TOPS Home E-Zine

Issue #8 - October 2002

Inside TOPS Home:

1. TOPS Announcements
2. Budget in a Web Site to Save Time and Money
3. What's New on your Community Web Site
4. Spotlight: Sixty-01 Association
5. Support: Making all Phone Numbers Unlisted
6. Support: Separating Board/Committee Members
7. Support: Owners with Multi-Word Last names

 

Announcements:

Welcome to TOPS Home, the web site e-zine for TOPS Community Web Sites. This month we bring you timely information on preparing your 2003 budget, eight new updates to your community web sites, and a number of helpful support articles to imporove the way information is stored on your community web site. We think that you will find this month's issue of TOPS Home to be a useful addition to your reading list this month.

As always, enjoy your reading, and if you have any questions or concerns call us at 1-800-556-7852, or e-mail us at WebSupport@TOPSSoft.com. We look forward to speaking with you!

 

Budget in a TOPS Community Web Site to save Time and $$

Fall is here, and most of you are busy slaving away at the computer, devising those budget plans for next year. A TOPS Community Web Site is a great way to put forth less effort in administration next year and yield greater rewards for your communities both now and in the future. If you spend time budgeting for your Community Web Site now you’ll help reduce your costs and reap the rewards all year long.

Communities benefit from a web site by increasing the communication between neighborhood residents, the board members, and the professional management company. Most residents want to get to know their neighbors a little better, but everyone’s just so busy! Residents can send comments, questions and survey responses to the board members as well as fill out online forms to sign up for the tennis or swim team, reserve the clubhouse for that anniversary party or anything you can imagine.

Residents can automatically view the “What’s New” feature each time they access the web site. This area includes a personalized list of any new items added to the site since that individual last signed on. Everyone can see pictures of the kids at the community’s Fall Picnic, check out the upcoming Events Calendar, or sign up to participate in the annual Garage Sale. All this can be done on the resident’s time schedule, from the convenience of their home.

Managers benefit from a community web site because it greatly enhances the speed at which information is distributed, while it decreases the demand on the property manager from common questions and requests for community documents. Information is now available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for any resident to review. Residents get the impression that you are always available to communicate with them, and this saves time, effort and energy for your staff to devote to their many other management duties.

Let your Community Web Site work for YOU next year!

 

What's New on Your Community Web Sites:

We have been working hard lately to make the entire TOPS Community Web Service more automated than ever. Last month we instituted the first step of this automation process with our chkfiles program, which updates files on your server to make sure the files are always current. This month we have initiated the next phase of the automation process by automating web site updates. With this process, we can roll out new features, changes, and updates as we complete them rather than waiting for a once-per-year major web site upgrade.

This section will be dedicated to listing the new features that have been added to your web sites each month. The following changes were activated October 15th, 2002.

1. Added functionality for administrator to remove images from all features that allow images to be added.
2. Added "WMF" format (Windows Meta Files, a common clipart file type) to the list of supported graphic file types. (We still do not recommend using this format since it is Windows specific.)
3. Resolved some lingering problems with login/passwords that contain apostrophes (single quote marks).
4. Removed the display of module and category titles from the top of an item detail screen.
5. Added messages in the eForms maintenance screen to inform administrators to use commas to separate drop down list items.
6. Added ability to search the spouse employer field in the address book search.
7. Added ability for residents/admin to edit their own messages in message board.
8. Removed the "indent" on the eform display screen that caused multi-line field descriptions to look off balance.

 

Customer in the Spotlight:

Sixty-01 COA

Sixty-01 is a lovely self-managed community located in Redmond, Washington. Their web site is a true testament to the beauty of this 83-acre community, complete with a patron swan named Gus.

The communication committee and manager of Sixty-01 have done an excellent job of gathering information and photos of the community for the web site. Be sure to check out the facilities section to see the many amenities the community has to offer. The floor plans section is a nice touch for advertising the spacious homes that are available. Another nifty item on the site is a complete breakdown of maps and directions for prospective owners to locate the community.

The private side of the community web site is just as diverse and informative as the public side, making Sixty01.com a web site to make community members proud. Be sure to check it out at http://www.Sixty01.com

 

Support: Making All Phone Numbers Unlisted

A number of our customers prefer to, or are required to, make all owner phone numbers unlisted for a community. But checking “Disable Web Interface” for each homeowner in a community can be time consuming and impractical for larger communities. Enter the Uptown utility for TOPS 2000™ to set all owner phone number fields to "Unlisted" status in the selected community.

Once you execute Uptown in TOPS 2000™ (instructions are included in the zip file available at the link below) and make all phone numbers unlisted, those numbers will not upload to your TOPS Community Web Site, and will be removed from the profiles already on the site. Owners may still go in to their user profiles on the web site and enter in their own phone numbers manually, but using this utility puts the decision to share information with fellow community members into the hands of the owner, rather than the manager.

To download the Uptown utility, grab it from the downloads page: www.topshome.com/topshome/Administrators/downloads.htm#program_files

Support: Separating Board and Committee Members

Many of our community web sites choose to hide the address book from residents as required by law, or to prevent information abuse. Unfortunately, when Board/Committee Members are selected from the Resident address book, any resident is able to see whatever information the members have entered there. One solution is to create a “Board/Committee Members” address book, separate from the Resident address book and select the BoD/Committee members from it.

Although each address book entry must have a login name and password, there’s no requirement to give the BoD members any login/password beside their Resident address book entry. Typically, Board-Only functions are set to a security level of 25, so whichever login they use to enter the site, it should be set to the appropriate board-only security level.

 

Support: Uploading Owners with Multi-Word Last Names

For last names with spaces, such as “del Fuego” or “van der Winkle”, TOPS 2000™ uploads just the last segment of such names, thus “Fuego” and “Winkle.” This is because TOPS 2000™ must separate suffixes like Jr, MD, DDS, Sr, III. Therefore names like these need something other than a space to join the segments, like an underscore or hyphen, i.e. “van_der_Winkle.”

For more information on how TOPS 2000™ separates names for uploading, see "Tips for Easy Data Uploads" in the help documents section of our web site's downloads page: http://www.topshome.com/topshome/Administrators/downloads.htm#help_docs

 

Did you know that TOPS Software will provide you with a free community web site  CD demo?  Follow this link to apply for your free demo today!

 

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About the Authors

Lucy Fox is your Community Web Site Support Representative
Andrea Drennen is the Director of Publishing and Standards at TOPS Software
Susan Sanders is the Lead Sales Representative for the TOPS Community Web Site Service

 

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