Coming Soon: Moving website management components from the Intranet to G.J. Software

What’s changing

In the August 2021 G.J. Software release, we introduced several new features to begin the process of decoupling the G.J. Intranet from gjgardner.com and gjgardner.com.au. These features are live in the system, but they do not currently sync to the website. We plan on making that transition in an upcoming release. This is part of our transition away from the Intranet to make GJS the source of all information related to G.J. Gardner franchises. The following functionality has been added:

• Fields necessary to publish offices on the websites.
• Fields necessary to list staff members on the websites.
• Integration endpoints requried to get/oull information from the websites.
• While the functionality has been added, the websites are still sourcing information from the Intranet until we’re officially ready to make it live.

Who’s impacted 

All offices in Australia and the United States.

Why it matters

Currently, website information is pulling information from the website. However, we previously announced our plans to deprecate the Intranet in multiple phases. The largest and most complicated phase in this project is decoupling the website and Intranet. This process requires a carefully choreographed implementation of multiple changes to our systems. By introducing the features described in this update we are creating the infrastructure needed to support the change when we’re ready to make GJS the official source of information displayed on the website.

Additional details 

There are multiple interconnected modules in Intranet that are required for our websites to function. Data from these modules feed into a middleware via API connections that we refer to as the Marketing Hub. Currently, the Marketing Hub sits between the website and Intranet. Now we’re building the required functionality into GJS and the Marketing Hub that will allow us to replace the Intranet. Once development is complete, we’ll then off the integration from the Intranet in a coordinated effort. The following are modules being developed within the Marketing Hub and GJS:

• Plan Bank: The plan bank is the brains behind the home designs, display homes, house and land packages, and just about every visual element you see on the website.
• House & Land: H&L Packages cannot exists without the plan bank. We also need to be able to publish H&L on 3rd-party sites such as realestate.com.au and domain.com.au.
• Lead Notification: Leads from H&L and everywhere else on the website need to be sent somewhere. This means we need a lead notification system tied to staff in an office.
• Office Information: We need office details including address, phone number, and service post codes to display on the website. This is how to route web leads to the appropriate office.
• Staff Information: We need staff details including name, email address, phone number, profile picture, and position to display under the Meet the Team section on the website. This is how we assign H&L Packages and route leads to the appropriate person.

There are a handful of other requirements, but these are some of the most complex ones to create. As part of the August release, we introduced the following functionality:

Office details

Added new field Public Listed checkbox for offices to Franchisee System Variables. This is the button that will be used to activate or deactivate an office on the website.

However, we decided to remove the ability of office staff to update information on franchisee system variables. This is because we need to maintain uniformity in the information displayed on the website such as the format of the website and phone number. Franchisees will need to request Support to update this information.

Staff details

At the bottom of each page is the Meet the team section. The phone number and email of the staff displayed will come from the employee contact record in GJ Software.

Users can now add a profile image which will be displayed on the website.

Adding staff to the website is optional. However, we added a new field List on Website to Setup > Manager > User details.

We also added a new field called Position for users, which is used to show the role of the staff member.

Getting started

The features are available, but they are not live on the website. It’s important to work with franchisees to make sure profile pictures have been added, the correct offices are Publically Listed, and the correct Staff and Staff Positions are listed as well.

Rollout pace 

We’re currently rolling out these features in sequence and have not determined when the official cutoff between the Intranet and website will be. We’ll communicate more information and timelines for when further changes will be needed.

Roadmap 

We’re actively working on the plan bank, lead distribution system, email notification recipients functions from the Intranet, house and land packages, Domain and REA Integrations, Google My Business Integrations, and a suite of other changes in the project.