“We must always have all the documents relating to all the properties, all the rental units, to hand, and these documents must be well filed…”.
“If the team grows, if a new person arrives, they must be able to find the document they need in an instant.”
We often hear these echoes from our customers, who own and manage multiple rental units: behind the scenes, good organization of the many and varied documents linked to rental entities is essential to management.
That’s why we’ve developed a “documents” functionality tailored to the imperatives of rental management. François, Founder & Product Owner, and Sébastien, Lead Dev, look at the choices to ensure a truly useful feature – one that enhances the user experience, without weighing it down.
“Documents”: what is it all about?
François: All the documents a user needs, from leases to ILL certificates, quotes, or photos of work, are organized and accessible in a tree of folders. Each of these folders is linked to an entity in Up2Rent.
In practice,
- When a boiler inspection is created, the certificate attached to this inspection is automatically filed in the correct folder in the tree structure, attached to the rental unit to which the boiler belongs.
- If the user deletes this certificate, it is deleted from the application and the folder.
- If this certificate is attached to the lease contract, the manager can decide to share it with the tenant. If the document is suitable, the parties can be invited to sign it.
We wanted a functionality that would be as familiar to users as Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive… but that would take into account the specific requirements of rental management.
How did you define your roadmap?
Sébastien: We meet the needs of those who own and/or manage numerous rental units: multiple owners, rental management agencies, developers, and real estate investment companies.
Their needs guided our product roadmap. We wanted our tree structure to
- follow a standardized organization, to which a new team member could easily add
- always include the latest versions of documents, from meter readings to ILL certificates
- all users find order where they need it, and flexibility where they want it…
We have also taken into account these conditions for trouble-free use:
- All documents are stored with the highest possible level of security: everything is stored in the EU by AWS and replicated in six data centers.
- Managers can filter, search, and select their documents across the entire tree structure, and download them with a single click.
What were the constraints during implementation?
Sébastien: Each user had to be able to classify documents in the most intuitive way. And every document used on Up2Rent had to be filed in a coherent place in “Documents”.
Here are some of the elements we implemented to achieve this:
- We fixed certain folders in the structure, with discretion. For example, an EPB certificate or a boiler inspection certificate from one rental unit can never be found in the sub-folder of another rental unit.
- From one property or unit to another, the same folders or subfolders are present by default. Users don’t have to recreate them; they can simply follow the existing organization.
- In addition, we were keen to implement those elements that make day-to-day work easier: users can choose between a list view or a thumbnail view, and know at a glance which document they’re dealing with. When creating a folder, users can link it to an existing folder or import several files at once. Automatic translation is also available.
We wanted the product to be both structured and open. This is both a UX and UI challenge, but it’s the price we pay for having functionality that’s both powerful and easy to use.
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