using vFlyer even better. If you have comments about the new logged-in home layout, feel free to send us a message through the feedback widget!

We’ve gotten a number of requests from our members over the last few months for information about vFlyer Agency Edition, so I wanted to write a post that explains what vFlyer Agency Edition is and how it can benefit vFlyer users.

vFlyer Agency Edition is an account configuration that allows real estate agencies, property management companies, marketing firms, and other organizations that require multiple accounts to create and assign sub-accounts, which are essentially normal vFlyer accounts that are under the management of a main account. The manager and any assistants of the main account can access all sub-accounts via a drop-down list and have the power to assign these sub-accounts to to others so that they can create, edit, and publish content in them. Those assigned to sub-accounts will only have access to the sub-account to which they are assigned.

The main benefits of vFlyer Agency Edition in these scenarios are:

1. You can assign sub-accounts to your employees, team members, or clients for less than what it would cost to set up stand-alone vFlyer accounts for each of them.

2. As the account manager, you have the ability to coordinate and oversee the content in each sub-account so that, for instance, you could have all the sub-accounts use a custom branded Flyer theme you created in the main account to maintain consistency across your company’s or organization’s listings.

vFlyer Agency Edition is ideal for:

1. Real Estate Agencies and Broker Offices
2. Auto Dealership Groups
3. Property Management Companies
4. Mortgage Brokers advertising Realtor listings
5. Marketing and Graphic Design Firms

vFlyer Agency Edition is also a great tool for individual vFlyer members and small companies who have different categories of listings that they want to keep separate from each other. For instance, if you are a Realtor marketing properties in different locations, or properties both for sale and for rent, you could create a sub-account for each that you could access from your main account. Not only does this allow you to manage your listings more easily, it also gives you a separate Account Profile for each sub-account so that viewers of each Account Profile only see the listings you want them to see.

vFlyer Agency Edition is available to vFlyer Premium and vFlyer Professional members.

There is no additional charge for unassigned sub-accounts, which share the Flyer allocation of the main account. In other words, if you have a vFlyer Professional account and you create four sub-accounts, those four sub-accounts as well as the main account all pull from the same allocation of 125 available Active Flyers.

Assigned sub-accounts, on the other hand, have their own allocation of Flyers and are charged based on this allocation. The main account manager can specify the subscription plan associate with each sub-account. Typically, the sub-accounts are discounted at 20% off the normal subscription price. The manager of the main account can specify whether the main account is billed for assigned sub-accounts or the individual sub-account user is billed directly for his or her sub-account.

To learn more about vFlyer Agency Edition, send us an email at sales@vflyer.com.

Many of you asked for a better way to manage the contact requests that you receive from vFlyer. As I mentioned in my previous post on email and privacy, vFlyer gives you ability to receive contact requests as an alternative, or in addition, to direct email correspondence!

Some of you may have noticed that we now allow you to access contact requests from the Home page (once you have logged in). This feature is actually very important for accounts that are actively managed by more than one person! Since the new collaborative features of vFlyer give subscribers multi-user and multi-account support, more and more accounts now are being accessed by multiple user!

Need another vFlyer account? As I mentioned in my previous posts on vFlyer Team and Agency, it is possible now possible to have and manage multiple accounts without logging in and out.

Adding Another Account:
Perhaps you use vFlyer for business but would like to sell items in other product categories or for personal use. Perhaps you run two businesses and need an account for each. There are also sales organizations and virtual assistants that manage vFlyer accounts for multiple clients and would prefer to access them from a single account. Thanks to the new collaborative features in vFlyer, adding another account to your existing account is a few simple clicks away!

How it Works:
You will notice a Settings link at the top right of the page, click on the Accounts tab and go to the Create a New Account section to add a second account to your existing one. You can only have one free (vFlyer Personal) account in your account network, so subscribers can add one free account or multiple subscriber accounts to their account network.

I have spent the last two days talking about how individuals, team leaders, brokers and companies can use vFlyer Team and vFlyer Agency to create collaborative environments when it comes to creating, promoting and distributing online listing and flyers. The real power and flexibility of vFlyer’s collaboration services, however, is the ability to combine and customize these services to create a custom collaborative network of vFlyer accounts that meets your organization’s specific needs or requirements. Here are some examples of what can be accomplished by combining collaborative features and services:

• With vFlyer Agency, master accounts can support a network of multiple accounts. These can include any number of “sub accounts” created by administrators, or “sister accounts” created independently as part of a single vFlyer Collaboration Network
• With vFlyer Team, “sub accounts” can extend your collaboration network by allowing additional team members further down-stream to share accounts, the same applies with “sister accounts”
• Administrators have the ability to choose the types of accounts their network can support as well as put limits and policies in place. They can determine the number of assistants who can share an account and control other aspects of their network

Even if you don’t fully understand the inner working of the vFlyer Collaboration Network, hopefully you understand that vFlyer Team and vFlyer Agency provide the basic building blocks that enable us to create a simple or custom solution for your or your organization. Teams and organization all have different operating and reporting structures. Some are flat and open, while other are hierarchical and administered. Whatever the structure of your sales organization, the flexibility of our collaborative services allows us to design a solution that works for you. Contact sales@vflyer.com for more information.

Yesterday I talked about using vFlyer Team to share access to your vFlyer account with other team members. Another exciting new service available in the vFlyer collaborative release is vFlyer Agency, the ability for companies, brokers, team leaders, or your IT organization to centrally create, manage and delegate vFlyer “sub accounts”.

Here are some of the things that are possible using vFlyer Agency:

• The administrator/owner can create multiple accounts or invite team members to create their own accounts
• The administrator can choose centralized billing for their sub accounts or to have each team members be financially responsible for their own account
• Centralized billing payment options are flexible and include both credit card or monthly invoicing on a purchase order (corporate accounts)
• vFlyer Agency can supports both subscription (Basic, Premium, i.e.) and free (Personal) accounts
• The administrator can access any account using a drop down menu at the top of each page
• The administrator can terminate or reassign accounts at any time

As I mentioned previously, one of the beauties of vFlyer Agency is the ability for the administrator to access all of their accounts at any time! For example, as an administrator you can jump from one account to the other to view a list of flyers, widgets, reports, or images by simply selected that account from a drop down list of available account in the upper right hand of each page.

Both vFlyer Team and vFlyer Agency are some of the services available both both individual and corporate users (I touched on our corporate account pricing and discounts in the past). If you or your company is interested in vFlyer Agency please contact our sale and support group at: sales@vflyer.com

Related Posts and Resources:

• Blog: vFlyer Team, Corporate Plans and Discounts
• Wiki: vFlyer Collaboration Platform
• Screenshots: vFlyer Team and Agency
• More…

Technorati Tags: Collaboration, vFlyerrealtorReal Estatepostletszillowremaxprudentialcoldwellcentury21

vFlyer Team is one of the new collaborative services available in the latest release of the vFlyer platform. Many successful real estate agents use real estate assistants to help them in their business. The practice is so common that the NAR has a dedicated set of resources on the subject! Additionally, in many small and large real estate offices it is not uncommon for individuals to collaborate and work on listings as a team, or in some cases, share a vFlyer account. Now it is possible for you to share your account with both assistants and other team members in secure and scalable fashion.

vFlyer Team enables this type of collaboration by allowing you to invite team members and give them secure access to your vFlyer account. These “vFlyer Assistants” can then login, create, edit and publish flyers on your behave. Since each of your “vFlyer Assistants” has their own login and password, you do not have to compromise the security of your account by sharing your personal login and password with the entire office!

Using vFlyer Team is simple, and this service is available to all current subscribers (if you are using vFlyer Personal you will need to upgrade your account). You will notice we have added an Assistants tab under your Account menu. This tab allows you to add up to 5 assistants (if you need more, let us know) by simply inviting them to your account using their email address!

You can always resend the invitation, or remove (delete) assistants from your account. Once invited, your “vFlyer Assistants” will receive an email with a link that allows them to activate their invitation and initiate access to your account. As always, we would love to get your feedback on our new set of collaborative services.

We have been super busy the last couple of weeks! vFlyer now comes with powerful collaboration and delegated administration services aimed at enabling real estate and sales teams and organizations to support multiple accounts and users on the vFlyer platform. These include:

• vFlyer Team: Invite and allow “assistants” to access you account, create, edit and publish flyers!
• vFlyer Agency: Create and assign sub-accounts to agents or sales professionals in your agency or firm.
• Multiple Account Support: Access two or more accounts without having to switch accounts.

Visit our vFlyer Support Wiki (Collaboration) to hear more about these new and exciting services. I will devote the next couple of blog posts to covering some of the new collaborative features in more detail.