Our product development team is constantly innovating, to build a better Alto software experience.
Every time we've added a new feature, we've notified all our users within Alto itself utilising in product messaging.
However, for a full list of the changes on a monthly basis such as new features, any improvements or product fixes to our software, please see the relevant articles in our 2023 Release Notes section of the Help Centre.
This article includes:
- New features
-
Improvements
- Duplicate property warning now includes information about the property that's already in the database
- Using the new add a property page when no Hometrack data is available
- Allow Withdrawn properties to be changed to Instructed
- Pre-populate the email subject line with the address details of the property being emailed
- Increased visibility of appraiser notes
- Create appraiser notes when adding a property
- Book a market appraisal form opens upon saving a property
- Performance improvements to contact records
- Instruct a property without requiring a Market Appraisal
- Appraiser Notes optimisations
- Opt-out from the new add a property page
- Product fixes
New features
To view a log of the latest new features within Alto:
- Sign in to Alto
- Click the ? icon in the bottom right corner of the screen
- Click Product updates
- A summary list of our Product updates display. Some new feature updates will include links that take you to the relevant page within Alto. Popup messaging and/or guides may then launch to provide you with more information on what's new
Roll-out of the new add a property page as the default way of adding property to Alto, including a new vendor/landlord selection
This new feature went live on 22nd November.
Our new method to add a property is being gradually rolled-out as the default way of adding property to Alto, replacing the old design. (There is an opt-out if you want to go back).
As part of this, we’ve also launched a new way to search for a vendor/landlord. This new way provides more contextual information to help you select the right person (including details of existing properties they own and when they were registered), and also includes Archived contacts.
Added Alto navigation bar for Alto on mobile
This new feature went live on 20th November.
As part of feedback received for Alto on mobile, to improve navigation and keep consistency with the desktop equivalent of Alto, we've added the navigation bar.
Property timeline on the new add a property page now includes Zoopla listing history
This new feature went live on 7th November.
Within our new method to add a property, we now include Zoopla listing data on the Property timeline.
This will help you to have a more informed conversation with prospects as they'll have more information about their listing history (and prices).
Improvements
Duplicate property warning now includes information about the property that's already in the database
This improvement went live on 22nd November.
Within our new method to add a property, we’ve added more information to the duplicate property warning message to provide you with some at-a-glance information about the existing property in your database.
Using the new add a property page when no Hometrack data is available
This improvement went live on 22nd November.
When this feature launched, we solely relied on Hometrack data which covers c.70% of UK properties. Since then we have enriched the feature with Zoopla data which has allowed us to remove the ‘dead-end’ when no Hometrack information was found.
Now, rather than seeing an error message, you'll be able to access the add a property page with Zoopla data provided, and the fields open in Edit mode.
Allow Withdrawn properties to be changed to Instructed
This improvement went live on 20th November.
We’ve added the option to change the status of a Withdrawn property to Instructed.
Previously, Alto wasn't as flexible and only allowed the status to be changed to Archived or Available.
For more information on Changing the status of a property, click here
Pre-populate the email subject line with the address details of the property being emailed
This improvement went live on 20th November.
We've released the functionality to pre-populate email Subject lines with the address of the property being emailed about.
This will give contextual information about the message for applicants, vendors and landlords.
Increased visibility of appraiser notes
This improvement went live on 14th November.
We've added a section to the Pre-Appraisal tab to allow the Appraiser notes to be read, and added a link to edit the notes (which will take you to the Post-Appraisal tab to input/edit as normal).
Create appraiser notes when adding a property
This improvement went live on 13th November.
When adding a property, you can now create Appraiser notes. This provides a way of adding important information which may help in winning the instruction but that may not be otherwise captured in the property details.
Book a market appraisal form opens upon saving a property
This improvement went live on 9th November.
We've tweaked this feature so that upon saving a property, you'll automatically have the book a market appraisal form open on page load.
This will reduce the clicks/navigation needed if you want to book the market appraisal immediately after creating the property.
Performance improvements to contact records
This improvement went live on 7th November.
In the past, whenever a contact record was loaded, it would load all of the contacts transactions regardless of whether you accessed the transactions or not. From our analysis, this proved to have a large performance hit to the Alto database and to the overall performance of Alto.
Therefore, we've made changes to the contacts transactions load call so that it is invoked only when you access the Transactions side menu tab on a contacts record.
Our analysis of these changes show a significant gain in performance to contact load times (especially ones with a lot of transactions) and some gains to Alto as a whole.
Instruct a property without requiring a Market Appraisal
This improvement went live on 7th November.
We've updated the information message so that you're no longer informed to book a market appraisal in order to instruct a property.
The new message tells you to enter a Proposed price on the Post-Appraisal top tab.
For those of you who have direct instructions, you'll no longer need to book in a market appraisal just to progress the property.
Appraiser Notes optimisations
This improvement went live on 7th November.
Appraiser Notes have been decoupled from valuation appointments so the notes will always persist through re-bookings, cancellations or if they exist before a market appraisal is booked.
We've also made the Appraiser Notes field wider so it's easier to view the comments.
Opt-out from the new add a property page
This improvement went live on 1st November.
In preparation for our new method to add a property becoming the default way to add property, we’ve added a section to the top of the page which will include an opt-out link and request for feedback.
Product fixes
Fixed an issue where documents were being overridden when uploaded against a contact record for Jupix to Alto customers
This product fix went live on 20th November.
We were made aware that documents uploaded against a contact record in Alto were overriding existing ones. From our investigation, this issue only affected customers that had migrated from Jupix to Alto.
We have released a fix that addresses this issue and that'll prevent this behaviour from happening again.
Fixed incorrect records showing when navigating through tabs
This product fix went live on 8th November.
There was an issue where users were navigating to the wrong records when switching between tenancies and tabs. This caused an issue as wrong details were added to the wrong records.
This has now been fixed.