Product Updates: Week 40

This week we're introducing a feature that many of you requested: you can now easily accept or edit showings before they're scheduled. This gives your team greater control over their showing workflow and helps ensure every showing is approved.

Plus, we've rolled out several quality-of-life fixes and platform upgrades to make daily operations smoother.

New Showing Confirmation Flow

You now have the option to approve showing requests before they're automatically scheduled. When this feature is enabled, incoming showing requests enter a "Pending" status rather than going straight to your calendar.

When a prospect schedules a showing, you'll receive an email notification containing all the essential details: prospect information, requested showing time, and showing method. From there, you have three options—approve the showing, cancel it, or open it directly in the Command Center for further review.

Setting it up: Navigate to a property's settings, go to the Showings section, and check the box for "Require PM approval for showings."

You can also customize the message prospects receive while their showing is pending approval by going to Settings > Communication > Messages.

Managing pending showings: Use the Showings Calendar to filter by "Showing Pending" status (in purple). This gives you a centralized view of all requests awaiting your approval, making it easy to review and process multiple showing requests efficiently.

Improved prescreening experience

We've redesigned the prescreening flow to make it clearer and more intuitive for prospects to complete.

Prescreening templates

The most significant change is switching from checkboxes to simple Yes/No questions. This format is more straightforward and reduces confusion about whether they should tick it or not.

Selfie verification

We've also improved how the system handles camera permissions—a common friction point in the verification process. The interface now prominently prompts prospects to enable their camera, making it clear this is a required step. If a prospect accidentally blocks camera access, they'll immediately see a step-by-step troubleshooting guide showing them how to reset permissions in their browser.

Application Group Management

Managing RentEngine rental applications just got more flexible. You can now modify application groups independently, without needing to contact support for changes.

Whether you need to remove someone from a joint application, split applicants into separate groups, or merge applications together, you can handle it all directly within the platform.

How to use it: Open the Rental Applications tab, select an application, and click the new actions menu next to any applicant's name. From there, you can search for other applicants to change group assignments or create a new standalone application group.

Note: This feature is only available if you're using RentEngine's rental application system.

Platform Enhancements

This week also brought several behind-the-scenes improvements:

Location Permissions
The GPS permission request flow for self-guided showings has been streamlined. Prospects now receive clearer instructions for enabling location access - reducing friction to start the showing.

Lockbox Self-Help
When lockbox errors occur, you'll now see direct links to relevant troubleshooting articles.

Outlook Integration
We've improved the stability of our Outlook calendar connection, making it more reliable for teams using Microsoft's calendar system.

PMS Sync
Incomplete units are now included in PMS syncs. These units will automatically update as they're completed.

Do Not Disturb
The Do Not Disturb feature now operates at the account level. This means you can set different notification preferences for different office locations, giving you more granular control over your team's communication settings.

As always, we welcome your feedback! If you have a feature request or improvement you'd like to see, let us know!