Use your own data sources to populate forms

One of the by-products of living in a society that expects to be able to find data on the Internet is that many of us now want to be able to use that data in ever increasingly flexible ways.

 

Typically, when you buy a piece of software, that's what you get. That's the way the retail software world works. Well, we're trying to make WinTOTAL more open to third party vendors and to users alike, and this geodatabase project is one example of that.

 

To get familiar with the concept of a geodatabase and its uses, you may want to do some light reading.

 

"GIS: Uses and Integration Possibilites"
"As a profession, we must advance along with our technology"

 

Did you read those articles? Good...

 

Now, in the immediate future, what we're wanting to do is give you a way to populate page one of your form using information from your own datasource. You don't have to look far to find an appraiser, or group of appraisers, that already aggregate property data in an external database. And of course those folks want to be able to inject that data straight into a report without rekeying anything. So, that's the plan.

 

How will it work?

After we got through the "should we" to the "how to" phase of the conversation, we started kicking around a couple of ideas.

 

The first was to add a button on the Forms PowerView that launched an app that went and looked through an external datasource for the subject's information. Once found, it would then populate the form with the found data.

 

The second idea was the one we feel will be the best solution. And that is, to do it from the Comps PowerView, but give you an option to place a property as the subject, and to fill out everything applicable that you have in the database.

 

Intriguing. Tell us more...

We already have an existing data importer for comps. Let's talk about that for a second.

 

Out of the box, Aurora comes with a data import tool for sucking information from external sources and from MLS exports. It's kind of a bear though. Each external data source is going to be formatted differently. There are no such thing as data standards or common terms it seems in the real estate industry. So, we've made one, called TOTAL XML. We've used it for years as a common denominator that third party programs can understand. TOTAL XML reflects every single field in the WinTOTAL databases and thus everything that could possibly show up on a form. So, these external datasources that you, dear reader, create and maintain on your own, HAVE to be mapped to our format before WinTOTAL can pull in information and know what to do with it or where to put it.

 

By definition it's a pain in the rear. There are a lot of fields to map, and nearly every data source is different which means we can't automate being much help to you. But once you've mapped your datasource to our database, that "map" is saved, and you're golden from there on out. It's not hard, just time consuming.

 

So, all that said, let's fast foward to the part where you've got everything mapped. Here's how we're thinking it should work.

1. Grab a cup of coffee
2. Udate your external datasource with the latest records from wherever it is you get them
3. Finish your coffee
4. Use WinTOTAL's data import tool to update your WinTOTAL property/comps database
5. Get a fresh cup of java and head out for inspections
6. Get back to the office, start your report
7. Go to your Comps Database, search for the subject
8. Mark the one you want
9. Click "Place as Subject" on the toolbar
10. Viola!

The benefit here is that all the information from your external datasource is already in WinTOTAL. You're not having to go to multiple locations to get data.

 

Now, along with this, there are improvements that need to be made to the database and the data import tool. That much is clear, but those are both much larger projects that we'll tackle in Armstrong.

 

Our goal

We want to build this prototpye now. We want to make it work with Aurora, and be available to anyone that wants it now. It will probably remain in "prototype status" in Aurora and be a part of the feature set in Armstrong (WinTOTAL v6). At least, that's what we're thinking at this juncture. As always, we're wide open to suggestions and comments.

 

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