Third quarter recap
Ah, fall—we're glad you're finally here! We hope you and your community are enjoying the cooler weather as much as we are. The summer heat might have been stifling last quarter, but it couldn't stifle the release of new features and improvements here at HOA Express!
This past quarter was just as busy as Q2 and Q1, which means we have much to showcase below. Only our favorites could be highlighted, so be sure to check out our changelog for a more extensive list of recent improvements to our product!
🔁 Replace documents
It's now possible to replace a document on a "documents" page type or the file associated with a "single document" page type. Notably, this in-place update allows the document to maintain the same URL, so any links that point to the document will continue to work after the replacement.
📣 Communication preferences portal
To make managing your communication preferences easier—especially if you're a member of multiple community websites—we've introduced a dedicated communication preferences portal. This portal aggregates all of your preferences for receiving emails & texts across the HOA Express platform. You can quickly access this portal by clicking the "Preferences" link in the user dropdown menu at the top right of the Admin Portal. It's also shown after using a one-click unsubscribe link at the bottom of an email, making it easy to see other emails you may want to opt out of.
📝 Beta page management experience
Since 2023, we've been building an entirely new page management experience within the Admin Portal, powered by our modernized technologies. This has been a massive effort and we've been developing & releasing the ability to beta test this functionality as we go on a page-type-by-page-type basis. Last quarter, we released the ability to beta test the last of our 20+ page types: the homepage!
That means we're drawing close to promoting this new experience out of beta and letting it take the place of the current method of managing the content of pages via the community website. We're still putting the final touches on this new experience and preparing it for page editors (currently it's only available to beta test for admins with the "pages" privilege), so we'll announce more details about the exit from beta in the future!
➡️ Website migration service
Last quarter we launched our free website migration service! If you already have a community website and you're considering upgrading to HOA Express, now's a great time to make the switch. Our customer success team will handle the process of migrating content from your old website to a brand new, feature-rich website powered by HOA Express—for free!
✍️ More descriptive verbiage
We're always looking out for ways to improve the user friendliness of our product, in part by ensuring the verbiage is clear and descriptive throughout. This past quarter, we improved the clarity of text related to member import row issues, domain transfer activities, and the unit number registration setting. While this is something we do quite often, we made enough little improvements this past quarter that we wanted to highlight this effort!
📱 Lowered international credit costs
We were able to significantly lower the credit cost of sending text messages to recipients located outside of the United States and Canada! Sending to either U.S. or Canadian phone numbers will continue to cost just 1 text message credit each. For the updated list of credit costs, see: https://www.hoa-express.com/pricing-details/text-messages.
🔼 Additional modernized code
As part of our ongoing effort to modernize our tech stack, we released a new file serving site that handles serving protected files (e.g., documents, attachments, etc.) to authenticated users. This site is leveraged by our modernized front ends (e.g., the Admin Portal), and will be leveraged by other front ends as they're modernized in the future. Additionally, we modernized the code that powers the transfer of administration (TOA) process, taking the opportunity to also make the flow more user friendly and efficient.
✅ New onboarding step
We added a step to our onboarding checklist for new customers, pointing them toward the member registration settings. These settings tend to differ for different kinds of communities, so they're helpful to review & customize before members start registering!
🖋 Blog posts
In August, our customer success team published our latest "meet the team" blog article highlighting David—a software engineering manager at HOA Express. Check it out, and get to know other team members by reading past meet the team posts.
Wrapping up
The pace of new feature releases hasn't slowed this year, and we already have exciting improvements in the works for the final few months of the year, so stay tuned!
As always, like us on Facebook, follow us on LinkedIn and X, watch our changelog, and read our blog for all the latest happenings here at HOA Express.
Until next time.