In continuation of our efforts in improving usability, increasing engagement, increasing collection, reducing operational efforts, and supporting acquisition and retention in the system, we have identified and rectified the following product gaps and added certain valuable enhancements to the product.
NOTICE BOARD :
Background patterns for new notices
Notices are a very popular method to circulate information among the society members, whether for the purpose of promotions or announcements. Traditionally, new notices have always occupied a prime spot on the home page. However, since the widget has stayed with a static design for a long time, it cannot gather more attention from the users. This update completely revamps the widget experience in the following ways –
1. MyPulse Notices : Our internal user needs to add –
- A widget background image that supports both jpeg (image 1) and gifs (image 2)
- A brand logo, which will appear at the top right corner.
- In case the background image has heavy infographics, the user can choose to only show the title (image 1)
2. Society Notices : The society admin can choose one of the following preloaded templates to ensure their announcements have more character and gain better viewership –
Emergency Notice Alarm
Notices have always been published to the society members with standard push notifications. In favour of a smarter and safer community living, this update introduces a new category called ‘Emergency Notice’. For time sensitive topics such as water supply disruption, unscheduled power cuts, etc or any other situation that requires immediate attention from the residents, this feature would be very useful.
A society admin has to just select the notice type to be ‘Emergency’ while creating the announcement. On the app, it will create the following differentiations –
- The notice will be sent with a label of ‘Emergency’
- The notification will go with an alarm sound (carrying the morse code for SOS) to quickly alert the resident (Alarm Sound)
ERP :
Improvements to Dashboard Search
The dashboard search option has traditionally worked on the basis of the user inputting an item from the menu list. With this update, the field of view of this search has been widened by adding an option of tags on the top of the previous functionality. The following provisions have been built
- Tags attached to the menu items can be easily updated to keep the tool relevant
- New menu items added will now automatically fall under the scope of this search
- The roles that do not have access to certain pages on the dashboard will not find those menu items in search results (unlike previously where they landed on an error page)
The dashboard users (especially the new ones) can find the following benefits –
- The tags being added include multiple colloquial terms such as bill or challan for invoices OR raseed for receipts, making it easier for regional admins to operate
- Recent searches are pre-populated when the search box is clicked offering quicker navigation
Dashboard >> Search
Statutory Registers to retain the previous ownership information
The statutory registers module does not store any previous data added. In case any change is made to stakeholders or a new owner for a house is added, it replaces the old information.
With the current update, the Admin will be able to keep adding new details against a flat. This addition would label the older stakeholder as “Previous” and the newly added one as “Current” –
- Edit or delete actions against the previous owners are barred so that we can prevent loss of data by user’s mistake.
- If an older entry has to be updated, the current one for the flat would have to be removed first.
- Filter for viewing the previous or current list one at a time has been added.
- Downloaded excel file will have the historical records exported as well.
Dashboard >> Accounts >> Statutory registers
Tally – Bill plan wise receipt export
With the previous release in October, we started supporting the upload of bill plan wise mapping of multiple tally ledgers in MyGate. The updated tool is now being adopted by societies for exporting their multiple bill plan (heads) invoices into tally. The next stage of booking an income i.e. collections were yet to be supported on this new process.
Since it is very common to have one receipt for multiple types of invoices – with this new update, the export system will take bill plan level segregation of the receipt value into account while generating the XML file. The same is achieved using the compound entry feature provided by tally.
Admin/accountant will receive the following benefits –
- There is no bifurcation of receipts involved and hence multiple vouchers are not created in tally for a single receipt in MyGate. A one to one reconciliation is hence possible.
- This upgrade serves as the foundation for adjustments and credit notes for such societies as well. This is slated to be worked upon and released in the next quarter.
Dashboard >> Accounts >> Dues and receipts >> Receipts >> Export receipts to tally
Amenity – Companion name and their relationship in report
The amenity booking feature supports the following types of companions –
- Family
- Resident
- Guest
- Coach
However, such information collected during amenity booking was not being made available as a report to the Admin. With this update, the admin will be able to get the Number of Companions, Family Companions, Resident Companions, Coach Companions, Guest Companions against each booking. This information can help during the following use cases –
- Finding out the exact details of facility users during a slot in case of harm to property or nuisance
- Monetizing the use of facilities by guests or coaches
Dashboard >> Amenities >> Reports
App ‘Notification Center’ to now support Votes & RSVP messages
Votes and responses to a user’s poll and event respectively occur on a very frequent basis. These information points are, therefore, not sent via push notifications to avoid creating nuisance. We have a dedicated notification center on the home page that focuses on listing all user related activities.
With this update, the votes and RSVP counts would now be updated in the notification center listing.
Eg. 1 – Akash Mishra and 7 others have responded to your event.
Eg. 2 – Anlin Assisi and 43 others have voted on your poll.
App >> Notification Center
‘Profile’ page API support on the user app
Post the efforts made on the communications module over the last few months, user profiles are now supported on the MyGate app as well. One can open their own profile page and view all the communication content he or she has previously posted.
App >> My Profile
Same as the above, an API level support has been created for viewing another user’s content on their profile pages. It makes it simpler to find and engage with posts made by a popular creator within the society.
Migration – Automated mapping of Bill Plans during invoice upload
One of the most tedious efforts during migration of accounting data is to manually map all the invoice batches uploaded into their respective bill plans. Given that there are multiple years involved, hundreds of batches may be required to be identified and worked upon individually.
Through the addition of a ‘bill plan’ name column in the invoice upload file, the above process can now be automatically completed at the time the batches are being uploaded. This ensures the following –
- Batches are not wrongly mapped leading to an error in migration
- Almost 2 days of effort can be saved per year of migration, in case multiple bill plans are in play
UL Dashboard >> Upload & Downloads >> Upload Member Data >> Upload Invoices
Security :
New ‘Admin Console’ on the app
In order to increase engagement and enhance discovery of relevant information for our admin users, we have revamped the app admin console. The core functionalities are kept intact and additional details used by the admin in day to day operation across the gate and ERP modules have been included. The intent is to allow admins to take necessary actions quickly for smooth functioning of the society.
The revamp of the app admin console is planned in a phased manner. In the current iteration, we have redesigned the Admin Chat and Helpdesk widgets. Also, a new Income widget has been added to the console.
*Note : The new admin console will not have the old process of society selection on an intermediate page. Whichever society is actively being viewed by the admin, the app would open the console for the same.
Admins can access the console from the card on the home page as well as the traditional admin button in the header of the community page.
ADMIN CHAT
Chat Support or Admin Chat has been renamed to “Chat with Us” and has been placed in the top right corner of the admin console which will also show the total number of unread messages as a nudge. The icon when clicked will redirect to the Admin Chat page.
HELPDESK
Helpdesk used to be a tile on the old admin console. With the new UI, the admin will now be able to view :
- A lifetime status overview of all tickets raised within the community.
- The count of unattended, escalated and reopened tickets are highlight in RED
- A day-wise bar graph of the current status of tickets created in the last 7 days.
The widget, when clicked, will redirect to the helpdesk admin view of the ticket listing page in the app.
INCOME
Income is a newly introduced widget which will help the admins of societies active with the accounting module. The widget covers the following :
- The current overview of the top of the line figures such as total dues, total overdues, security deposit and advance.
- The current collection against any month’s total billing can be viewed as a pie chart. The values are represented both as absolute figures and percentages.
Previously only the Society Admin had access to all the widgets in the app admin dashboard. The Society Manager and Helpdesk Manager had access only to the admin level Helpdesk features in the app. With the new admin console, we have introduced the following :
- Module access is extended to all twelve default admin roles of MyGate (custom roles are to be handled in the next iterations)
- Permission for viewing and interacting with any widget has been defined for each role to ensure that only relevant data is present to a customer
Currently, the new admin console on the app is controlled by a society setting “Enable New Admin Console UI” and has been enabled only for a few selected test societies. The access to the setting is reserved to the following roles – Administrator, super admin and customer support.
The module will go through a phase wise scale up and achieve 100% coverage by the end of December. We would like to invite everyone to participate in the transition plan and provide feedback in order to keep improving the console.
What’s next?
- Widgets for viewing app adoption and visitor activity in the society.
- Gray widgets for inactive modules in the society to nudge the admins to onboard all features offered by MyGate.
- Performance improvement for a quick loading experience, especially for large societies
- Feedback implementation and exploration into what an admin would like to view and control via his MyGate application!
Vehicle Bulk Upload option for Society Admins
The admins had to reach out to the internal teams in order to add the vehicle data to the system. This created a dependency on the internal teams and reduced their bandwidth. The change brings the following benefits for the admins –
- Instead of adding vehicles one at a time, the admin will now be able to upload the vehicle data for their society at once.
- In case the admin does not want to share their data via email due to privacy concerns, the improvement removes the dependency on the MyGate team.
Note : Option to bulk delete vehicle information has already been extended to admins in a previous update.
Society >> Parking >> Vehicle List >> Vehicle Upload >> Upload the file >> Submit
Guard Patrolling Download now sorted by date
The guard patrolling data, when viewed on the admin dashboard, has always been sorted on the basis of date (for all routes). However, when the data was downloaded it used to sort on the basis of routes, making it difficult for the admins to get a complete picture of a day at one glance.
We have made feedback based improvement to the excel exported by the report. The sorting logic in download has been replicated from the dashboard view (reference image below).
Society >> Security and Patrolling >> Guard Patrolling Report >> Download Patrolling Report
Test society access restrictions
The test societies currently existing in the system do not have an SOP around approval and removal of admin level users. Historically, the creation of test societies has been random and unrecorded – we now have around 250 of them out of which only 10 or so are active. The exit employees still have access to such societies, which can be a potential data threat.
- We have restricted creation of new admins for these test societies and also disabled the option to add a family member or tenant from the app for these test societies.
- The access to create a new society admin in these test societies will be only with the user management and administrator roles.
This change will also allow business & excellence teams to enforce test society access policy for smooth creation or exits of employees. Limiting the number of test societies further would ease identification of red flags in the system and effective timely action.
People Hub >> Admin User List >> Manage Admins >> Add Society Admin >> Enter the Details >> Assign
Additional Notes :
- Retaining user details in the audit log even after the user is deleted
- Disable Society Management Option for City Head Role
- Smart Eye Society Setting API call changes
- Bulk upload access permission to add external roles from Administrator and User Management Roles
- Increased facility access list page limit from 50 to 500 in the API and Unified Dashboards.
That’s all folks!!