New dsSearchAgent Features – Syndication, Modules, and Options

Posted on January 1, 2009

So, lets talk about some about some more new options you may have noticed that we’ve added to allow you to customize your dsSearchAgent even further.

New Options

  • You can now set Acres as the default measure of Lot Size. This affects the “Lot Size” Criteria in the Search Tab.
  • You can now turn off the pre-built Header in your Welcome and Listing Update emails.
  • Additionally you can customize the Welcome Email subject line
  • Now that we added Price Drops to the Property Details, we recognized that some of you may not want to see this on your IDX, so we’ve added an option to turn off Price Drops.
  • If you need to limit your IDX search results to a specific state, you now can. Just add the state abbreviation to this new option in Control Panel.
  • In your Welcome and Listing Update emails you can use mail-merge fields. These fields are [[Contact.<Field Name>]] and [[Agent.<Field Name>]]. You can get the <Field Name>s for Contacts from the title of each field when you edit a Contact in Control Panel. Here are some examples:
    • [[Contact.First Name]]
    • [[Contact.Last Name]]
    • [[Agent.First Name]]
    • [[Agent.Last Name]]
  • Finally you can now customize all of the links to your IDX (from emails, rss, etc.) to link to the page you frame dsSearchAgent on your own website.

Custom Links

Custom Links now, by default, do not “lock” the Visitor into the result set the Custom Link defines. So effectively Custom Links only give the Visitor a “starting point” for searching. This removes the confusion and frustration for the Visitor, when visiting Custom Links. If you wish, you can go in and “lock” these results when you edit the Link in Control Panel, this will cause the Custom Link to behave as before.

Quick Search Module

QuickSearch We’ve added a new Quick Search Module for you to use. Quick Search Modules allow you to put a simple form on your site that allows the Visitor to choose some basic criteria, then are brought to your IDX Search and shown the results based on the criteria they chose.

RSS Feeds

We now we offer an RSS feed for your own listings, with no limit to the number of items in the feed. This effectively allows you to export your own listings to an RSS format feed.

As far as the Feeds themselves go we’ve added a few things to  keep them fresh:

  • RSS-ItemPrice change is shown in RSS feeds (where available)
  • Community and Tract is now shown in RSS (where available)
  • Links from RSS (and Emails) now consume the “Framed Page” option in your dsSearchAgent Options. Keeping visitors coming back to your site, instead of just dsSearchAgent.