XSites Desktop: Share files, interact with site visitors
Adam Calvery, Appraisal Product Manager
Being able to work and share data and files with others in real time via the Internet is a completely realistic expectation today. That's all collaboration, and very soon WinTOTAL and/or XSite owners will have a very cool to collaboration tool.
As you may know, we also provide web-based products to the real estate agent, inspector and mortgage markets. It's from our Mortgage team that the XSites Desktop was created and will end up benefiting our appraiser customers enormously.
Our Mortgage team was trying to figure out a way for a Mortgage XSites owner to work with their clients AS they filled out a loan application on their website. They wanted to be able to chat with and share the screen with their clients in real-time. So, they created the XSites Desktop. This little tool alerts you to the presence of a visitor on your site, and lets you pop up a little chat dialog on THEIR screen so you can say hello, ask if they need any help, or ask if you can be of service.
For appraisers, this would mean getting an alert when, say, someone was on your Order page. You could pop up a chat dialog to ask if they need any help with the order or anything else you like. You can redirect their browser to other pages on your site, and even share files right there without your client having to install or download anything. It's all done through a web application embedded in your XSite. The file sharing in particular is something else worth talking about.
One of the more common requests we get is to find a better way to share files with remote appraisers. Thanks to our Mortgage team, the lightbulb went off for us. Since the XSites Desktop already allows file sharing within its chat/instant messaging capabilities, we can build that into your Appraisal Desktop.
Ironically, I'd written a blog post on this back in August without knowing much about XSites Desktop. Much of what I was thinking then appears to be getting ready to happen now.
XSites Desktop will integrate with WinTOTAL, and it will allow you to have "Shared Folders" in your Appraisal Desktop tied to anyone who's a user on your XSite, or anyone you've saved as a contact via the Chat/Instant Messaging (name to be determined) part of XSites Desktop. So if, you, Jim and Dan all work remotely from each other but would like to share files, you can via XSites Desktop. You'll have a shared folder in your Appraisal Desktop for Jim and Dan, and they you. Dragging a report into the Jim folder automatically syncs it with Jim's Appraisal Desktop so it shows up there. If Jim opens it, makes changes and saves it, those changes are synced to the file on your system as long as it's in the shared folder. This bypasses the hassles of e-mail entirely and makes reviews and collaboration instant and simple.
This will happen before 2007 is out. I'll go on record as saying that. We're thinking that the XSites Desktop would be a separate product because it installs locally for you, and has features that tie other products together. There are a ton of plugins I'd love to build as well. Kind of like the widgets in Vista or Google that anyone can download. The possibilities are really exciting and virtually limitless with today's technology.
Of course Elite customers get anything new we release for free as part of the Elite system and this would be no different.
