Inside this issue:

Zoom Versus Default Font for Notes 1

User Group Meeting Highlights 2

Increase Web Traffic, Alleviate Your Work Load 3

Right Click and Search 4-5

Setting Your County Number for DOV’s within 6

A Pre-Edit Message to Myself 7

User Group Photos 8-9

What’s Your Plans? 10

Getting to Know the Newest Vanguard 10-11

Photo Contest 2018 11

Check and Tags CAMAvision v22 12-15

Are You on the Latest and Greatest? 16-17

Did You Know??? 17

Query Wizard...Little Things Add Up 18-19

Multi-parcel Sale-Data Entry 20-21

Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain 21-22

Winter 2017

Excellence achieved through people, products, and service. TM

Zoom Versus Default Font for Notes

Vanguard Appraisals, Inc. 1065 Sierra Ct. NE Suite D Cedar Rapids, IA 52402

Phone# 319-365-8625 Fax #319-365-0142 Toll Free 1-800-736-8625

www.camavision.com

By: Nick Klein

A feature introduced into CAMAvision® v18 (2013) was the ability to apply a zoom level for viewing notes and the legal description. This feature is variable per-user and allows the on-screen viewing size of the text to be adjusted to suit individual needs. What’s cool about this feature is it can enlarge the text without actually changing anything. Plus, it applies to old and new notes and does not carry over onto printed reports.

Setting a default font for notes is a new feature introduced in CAMAvision v22 (2017). Applied system-wide, an admin can define the default font style, size and color for notes. Unlike the zooming feature, the default font only applies to new notes going forward. And unlike the zooming, which is for on-screen display, the font style can be visible on printed reports. Naturally, users still have the ability to change the font styling within individual notes, but this new setting could save a step or two for some users.

Both of these features share a similar ability to enlarge (or shrink!) the text size for notes but serve two very different purposes. It may be tempting to set a large font style for all your new notes thinking they will be easier to read – and they certainly will. However, this styling can carry over to reports and has the potential to increase the number of printed pages.

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By: Teresa Ellerby

For 2017, we completed seven greatly attended user group meetings.

Nebraska meeting was held at the Country Inn & Suites in Lincoln April 18th thru 20th. We had 24 attendees with 10 different jurisdictions present.

Illinois meeting was held at the Holiday Inn Bloomington May 3rd & 4th. We had 22 attendees with 10 different jurisdictions present.

South Dakota meeting was held at the Arrowwood Resort & Conference Center Cedar Shores in Oacoma July 11th & 12th. We had 46 attendees with 23 different jurisdictions present.

Missouri meeting was held at the Stoney Creek Inn & Conference Center in Columbia August 8th & 9th. We had 147 attendees with 36 different jurisdictions present.

North Dakota meeting was held at the Quality Inn (formerly the Comfort Inn) Bismarck October 24th & 25th. We had 82 attendees with 43 different jurisdictions present.

Minnesota meeting was held at the Holiday Inn St. Cloud October 26th & 27th. We had 54 attendees with 23 different jurisdictions present.

Iowa meeting was held at the Cedar Rapids Marriott in Cedar Rapids November 15th & 16th. We had 221 attendees with 93 different jurisdictions present and five from the Department of Revenue.

Thanks to all who attended.

Future User Group Meeting Topics Mentioned from the Evaluations Queries

Commercial

New Enhancements

Tips, Tricks and Shortcuts

Land Values, Sales Analysis

Comments On User Group Meeting

Very Informative.

Great Conference. Enjoyed the Jeopardy

Outstanding, Friendly and Educational

I just want to compliment Vanguard and their employees-always helpful-always friendly. I always look forward to the user group meeting.

I enjoyed it, Thank You.

Looking forward to the 50th!

Excellent! Thank You

User Group Meeting Highlights Back to Index

PAGE 3 VANGUARD APPRAISALS, INC. WINTER 2017

Increase Web Traffic, Alleviate Your Workload By: Nicholas Bowers

A good assessor website is like having an extra employee working for you. It’s an employee who works 24/7 and can be the face of your office. It’s a helpful employee that gives your property owners information and alleviates some of your offices workload. What good does that do you if you are not getting people to your website? Here are some simple ideas to drive traffic to your assessor website, and at the same time, help you decrease some of your workload in the office.

Promote your assessor website, and show the public where their parcel data is located on the Internet. Promoting your website by applying the link in the letter head of official correspondence, such as Assessment Notices, can help decrease some on your office’s workload.

Add a link to the parcel data on your jurisdiction‘s website. If your jurisdiction has an official website or your office has a web page, add the link to the parcel data within that website. Single out your link to make it prominent, so the public can see the link in plain sight.

Some jurisdictions use the help of social media, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. The use of social media to promote your parcel data, blog posts, articles, calendar, and other useful content on your assessor website can help you increase your web traffic, making content is easier to find for your property owners. By using your social media and all of its “followers” (as well as users in your followers’ networks), it allows them to spread, share and pass your information to wherever it is needed.

Jurisdictions that create blogs and articles see their web traffic rise as well. Whether it’s blogging through social media or creating an article and linking back to your jurisdiction’s website, they both help drive traffic to your website and spread information to the public quickly and easily. By blogging and posting up articles for the public, it helps answer most of their inquiries and gives property owners information to move forward.

Become a contributor online. Be active in online groups and on websites that are relevant to your website and the public. Participate in conversations about your industry. The more you engage with your community and the property owners, the more exposure and profile visits returned. For those who use social media, if your profile contains a link to your website, then you have turned your engagement into another channel for website traffic. Just be sure to contribute moderately and in a sincere way, and avoid including links to your website in your comments, as this would be considered spam.

You can increase web traffic by being listed in hubs, portals, online directories and review sites. For most of these sites, your profile will have a link to your website, so actively update these listings. Vanguard Appraisals currently has seven Assessor Hubs for you and your property owners to use and gather data conveniently. The Assessor Hubs generate a lot of traffic to your website, and links are easy for property owners to remember. Another benefit our Assessor Hubs possess are higher search ratings for the web, so people can find your website quickly and easily.

illinoisAssessors.com

iowaAssessors.com

minnesotaAssessors.com

missouriAssessors.com

nebraskaAssessors.com

northdakotaAssessors.com

southdakotaDirectors.com

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By: Nick Klein

A new feature appearing in CAMAvision® version 22 is integrated web searching via a right-click mouse menu. Simply select some text within a note, legal, or the permit comment editor, right-click and press Search. The user’s default web browser will open, and the search engine named in the menu will be called.

Based on the right-click and Search menu found in today’s web browsers, this handy little gem can save you some steps when you wish to quickly look up information about a parcel. In fact, the ability to execute a search of this type has become so ubiquitous it has found its way into applications beyond web browsers. Microsoft Outlook and Word (2010 and above) are just a couple of examples.

Google Chrome and MS Word’s right-click search menus

Perhaps you need to look up the meaning of some text in a note; maybe it’s a trademark or the name of a manufacturer. Highlight the text, right-click and Search. Naturally, you can still copy the text to the clipboard and paste it into your web browser, but this new feature is quicker and accomplishes the same task in fewer steps. Plus, it projects more of a seamless experience between your applications.

Popular search engines like Google and Bing do a pretty good job of interpreting whether a search string is an address or lat/long coordinates. However, just like your typical web search, the more complete you can define the criteria, the better the results. When you’re looking up an address, these search engines are most accurate when the address is completely filled out – in particular, the postal zip code.

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Right-Click and Search Back to Index

Right-Click and Search Cont’d

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Over the years, we’ve added the ability to click web links within notes to take you out to the Internet. This new search feature takes that concept one step further and web-enables any text within a note! It’s something that I’ve come to rely on pretty much whenever I’m browsing the web and something that I think will be very useful within CAMAvision too.

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Setting Your County Number for DOV’s within CAMAvision

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By: Mike Weeks

In a previous update to CAMAvision®, we set your Jurisdiction number to populate on the DOV’s that can be printed out of our system. Unfortunately, some of these slipped through the crack and didn’t update. If you have to hand enter this field on your DOV, the fix is really quite simple.

Go into your Preferences under File

From there, click on the System Contact tab as shown below. At the bottom-left, you will find a field named County#/Jurisdiction ID. If this is blank, the update didn’t work correctly. Enter the correct information, and click OK.

Once you’ve clicked Ok and updated this, I recommend logging out of CAMAvision® and then logging back in. This should have fixed the issue on the DOV, and now your County#/Jurisdiction ID should populate correctly.

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By: Terri Scheuermann

Many users have requested a Pre-edit reminder popup message for a variety of reasons. These messages could be a reminder to check select fields upon editing to making the parcel privacy messages jump out at the user. The free-form message can be as long or short as desired and specific to each user. Office data entry staff may be given different reminders than appraisers that list and review properties.

For those users that only wish to have a popup warning about parcel privacy flags there is a setting to Include parcel privacy, inactive PDF, etc. warnings. Checking this setting will add an informational text to the message should a parcel have a privacy flag set or appear in a retired/inactive PDF.

This Pre-edit message is set in Preferences ~ Pre-edit Message. Remember that this is a user setting and not a network setting so everyone can have their own message.

A Pre-Edit Message to Myself

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For more photos view our photo gallery on https://www.facebook.com/camavision

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PAGE 10 WINTER 2017 VANGUARD APPRAISALS , INC.

What’s Are Your Plans? By: Scott Johnson

I have had the privilege to work in many states over the last couple of decades, and even though each state requires the assessor to set the value of a property at market value, each one seems to find a way to do it differently than their neighboring state. (To clarify that, I will exclude Agricultural values from this state-ment, because no one does agricultural land and/or buildings the same.)

What is your plan for the future of residential values in your jurisdiction? I always tell people that “I live and die by statistics.” The numbers on the reports tell me a story of your jurisdiction. What will the stats tell you about your jurisdiction? Will the story have a good ending? That’s up to you!

Recently, I was asked to look at some statistical reports for a jurisdiction. The Median was good for state requirements, in their case at 94.41, the COD was 16.80 and their PRD was 1.02. That looks really good until I dug deeper and found that their land-to-building ratios or allocation was greater than 1-to-10, and at the extremes the ratio was 1-to-30 and 1-to-50 at the very high end. The assessor was using map area factors greater than 1.40, which indicates that they are much too low in their manual level. It is so important that you reset the system on a regular basis. If you don’t, you will get to a point where there will be very large swings in value differences between the upper - and lower-end valued properties. You don’t like to see that, the public doesn’t like to see it, and it is avoidable if you just follow the steps.

The steps are as follows: 1) Land values, 2) Manual Level, 3) Depreciation and 4) Map Area factors. Once you have completed these 4 steps in this order, you can make individual parcel adjustments as needed for Functional and Economic Obsolescence.

The tools are in CAMAvision. If you need assistance, please don’t be afraid to ask! I was a new assessor many years ago and learned very quickly that I didn’t know everything. I learned by asking questions! Don’t waste time or money doing the wrong thing or heading down the wrong path, only to find out that you have to back up and redo months or years of work. Ask for help!

Please help us welcome new employee Glen Dawson to the VAI family. Glen was hired July 31, 2017. Glen works as an Appraisal Associate. Glen was born at Ellsworth Air Force Base, SD and raised in Oelwein, Iowa.

He Served 6 Years in the US Air Force as Crew Chief on the AC-130 U Gunships and was stationed at Hurlburt Field Air Force Base. He did a tour in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He graduated from Upper Iowa University with an MBA in Organizational Development and a BA in Human Resource Management.

In his free time, Glen is an avid gamer, enjoys working on his cars, and playing with his dogs.

Getting To Know the Newest Vanguard Employees

Brett McConhay started with Vanguard Aug 30th, 2017. He was born and raised in Wapello, IA. After attending two years at Kirkwood in Cedar Rapids, Brett lived in St. Louis, Hartford, CT, and Dallas, TX before returning closer to home about eight years ago and now lives in Burlington. He lives with his girlfriend, Mackenzie, and his three children: Brylee(9), Kinsley(8), and Brady (5). Outside of work, Brett is an avid sports fan and loves his Hawkeyes, Cubs and Packer but spends most of his free time with his family.

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PAGE 11 WINTER 2017 VANGUARD APPRAISALS, INC.

Amber Wilson was hired November 20, 2017. Amber was born and raised in Waterloo, IA and moved to Cedar Rapids after High School. She has a 10 year old son, with whom she enjoys playing board games and watching movies. She recently got married and has three fur-babies with her husband: Walter the Pug, Sissy the Cavichonne, and Rogue the cat. All three are rescues and fit in well with the family. In her free time, Amber likes to go to the movies, play board games, and craft as much as possible.

Lyle Rossen started with Vanguard October 04, 2017. Lyle was born and raised in Burlington, Iowa. He has been employed at Burlington Fire Dept for 30 years. He has also been a long time Realtor, general contractor and housing inspector in the area. Lyle has 4 children:, Karmen (24) is a YMCA coordinator, Lake (22) is a senior at Clarke University, Grace (20) is a junior at Iowa State University, and Blaise (18) is a senior at Burlington High School. Lyle enjoys watching his son Lake play baseball for Clarke and is excited to watch his youngest finish his senior season at Burlington High and then move on to play for Southeastern Community College next year. He loves to play bad golf, go to Hawkeye Football games, and watch Green Bay Packers.

2018 PHOTO CONTEST Photo Contest Rules

1. A photo, series of photos, or video can be submitted

2. The Vanguard bumper stickers must be visible, readable

3. Content of the photo/video must be Facebook appropriate

When the Vanguard staff chooses a photo, you will have 30 days to get as many likes as you can.

Submit digital images by email to brad@camavision.com, or mail on a CD to Vanguard Appraisals, Inc. 1065 Sierra Ct NE Suite D Cedar Rapids, IA 52402. Put Attn: Contest 2018

Digital photographs only-no printed photographs will be accepted

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PAGE 12 VANGUARD APPRAISALS , INC. WINTER 2017

Check and Tags CAMAvision v22 By: Marty Barrett

Introduction For years, the check-tag system of CAMAvision has been a simple set of four fields that could be activated (i.e., “tagged”) to make categorizing and searching for these parcels a little bit easier. For some, the “tag” was a reminder to “check” something, hence the check-tag terminology. The purpose of a check-tag could be defined in a variety of ways. Perhaps the simplest was a Field or Office check with a date to indicate when the work should be completed. Even the interpretation of the date was intended to be generic as it could be a deadline date or an assessment year date. In past versions of CAMAvision, the user was limited to one Parcel check (Field or Office, etc.), one Sales check, one Exempt check, one Review check, and one User-defined check per parcel.

While workable for some, its limitations forced users to think of creative methods to expand the number of tags per parcel. Some data fields were repurposed, while others used the trick of commandeering the Permits. Many clients created pseudo-permits to store multiple checks. Using the permits overcame the limitation of having only one Field/ Office check but created other problems. For instance, permits are typically desired on websites and property reports, where check-tags tend to be internal work reminders for the appraiser.

Parcel “tags” appearing in the Permits

The User check, a recent addition to CAMAvision, was intended to alleviate some of the limitations of having only one Field or Office check. This quickly got used, and it left users asking for more.

Nowadays, clients need a more robust system to track the workflow of parcels. The assessor’s office of today is expected to collect and track ever increasing volumes of parcel data. This is why the check-tags fields were designed, but the old methods simply do not work with the demands of today.

For CAMAvision v22, the new Checks table for parcels has been completely rewritten from the ground up. It gives the user a flexible management system driven by multiple user-definable tables and a new but familiar user interface.

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PAGE 13 VANGUARD APPRAISALS, INC. WINTER 2017

Parcel Maintenance Checks and Tags have been reimagined as a multi-record grid similar in many respects to Permits (off of which it’s based). We’ve taken the old, rigid method of Parcel, Sale, Exempt, Review and User checks and turned it into a multi-record system capable of complex combinations of check reminders, workflow tags – you name it.

The new screen allows a user to keep permits where they belong and assign checks or multiple reminders of any kind imaginable to a parcel. Use it as workflow tracking and keep multiple years. It utilizes three user editable tables, and its contents are fully searchable with the Query Wizard. Additionally, these checks and tags will not show up with permits on reports and websites, where only true permits should be displayed.

The storage of records is not sorted by any one particular field. Users are free to arrange the records in a manner best suited to their respective offices, and tools exist (on the toolbar) to move records higher or lower in the list. The Sale Check Wizard within the sales screen works just as before but with one notable exception. Because a parcel is no longer limited to one check, when a sale is added and the Sales Check Wizard is invoked, a new Sales Check record will be added to the Check-Tags. In other words, existing (and presumably old) sales checks will not be overwritten.

Conversion

In the conversion to version 22, your existing Checks and Tags are automatically moved to the new table format. Each existing tag now gets its own line. The Parcel, Sale, Exempt and Review check will automatically get a line in the new table if they were active and keep the date you had set.

All existing tags will be assigned to Normal priority, and Parcel checks with have their respective Type assigned. A User check will get a category of Review, and the User1 field will have the User flag assigned from the old layout. The dates for each of the old checks is converted exactly as-is to the new Status Date field.

Table Structure The table where all this information is stored is called CHECKS. It is available within the Query Wizard and should be linked to the GENERAL table. Similar to permits or sales, there is a zero-to-many relationship with the GENERAL and CHECKS table: a parcel record in the GENERAL table may have zero or more entries in the CHECKS table. All the fields are available for searching and filtering.

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Field #

Field Name Field Type

Query Wizard Notes

1 Priority Integer Priority The color code for Check Tag. The color only appears when status is Yes or Recheck

2 Category Integer Category_Code Lookup to Check-Tag Category table 3 Type Integer Type_Code Lookup to Parcel Status table 4 User Integer User1_Code Lookup to User1 Table 5 Status Integer Status Yes / No / Recheck / Completed 6 Status Date Date Status_Date The due date / completed date 7 Assigned To String Entry_Initials Initials for person assigned Check 8 Comments String Comment Free-form text (1000 chars). Can use pick-a-

note and URL support for links like in Permits

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Check and Tags CAMAvision v22 Cont’d By: Marty Barrett

Priority The priority field allows you to state the importance of a specific check-tag. When the Status of the respective check is Yes or Recheck, it will even apply a color-coded highlight at the beginning of the line for easy identification.

Check Tag Category The Check Tag Category table allows you to setup which categories of check tags can be assign to parcels. The preassigned categories of Parcel, Sales, Exempt, Review and VAI cannot be removed or modified, but you can add additional categories to your liking.

Check Tag Type The Check Tag Type is stored in the Parcel Status Table. Previously, this table was limited to only categories for a

parcel check. No longer limited to just a Parcel check, it can be expanded and used for new check-tag combinations.This table is completely open ended and you can add additional Types if you would like.

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2

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Check Tag User 1 The User1 table allows the user another way to subdivide parcels to their liking. Many counties have used this field to determine when parcels need to be reappraised on a four-five-or six- year basis. Other jurisdictions have used the field to assign parcels to specific appraisal staff.

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Assigned To The assigned-to field allows the user to assign the tag to any user who has their initials in the system, similar to Lister Initials. It is also a free-form field and can by hand-typed if a particular set of initials isn’t present in the system.

Status Date The Status date allows the user to assign a due date or a completion date.

Status The status allows you to mark whether a check is active or inactive or needs to be rechecked. This also determines if the priority coloring is shown. The priority coloring will only be shown if the Status is Yes or Recheck. This combo-box is not currently editable by the user.

7 Comments Free-form text (1000 character) field. Can use Pick-a-Notes and has URL support for links like in Permits.

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Are You on the Latest and Greatest? By: VCS Tech Support

When it comes to software like CAMAvision, it is ideal to keep up on updates to ensure you have all the latest and greatest features, as well as any necessary coding changes. But how do you know if you’re up-to-date or not? Version 21 added a helpful indicator to let users know when there is a newer version available than what is currently running on your system. To utilize this feature however, this is a User Preference that needs to be enabled.

Within CAMAvision, if you go up to File and choose Preference For {your name}, this will bring up the User Preferences and Shortcuts dialog. Within this dialog, there is an option called “Connect to Internet on startup to refresh main page.” If this option is checked, the home screen of your CAMAvision will notify you if there is a more current version of CAMAvision to install.

If this option is not enabled and you decide to enable it, you will need to close CAMAvision and re-open the program to have the main screen refresh. Once the main screen refreshes, if you are not on the latest and greatest version of CAMAvision, a message will appear in the Notes section to notify you of a program update, as shown in the print screen below.

If you see this note on the home screen of CAMAvision, this indicates our programmers have released an update to the program build currently installed on your system. We highly recommend that you or your IT department download and apply this update on the server where CAMAvision is installed to keep you up-to-date with the most current version of CAMAvision.

We are often asked, “What does this update include?” I am going to let you in on a little-known secret-go to the Help menu and choose About.

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Did You Know? Illinois The world's largest cookie and cracker factory, where Nabisco made 16 billion Oreo cookies in 1995, is located in

Chicago.

The round Silo for farm storage of silage was first constructed on a farm in Spring Grove.Iowa Quaker Oats, in Cedar Rapids, is the largest cereal company in the world.

Knoxville's National Sprint Car Hall of Fame and Museum is the only museum in the country dedicated to preservingthe history of sprint car racing.

Minnesota Minneapolis has more golfers per capita than any other city in the country.

Minnesota has 90,000 miles of shoreline, more than California, Florida and Hawaii combined.Missouri In 1889, Aunt Jemima pancake flour, invented at St. Joseph, Missouri, was the first self-rising flour for pancakes and

the first ready-mix food ever to be introduced commercially.

Missouri ties with Tennessee as the most neighborly state in the union, bordered by 8 states.Nebraska Nebraska is both the nation's largest producer and user of center pivot irrigation.

The 911 system of emergency communications, now used nationwide, was developed and first used in Lincoln,Nebraska.

Kearney, Nebraska is located exactly between Boston and San Francisco.North Dakota North Dakota grows more sunflowers than any other state.

Of the 50 states North Dakota is 17th in size, with 70,665 square miles. North Dakota is 212 miles long north to southand 360 miles wide east to west.

The American elm (Ulmus americana) is the official state tree and is commonly found across North Dakota. TheAmerican elm often reaches 120 feet or taller.

South Dakota Sculptor Gutzon Borglum began drilling into the 6,200-foot Mount Rushmore in 1927. Creation of the Shrine to

Democracy took 14 years and cost a mere $1 million, though it's now deemed priceless.

Belle Fourche is the geographical center of the United States of America, designated in 1959 and noted by anofficial marker and sheepherder's monument called "Stone Johnnie."

The U.S.S. South Dakota was the most decorated battleship during World War II

PAGE 17 VANGUARD APPRAISALS, INC. WINTER 2017

This will open the About dialog box, and at the bottom of this dialog box, there is a Check for Updates button. Pressing this Check for Updates button will provide you with a brief list of changes available in the pending program update.

As long as you have the User Preference checked to connect to internet (and have internet connection), you now have the power to maintain your CAMAvision with all of the latest and greatest features. If you would like additional assistance with enabling this feature within your program, questions applying those updates and/or getting instructions for the download and installation process, please contact your friendly Tech Support staff at support@camavision.com.

Are You on the Latest and Greatest? Cont’d Back to Index

By: Gavin Gross

With all the changes made to the Query Wizard in version 22, it is almost certain you will miss at least one change that could make your life a little easier. So let’s take a look at the different tabs and some of the smaller enhancements on the tabs that may be just what you have been waiting for.

Query Tab

We added a Goto Field function for when you have trouble finding a field in your query. To access this, simply right-click any field on any table, and select Goto Field. This will take you directly to where that field is being used! If the field is used more than once, you can continue to cycle through the fields with Ctrl+Enter.

The responsiveness of this tab has been addressed in many different areas. Checkmarks now also appear next to fields that are used in expressions. Joins update immediately with the scroll wheel. Right-clicking anywhere in the grid puts focus on the cell you are hovering over. All of the right-click menus do a better job loading their content based on exactly where you are clicking. Example: Add Lookup Table or Add DDCombo Expression only appear when you right-click a field with the corresponding binoculars.

Finally, we added “update all” functions in the Header column of the grid for Show & Filter. Right-clicking in the Show cell and making any selection will update every field’s Show value. When right-clicking any of the Filter rows in the header column, you will be presented with the option to Copy\Paste\Clear the entire row. Be forewarned, pasting a filter row will not clear cells, unless you are pasting a new filter into that cell. For example, I have 3 fields in my query: House_Number, Address, & City. Filter 1 has a filter on House_Number, and Filter 2 has a filter on Address. If I copy the Filter 1 row and paste it into the Filter 2 row, I will now have a filter on House_Number and Address for Filter 2.

Value Editor – Filter Tab

To get to the next value field on the Filter tab, you can now use the Enter button. Combo boxes on both the Value and Filter tabs have been updated to match the show/sort rows of the query grid, which allows keyboard-centric users to maintain focus. The Lookup form also received attention when we added the ability to select multiple rows by shift-clicking and the ability to add count for a selected item.

Value Editor – Expression Tab

On the Expression tab, when adding a function containing Table.Field, you no longer have to highlight the whole string to replace it with the field you find. You can now just click anywhere in the string. When you select the field to use, the program will make the change for you. For anyone wanting to know if a new expression is valid, you can check it immediately with the Validate button (instead of waiting until you switch to Preview and realize something is invalid).

Layout Tab

There have also been some really useful tweaks to the layout page. One improvement I wanted to talk about is a little helper for clicking on those tiny section separator lines. We couldn’t do the most obvious solution of making the lines bigger, because that would bump the spacing on every saved query that is loaded. Our solution was to utilize the section title divider lines highlighted in the picture. Just click anywhere around one of those lines, and your cursor will perfectly position on the corresponding section line.

Query Wizard… Little Things Add Up

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Query Wizard… Little Things Add Up Cont’d

Another little addition extended the functionality of @Date/@Time and also added @Year. If you have a query where you have to update the dates in a label every time you run it, this might be a very welcomed addition. Previously @Date and @Time would always display the current date or time. We added a plus or minus feature to those fields, which allows you to add or subtract years/months/weeks/days/hours/minutes/seconds from that current date or time. So, if you wanted to have a label that said last year to this year, you could write a label

that says “@Year-1y to @Year” To use this function, simply add a plus(+) or minus(-) after @Date/@Time/@Year, followed by numbers to indicate the amount of time and a letter to indicate the measurement of time.

Preview Tab

There are two updates to the Preview tab that I would like to point out. First, we updated exports to Excel to allow result sets with more than 65,535 rows. The only caveat is that after every 65,535 rows, we put it on a new sheet within the Excel file. Second, we added search functionality to the grid. Pressing Ctrl+F on the grid will open a search bar on the top-right corner of Query Wizard.

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By: Danielle Powell

One of the enhancements in Version 22 of CAMAvision involved multi-parcel sales, as the simple checkbox to indicate a multi-parcel sale converted to a drop-down menu. The options in this menu include: No, Primary, and Child. This allows more versatility so that all parcels involved in a multi-parcel sale indicate their specific role.

Primary Parcels:

Primary should only be set on one parcel per sale. Usually, this is the parcel with the most structures or highest value. Previously, the indicator box would have gotten a checkmark to enable the parcel list area of the Sales tab, where all other parcels involved are entered and shown.

1. The sale amount (VCS Value) should be a summed total of ALL parcels involved in the multi-parcelsale.

a. This can be done by clicking the black down-arrow next to the VCS Value field to select“Copy Multi-Parcel Total.”Note: This option only enables once PINs are added to the parcel list, and all parcelsincluded should be in the list beforehand to ensure the total amount is accurate.

2. NUTC (Non-Usable Transaction Code) should be designated by the Transaction, Deed, orDeclaration of Value. If this is considered a “good” sale, it may need to use a “normal” NUTC toindicate that.

3. Set the drop-down menu to the “Primary” selection.4. Add ALL parcels included in the sale to the list at the bottom of the Sales tab.5. Certain states (e.g., ones that have a specific sales export) may have additional requirements, so

please be sure to enter ALL necessary sale information on the Primary parcel.

Multi-parcel Sale – Data Entry

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1. Enter the sale with the exact same information as the Primary parcel with the followingexceptions on ALL child parcels:

a. The Child parcel should get a NUTC (Non Usable Transaction Code) designated as “Saleof More than one Property” or similar.

b. Set the drop-down menu to the “Child” selection.c. The Multi-Parcel PIN list will include the Primary parcel and exclude the currently loaded

Child parcel.

Child Parcels:

Child parcels will be all other parcels included in the sale. They are similar to the primary sale with a couple specific differences to exclude those sales from analyses and exports, ensuring the sale only gets consid-ered once in those processes.

Multi-parcel Sale – Data Entry Cont’d

Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain By: Patrick Alexander

In this case, maybe you should. In the latest release of the program, the (Query) Wizard received many enhancements. One of these enhancements is the ability to create a second page for custom reports

(as long as the second page doesn’t need any banding). So now, we can truly unleash our creative mojo and build reports we could previously only dream of.

One such report is a custom income questionnaire. CAMAvision comes with pre-packaged questionnaires, but we want something more specific to our jurisdiction.

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PAGE 22 WINTER 2017 VANGUARD APPRAISALS, INC.

Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain Cont’d

For instance, we would like a more dynamic apartment size listing grid, along with only the expenses we want to track. Additionally, we want to include a place for the property owner to sign the completed form. Prior to version 22, we were out of luck if we wanted to create something within the program, since custom reports were constrained to one designed page, and the income questionnaire is designed to fit on two designed pages. That is no longer the case with the addition of the Layout 2 tab within the reporting section of Query Wizard.

For our questionnaire, we really don’t need any banding, so we will make the front side of it in the Layout 1 tab using the page header and footer bands. We can use the horizontal and vertical line objects to create our grids. We will have the Query Wizard populate our mailing address, along with some general parcel information at the top for the form. The dates will need to be updated every year, but otherwise, the front page shouldn’t need any other changes between runs.

The backside of the questionnaire doesn’t need any banding either, so we can use the Layout 2 tab to create it. In this case, the backside of the form also doesn’t have any variables, but that is only because the questionnaire doesn’t need any. If you had a need for it, variables which Query Wizard would then replace based on the parcel

being processed could be included.

Once again, the grid-look is created by using horizontal and vertical line objects. The only labels which may need to be updated between prints are the years on the expense grid. Also note, we added a signature box on the right-hand side of the form.

When generated against our selection query, our customized questionnaire has all of our variables populated, and all of the lines become fully rendered. We now have a customized apartment income questionnaire tailored to our jurisdiction.

But this new page two isn’t limited to just questionnaires. It could also be used with a standard set of instructions and/or boiler plate text that you want to appear on the back of each page. The potential uses are practically limitless.

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VANGUARD APPRAISALS, INC.

1065 SIERRA CT NE SUITE D CEDAR RAPIDS, IA 52402 P#319-365-8625 F#319-365-0142 TOLL FREE 1-800-736-8625 WWW.CAMAVISION.COM

Since 1968, Vanguard Appraisals has been at the forefront of the mass appraisal industry. Our trained staff includes specialists in field data collection, appraisal review, pricing, mass appraisal project management, court preparation and testimony, data entry, software engineering, technical support and training.

Our Flagship CAMAvision product has been developed specifically to operate in the assessor’s environment. Vanguard is a full service company. We provide a wide range of appraisal products and services for assessors, we also see all the projects through completion.

Customer satisfaction is our main goal.

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