Searching

While Matrix may have powerful search capabilities similar to ProSearch, it's often not obvious what needs to be entered to get the desired results. I can and will document other search issues, but this example seems to be typical of something that's technically correct but certainly not obvious and could be implemented much better.

Let's say you were interested in a swimming pool. Perhaps you want the property to have a pool. Perhaps you don't want a pool or maybe you don't care one way or another. With Matrix, this is the search concerning a pool:

Just what are you supposed to enter here?

If you wanted a pool, click on "Pool" and the "Or" radio button (or "No Pool" and the "Not" radio button.)

If you don't want a pool, click on "No Pool" and the "Or" radio button (or "Pool" and the "Not" radio button.)

If you don't care one way or another, select both "Pool" and "No Pool" and the "Or" radio button, (or don't select either item and select the "Not" radio button.)

You can also not have any properties show up by selecting both "Pool" and "No Pool" and the "Not" radio button.

If that wasn't perfectly clear, you can always click on the help button. Then you'd be presented with the following window:

Not really all that helpful...

I can think of some other ways this could be implemented that would would better:

How about using three radio buttons?

How about a couple of check boxes?

Or maybe a field to enter a Y or N?

While I like the radio buttons the best, any of these would probably be better than how Matrix implemented it...

Transition Postponed!

MLSListings just announced that the full transition to Matrix will be postponed until December 31, 2011.

Thank You!

We'll be able to continue using ProSearch until then and Matrix will be worked on to address many of the issues that have been reported. It may yet become a useful tool for us.

Thank you MLSListings for listening to your clients.

Selecting Additional Search Fields

Matrix sets up search screens for various classes of searches that contain common search fields for those classes. They do allow one to customize these screens to add most any other search field. You just select the items you want from a scrollable list of hundreds of items, select the item and press the Add button to add the selected item to your list of selected fields. When you've added all of the fields you want, you return to the search screen and your selected items are added to the bottom of your screen.

However, using Safari on a Macintosh running OS X 10.6.4 this doesn't work properly.

If you select an item and then scroll down the list of items, after a few seconds that item is added to the list of selected fields and the scroll list moves back to the selected item. Continue scrolling and after a few seconds it tries to add that same item again and displays following message:

Item was not added because it is either on the search page or was already one of your Frequently Used Fields

This certainly isn't the correct behavior, and I suspect it's due to some nonstandard coding used to implement this website.

While Tarasoft can certainly choose to implement their software using whatever tools they want and support only a subset of browsers and operating systems, they do state the following on their website:

Browser Compatability [sic]

Tarasoft Matrix® is 100% compatible with all internet browsers including IE 6, 7, 8, Firefox, Opera, Chrome and Safari. Tarasoft Matrix® is very light on browser resources not requiring any browser add-on. There are zero Operating System requirements.

Really?

Photo In Headers

A feature in Matrix that's not available in ProSearch is the ability to include low resolution, graphical headers and footers in various generated reports. I gather the idea was to allow the inclusion of the agent's photo, but this is how you're supposed to specify if you want to include the photo or not?

Seems like there should be a space to enter either a 'Y' or an 'N' or the question should be Include Agent Photo followed by "Yes" or "No" radio buttons.

Regardless of what was meant, checking or unchecking that box doesn't do anything. If you haven't uploaded your picture you'll end up with a blank head shot in the header. If you've uploaded a picture it'll use that picture forever, or at least until you upload a different image.

Deleting Contacts

When I attempt to delete a contact, I'm presented with the following screen:

The first time I tried this, it looked as if the contact was still there. The contact was still showing up in the "Recent Use Contacts" on the Matrix home page. If I clicked on that contact and would get the same error screen.

I closed the browser and started again. The contact that I tried to delete was gone. I created a new contact, deleted it and was again presented with the above error message.

The contacts are getting deleted, but you're presented with a strange error message and may need to restart Matrix before everything looks proper.

Addressing E-mails Enhancement Request

When addressing e-mails, I see the following when I type in the e-mail address:

As I type in the e-mail address, the address beings to scroll after typing just a few characters, even though there's plenty of room in that address field.

Then when I press the comma or semicolon key to being entering in another e-mail address, it duplicates the e-mail address I just entered.

I can of course enter in the address even if I can only see a few characters at a time, and I can hit the delete key a few times to get rid of the duplicate address, but it's annoying and not something that should be there.

The premature scrolling for the address occurs using both Safari and Firefox on a Mac running OS X 10.6.4 and on an iPad. The duplicate address doesn't occur using Firefox, but does using Safari or the iPad. I haven't tried this with any other computers.

Color Choices Enhancement Request

Everyone has their own ideas about what colors are pleasing to them or what works best for their web site. Usually it doesn't make much difference. However, sometimes the colors used make it rather difficult to use a site. I find the gray word "Manage" a bit difficult to see when displayed on the light gray background, although not nearly as difficult to see as the white text over the light colored backgrounds in the boxes below that.

Make all the text, and indeed any component of the web site that you want people to see, a contrasting color from the background it's displayed on.

Bug and Enhancement Request

In the client portal, there's a pop-up menu that specifies the number of properties to display. When viewing in single line mode, the values in that menu are 10, 25, 50 and 250. When 250 is selected, it will only display 10 items...

In addition to client single line, you can select client page, client half page and client thumbnail. In client thumbnail mode you can specify 10, 25 or 50 properties. However, the client page view will only show one property and the client half page only two. At a minimum I would suggest allowing additional numbers of properties to be viewed when viewing the half page and full page views. I'd also would like to see more than 50 properties at one time, although I don't know if there's some hard, upper limit imposed by how Matrix was implemented.

Feedback

Not too long ago I mailed a rather harsh, but honest, letter to MLSListings detailing my issues with Matrix and offered some suggestions about what could be done. I was contacted this morning and had a pleasant and hopefully productive, long phone conversation. I explained how I currently use ProSearch to do my job and how moving to Matrix would cause me many problems. We discussed various options, why certain items were done a certain way and what changes may be coming soon.

I have a little more hope now that some useful changes might be made in the near future. For the time being I'll try to document actual bugs or obvious enhancement suggestions that shouldn't be difficult or controversial to change. I'll hold off on critiquing the user interface/experiece issues. While I don't expect those issues to be corrected in the near future, if some of the changes we discussed could be implemented it would make the system more palatable. We'll see...

Maps

Both ProSearch and Matrix use Microsoft's Bing Maps to display any maps. Personally, I prefer Google Maps. The satellite images seem to have a higher resolution and the Street View is invaluable. Not a huge problem, I just copy the address and go to Google Maps when I want to see that.

But even when both ProSearch and Matrix use Bing Maps, Matrix still manages to look worse than ProSearch. When Matrix displays a map, it shows a smaller area than what ProSearch shows. It's often difficult to know exactly where the property is located as you just can't see enough information. The only view that would show more information is the Agent Full view, but that's because you first have to click a button that opens a new Bing Maps window. If you print a full agent view you don't see any maps at all.

ProSearch located the property by putting a star over it. Matrix thinks it's useful to also put the street address on the map as well. Not sure why they felt a need to do that as the property address is displayed near the map in every case, but someone felt that cluttering up a small map was valuable...

Of course, they can't even get the address correct...

This is the map that ProSearch generates for a property at 809 North Capitol Avenue, #3:


Here is Matrix's map of the same property:


How about displaying the maps a little larger to show a larger area? Also get rid of the incorrect address, it just clutters up the map and isn't needed.

Viewing Listings

I use the MLS daily to search for properties for my clients. I create saved searches for as many clients as I can, although I often will enter a new search. When the system has found the properties, I may sort them differently, select all of the properties and display the full agent view. I can then quickly scroll through the window to see all of the listings. I can also use the browser's search function to quickly find something and can also print the window, something I now usually do to save it as a pdf for use on my iPad.

So how long might this take with ProSearch and Matrix?

A search today for all active listings of single family homes in Cupertino under $1,300,000 returns 47 listings.

Using ProSearch, it takes about 5-10 seconds for the window to start displaying all of the listings. As soon as that window begins displaying the information I can start reading it and scrolling though it. It takes about 50 seconds to display all of the listings. This is the complete, full agent views with all of the pictures and full MLS history. After the window is completely displayed I can use the browser's search capabilities.

With Matrix it also takes about 10 seconds to display the first listing. If I want to see all of the pictures I would need to click a button to view each picture, or I could click on the one picture to open up another window that can display the pictures. If I want to see the full MLS history I click another button. Click again to view the next property and repeat for every property. Not really sure how long that will take to view every property, but it's certainly many minutes. There's also no way to use the browser's search function to search all of the listings. It could only search one listing at a time.

A quicker way might be to generate the pdf report. You'll only see a single picture and incomplete MLS history, but it's certainly quicker than clicking multiple times for each listing. Matrix takes about 50 seconds to generate this pdf file, and during that time you're presented with a blank screen. You can only begin viewing the properties after the pdf is completely generated.

And why did I look for homes in Cupertino less than $1,300,000 for this example? I needed less than 50 property results since a Matrix report can't have more than 50. Unfortunately, most of my searches return more than 50 properties. Using Matrix will require that I break up my searches into groups of 50 or less. How much more time is that going to require?

So, Matrix requires much more effort and perhaps 10 times the amount of time to do what ProSearch does today.

Full Agent Views

A major issue with Matrix is the fact that it still can't print a complete full agent view. MLSListings and Tarasoft have had over a year to implement this, but for whatever reason they seem unable or unwilling to do so.

When viewing the properties in Matrix's full agent view you only see one picture. You must click to view each additional picture. To see the full MLS history you need to click yet again to display that information. If you try to print this out you only get the one picture. You also only see the full history if you've already clicked on it. Imagine having 30 properties you want to print out. You need to click 30 times to see each property, and for every property you need to scroll down to expand the MLS history. Yeah, that's what I want to do all day long…

Matrix does allow you to generate pdf reports. This finally does display all of the pictures (in a smaller size than ProSearch), but it doesn't display the full MLS History. Also, generating reports is limited to 50 properties. If you have more properties you need to break up the searches appropriately.

How hard can it really be to display a full agent view that's really complete?

The Transition to Matrix

MLSListings Inc. entered into an agreement to use Tarasoft's Matrix back in early 2009. In June 2009, MLSListing's subscribers were told that we were gaining a free, alternative search tool that we could use in addition to the current ProSearch product. I suspect few, if anyone, used Matrix. Change is often resisted, especially if you're using a tool that works reasonably well. I also suspect that anyone who actually tried to use Matrix would quickly abandon it as it's inferior to ProSearch in any number of ways.

But I'll give MLSListings credit for attempting to find new solutions to help us...

This year we're told that ProSearch will be going away at the end of the year and around midyear the message is that Matrix will become our only search tool after November 15th. Again I'll give MLSListings credit for giving us over a year to transition to this new system, for providing countless tutorials, videos, offering classes and spending countless resources and money on this transition.

Unfortunately, Matrix is just a horrible product. I've never been forced to endure a worse software product in over 30 years of using, owning and programming computers. I've never had to use something that was years worse than what it was replacing. It's been in development for years and it still can't display a complete, full agent property report. The search is awkward at best, and the incorrect on-line help doesn't help. Ordering lists is cumbersome and the lists print in text too small to read. The entire interface is ill-conceived, poorly implemented, and full of bugs.

Yeah, I don't like Matrix.

I'd like to see both systems kept, at least for the time being. If Matrix can be repaired to at least provide the functionality of the old ProSearch then there would be less resistance to the change. If additional functionality can be added above what ProSearch offers then most would probably willingly switch to Matrix.

But if Tarasoft or MLSListings don't have the capabilities or expertize to make Matrix at least as useful as what it's replacing, it should be abandoned at the earliest opportunity.

I'll try to document the issues that I have with Matrix. Hopefully many of them can be addressed and corrected and we'll have a useful system. I'd also like to learn of any ways to work around the Matrix issues, and would especially like to learn of alternative tools that we could use.