Introducing the most popular new features of Aurora

Aurora – WinTOTAL version 5.0 – debuts for some 1,100 attendees at our first annual Technology Convention in Orlando this month. This is no mere redecoration of, or even just an "update" to, WinTOTAL. We've completely revamped WinTOTAL to make it even easier to use and more powerful, and to give you the ability to manage your business and produce reports in ways you just can't anywhere else.

We'd like to get you as excited about it as we are, even if you can't join us at the convention. So we're going to spend the next few editions of the e-newsletter introducing you to some of the most eagerly awaited and coolest new things about Aurora.

Order PowerView – minimizes formfilling
Of course, Aurora revolutionizes the way you create reports. That's the first thing you expect WinTOTAL to do! With Aurora, that process starts when you first receive and input order information. Introducing the new Order PowerView (See the Order PowerView video).

How cool would it be if you started a new appraisal, entered its subject address and while you were filling out other order details, WinTOTAL seamlessly in the background: pulled down census and FEMA information, placed a location and flood map in your report, provided driving directions to your subject, and then slid out a small banner showing cloneable appraisals you completed on the same street and within a half mile of your subject?

Well, it's here. And that's just a small part of the new Order PowerView in Aurora. It's the customizable form-based replacement for the Requester in Athena – all the functionality but quicker and easier to use.

Why is it form-based? A form has spectacular advantageous. Consider the new auto-complete. As you type a few letters into the keyboard, like say the Lender field, an Internet Explorer style drop down narrows your selection. In one keystroke, you can have all your lender fields completed throughout your report, down to delivery information to a loan officer. It even lets you save multi-field canned comments, which we call QuickLists, to hot keys. As a simple example, hit two keys at once and have your report's city, state, zip and county fields completed. Enter the first neighborhood field and have every field in that section, including comments, completed with another keystroke.

Do you use XSite or Outlook scheduling? Enter the details once in the Order PowerView and synch an appointment reminder with a single click. Or, send your client a quick status update on your progress so they don't hound and call you.

There's more… Tired of manually setting your file numbers? No more. Set up a simple or advanced naming convention – office-wide or just for yourself – to automatically auto number your reports. "Same as" features let you tie one field to others, eliminating re-typing. Combine the borrower and co-borrower into one transfer field.

If you want flexibility in changing minor form headings, you can have that too via Order PowerView's Minor Form Header Options. Set what you want as labels and transfers – Borrower/Client, Borrower, Client, Owner, Lender, Lender/Client or Appraiser.

AutoMap – eliminates mapping work
Even more exciting: Riding on the same Order PowerView AutoMap technology, if you enter comps, whether through Aurora's MLS importer, manually, or merging from older reports, in the background your location map smartly adds comp balloons for each and determines their proximity from the subject, which are inserted into your report. If you delete a comp, no more jumping to and editing your location map. It's removed automatically for you.

And naturally, if you own an XSite, life is even easier for you through Aurora's Order PowerView. New orders automatically flow into Aurora and any created via the Order PowerView flow back up to it. Great for status, simple or advanced business management as well as delivering the final report through your XSite using just a few clicks.

SmartMerge – data and forms management
Within Order PowerView, a great timesaver is SmartMerge (See the SmartMerge video). With SmartMerge, you can merge data and forms from an existing report or template. If this sounds like cloning, it should – we've developed SmartMerge as a more powerful, intuitive "cloning" method, which replaces what you know as cloning in other versions of WinTOTAL.

With Aurora's SmartMerge, you'll still be able to copy data from an entire report just like you currently do with cloning. But with SmartMerge, you can just mark individual forms to copy, or even specific sections of forms. You won't need to reproduce an entire report and then make tedious changes and deletions like you do when you clone a report now. Instead, you can copy sections of a form, an entire form, a whole report, or just the forms without the data. You can even choose whether or not the data you're merging in will overwrite any existing data in the current report.

In the coming weeks we'll introduce you to many other new features of Aurora, including single scrolling forms, Side-by-Side Comps, DirectFax and much more. And don't forget about the tons of documentation and online tutorial videos so you can get up to speed on anything you want to learn more about. We're adding to the available videos all the time, so check back, too.