We’re so excited and we just can’t hide it! With apologies to the Pointer Sisters, we’re very excited to announce the new Buildium has arrived. Check it out by clicking the preview link at the top of the Buildium app. Go ahead and take control…we think you’ll like it.
Existing customers will be able to toggle between the old and new Buildium for about a month before we switch to the new version for good. Your data is shared between the old and new versions, so no double-entry or data migration is required. If you’re a brand new customer, welcome! We’re not even going to trouble you with the old version of our software. You’ve got our latest and greatest from the get-go.
So what’s new?
We’ve made lots and lots of improvements to Buildium with this new version; too many to list, in fact, but here are a few key items we think you’re going to love:
- Brand new search – Find people and properties quicker than ever with our brand new search functionality.
- Better lists – We’ve cleaned up our lists of properties, people, listings, applications, and more. The lists are easier to read, sort, and filter.
- “Hubs” that pull all your information together – Our new “hubs” for properties, people, leases, and ownership accounts pull together information in easy-to-scan, cross-linked pages. You won’t remember how you lived without them.
- Updated navigation – You spoke and we listened. Buildium’s menus have been reorganized based on the feedback we received from customers like you. You no longer have to be a mouse-clicking sharpshooter to target horizontal items below a tab. The new menus are big and stay open so you can click easily.
- A sight for sore eyes – Did you find yourself squinting a bit at the old Buildium? Our new visual design has brighter colors, better contrast, and larger type.
- Make it your own – This one’s just for fun. Go to the “My settings” page and choose a background that speaks to you. We have a bunch to choose from.
Anything else I should know?
Absolutely — this is Buildium’s largest, most ambitious upgrade ever. We’ve worked very hard to test everything, but with over 300 new and updated pages there are bound to be a few bugs. Here are a few we already know about:
You can’t hide the “Rentals” or “Associations” menus…yet.
- We will eventually allow you to turn off the “Rentals” or “Associations” menu, depending on the types of properties you manage, but it’s something we were not able to get into this initial release.
Some pop-up forms have cosmetic issues.
- Examples of cosmetic issues include borders being too thick in some tables, buttons looking a bit funky, and things not lining up exactly.
- Most cosmetic issues are in the Accounting area, and are only present in Internet Explorer, particularly IE8.
- We’re working to fix these issues, but you can eliminate most of them by upgrading your browser (we suggest Chrome, Firefox, or IE9).
User roles created in the old version do not map exactly to the new version.
- Because we’ve separated “Rentals” and “Associations” in the new version, any user roles created in the old version during the Beta period will only have access to “Rentals” in the new version. We recommend you make any necessary edits to user roles in the new version.
The new version works much better on the iPad than the old version did, but there are a few iPad problems we’re still working on.
- The “Shortcuts” menu scrolls with the page instead of staying stuck to the bottom.
- Our file upload uses Flash, so it will not work on the iPad. We are planning to replace it with a non-Flash solution.
- Our rich-text editor (used to edit mailing templates, for example) does not work on the iPad.
- The “Add filter” menu stays open even after the user clicks “Apply filter.”
- Confirmation messages sometimes do not appear.
We’re absolutely thrilled to get this new version of Buildium into our customers’ hands. It’s the best Buildium yet!