We wish you a very happy and prosperous 2010.

Here are the new features that are available in your Adda now.

Single Sign-on

If you are a multiple home owner, you may be familiar with this: If you are registered and approved in multiple Addas, you can login once ( single sign-on) and  easily switch between the multiple Addas to which you belong. You used the Adda List drop down box below the Logout Button. However when you login, you will be logged in automatically to the first Adda you had registered in.

Not anymore.

Now you have a setting in My Profile page to select the “default Adda” you want to be logged in first. Later you can switch between the Addas from the DropDown.

Masking Names

You already have the ability to mask your phone numbers and email address. Starting today, you can mask your name also. Once you opt for this setting, your name will not show up on search, nor on the resident’s directory. However if you make any forum posts, notice etc – your name will be displayed.

Please note that the administrators of your Adda will have access to all the masked details ( name, email, phone ).

Advance Realtime Notification Settings

Earlier there was only one “Realtime Notification” checkbox in My Profile page that controlled the alerts for new forum posts, polls, notices or new file uploads.

Now we have separated the Realtime Notification option of Forum from the rest. This means that now you can choose to be instantly notified when a new poll or a notice is created but not get instant notifications when forum discussion happens. Please go to the My Profile page to update your notification settings.

Enjoy!
ApartmentAdda Team

We have upgraded the Adda Forums and Notice Board . Here are the list of changes :

1. Introducing Forum Topic Number

Every forum topic that was created, or you will be creating henceforth will get a unique topic number. The emails you will receive will all carry this unique number. When you reply to the forum emails, Adda mail server will use this unique topic number to match your post to the right topic.

This has other advantages – just by seeing the topic number you will know how new or old a topic is.

Note : During this transition, when you reply to an old email it will get assigned a new topic number – so a few threads might split – inform us and we will join them. This will not happen if you reply directly on the Forum after logging into ApartmentAdda.

2. Introducing reply-to sender option

For users  who are used to google-groups, we are introducing a feature where the reply-to will have the sender’s email address instead of your group’s email address. This will enable one-to-one conversation where required. You can send a request to ApartmentAdda support to enable this feature for your Adda.

3.  Breadcrumbs and Message Numbers

We have introduced breadcrumbs for easy navigation of the forum topics and posts. Also each post now carries the ordering number – like how you receive in the email.

4. Participation poll in Notice Board

For an event, like New Year party, when you create a notice you can enable a Participation Poll right on the Event notice. A resident can now RSVP saying how many are attending from their flat – so you can have a quick count of attendees for effective planning.

5. Comments in Notice Board

Now you can add your comments to a Notice. This will send an email notification to the Notice owner. You can also opt to “Watch this notice”, so any comments posted on the notice will send you an email alert as well.

Cheers!
ApartmentAdda Team

In the beginning, every post made to the Forum sent an email to all users (except those who have opted out), informing them that they could log into ApartmentAdda to participate in the conversation.  Some of our users, especially the blackberry wielding ones, wished to reply to the post right away, by email – a la yahoogroup.

ApartmentAdda was happy to satisfy their urge to participate, at the same time not hamper the ‘Forum’ experience – by releasing the feature “Participate-by-email” .  This feature lets you swap emails – just like yahoogroup, and your emails get posted in the Forums as well!  So, if your laptop is out of juice, stopping you from logging on to ApartmentAdda, but you want to inform everyone that the builder is sitting right next to you on a 3 hour flight (woohoo!)- you could thumb an email from your handheld to ‘forum AT apartmentadda DOT com‘!! This posted a message in your Adda’s Forum, as well as notified neighbours by email.

Since the release of “Participate-by-email”, many valuable suggestions have poured in, and our team has been pounding away at their keyboard to implement the selected ones.

Today, we are very happy to announce the release of a bunch of enhancements to the “Participate-by-email” feature.

Here are the top two:

Personalized email ids

Previously to participate in the forum using email, the user was sending email to ‘forumATapartmentaddaDOTcom‘. ApartmentAdda internally mapped this email to the user’s specific Adda and posted it. While this was elegant, it limited the user of multiple Addas.
Now each Adda has its unique email id. For example, the email id of Sharlow Apartments is sharlow-forum AT apartmentadda DOT com. For the adminforum it is sharlow-adminforum AT apartmentadda DOT com. We have contacted the Moderator of each Adda to ensure they like their email id.

To the user of multiple Addas: Now you can participate in all your Addas with one user-id (your email-id). Just ensure you are writing to the email-id of the right Adda!

Facelift to the email appearance

Now  you can see the forum trail in email – just enough to give you the context, at the same time not overloading your inbox!
Also, Forum posts come color coded Blue’n'white in emails. Admin-Forum posts come in Grey’n'white. No more ‘oops’ moments with writing to the Forum with a message intended for the Admin-Forum.
Here are the screenshots.

Forum post in email

Admin-Forum post in email

There are many other small improvements in this feature, which we’d let our users discover as they use them!

Do let us know if you like what you see! And keep those suggestions coming in!

Love and Cheers!
ApartmentAdda Team