We can hardly believe that Q4 has already come and past, yet looking back we were so busy it is not surprising it flew by. This quarter we continued to push out key optimizations that will enhance your day-to-day workflows exponentially.

From October to December our Product and Development teams focused on improving features within our larger suite of tools. Follow Up Schedules, Digital Contracts, Custom Reports and Registration Forms have all been tuned to be the most efficient versions they can be with the goal of further streamlining your processes and ensuring accuracy every time.

As you will read below, Spark is now Google Authenticated, a feature that not only protects your data, but makes our platform more secure for some of the major releases we have planned for next year. Most importantly, the sum of what we pushed out this quarter will make the daily tasks of Administrators, Sales Reps, Managers, and Conveyancer easier, freeing up more time to foster important client relations.

Spark is Google Authenticated

Our application has gone through rigorous penetration testing the last two months to prevent cyber attacks and ensure your data is protected at the Google standard.

Being officially Google Authenticated means Spark is more secure than ever before, which plays a large part in our new Email Sync feature (coming soon 👀), especially if you’re using G-Suite. Not only does this protect your important, proprietary data, but it has levelled up our entire IT infrastructure to the highest security standard.

Resend completed DocuSign documents & send documents without DocuSign fields from Spark

Need to send a deposit receipt in the same envelope? Or perhaps you’d like to resend the entire contract package to your new home owner? Further connecting the Spark and DocuSign experience, we added the ability to send documents without DocuSign specific fields as well as resending completed files, preventing you from having to exit Spark to perform these DocuSign specific actions.

With this optimization, all signature requests and send history is housed inside Spark so you can view these important details without having to log into your DocuSign account. Want to go one step further by tracking the opens of sent documents? Simply toggle on the “Certified Delivery” option which will record the date and time of when the recipient has opened and viewed their documents.

CC Conveyancing on Contract Packages

Inside the Signature Request modal, users now have the ability to CC Conveyancing Team Members when sending contracts for signatures. When toggled on, Team Members under the Conveyancing permission role will receive a private URL via email to download a copy of the completed documents.

With toggling this on with each signature request, even when documents are added after the initial contract package is complete, conveyancing will auto-receive any new files for their records, keeping your conveyancing team organized and up to date.

Custom Reports — Adaptable Detailed View Columns

With this update, users have the ability to choose how their data is ordered by replicating the contract step process builder experience. After clicking into the detailed view of a widget in custom reports, select the “Edit Columns” button on the right side of the detailed view. From there, you can choose to create sections, reorder or remove the default columns and add the desired column headers over, just like you would in the CSP builder. Columns that are organized from top to bottom in this modal will appear from left to right in the Detailed View and when exporting.

This is extremely helpful for teams who have standardized columns across all reports making the digestion and understanding of data simple, especially when auditing project data.

Custom Reports — Dynamic Date Filters

Spark now supports dynamic dates in Custom Reporting, providing the flexibility to report on contracts outside of your dedicated report time frame through additional filters in contract related widgets.

This is best used to report on contracts that may not have changed from the previous week’s activity and that roll into the current week’s to give you more clarity into contract activity on your projects.

Follow Up Schedules — Text Based Email Templates

Previously, when preparing a follow up schedule, users could choose from a predefined email marketing template. With this new enhancement, users can now send automated, text-based emails that look and feel like a standard email (similar to the experience of Spark’s Quick Compose), providing additional flexibility to your Sales Reps based on their personal email style when following up with leads.

Registration Form Settings — On-site Interaction Toggle

All leads receive a registration source when they complete a Spark generated form. Each form also has a type (Web or On-Site) and when setting up a registration form, you now have the option to choose if a web or on-site registration automatically logs an interaction. Interactions also have types, so upon choosing your form, you can now select the type of interaction that auto-logs to a contact. If no interaction type is specified, nothing will auto-log.

This is especially useful for busy teams who wish to auto-create a sales centre interaction when a prospect arrives for an in person tour.

Adding Marketing Source to Contact New Form

Accurate tracking and reporting of marketing sources is as good as gold in the new development industry, as it provides insights into a marketing campaign’s ROI from initial registrations all the way through to contract conversion.

99% of the time, our clients track a contact’s Marketing Source as the answer to the question “How did you hear about us?,” so we made a small update to the Project Questions section. This field is now identified with a “Marketing Source” prefix making it more distinct when setting up your project’s Q&A.

With adding Marketing Source to the Contact > New Form, right next to Registration Source, we have made it easier for teams to include this when manually creating a contact to ensure you’re getting that important data for your marketing efforts.