The past few months have been very exciting for us. In addition to welcoming many new Maestro communities, we’ve been building some great new tools and features that will be coming in the next few weeks.
More importantly, we’ve been working with downtowns on some various projects that have really taught us a lot about how organizations are using Maestro. We’re working with a community in particular that has really shown us how important it is to have the data input correctly. We’ve been working with them and seeing how much additional work is required when you don’t want to completely redo everything, but you have a number records that need to be updated. In this case, the business information was mostly accurate, as were the contacts. However, the properties were all over the place. The community was faced with some options – scrap everything and start over, or go in and edit the property records that needed to be updated.
We’ve been working alongside them to answer questions and assist them as much as we can, and it really has shown us the importance of accurate data entry. It’s also shown us some things we can improve on. We noticed that many businesses own the property, which creates a Maestro dilemma because currently only contacts can be the owner. In the short term, we were able to resolve this by adding the business in as a contact (the full name, LLC and all) and adding “Also in as a business. Use this profile ONLY for property info” in the notes section. In the long term, we’re working to make it possible to mark a business as the owner of a property.
These types of real-world issues facing Maestro users are helpful to see and experience first hand, and we are learning from them. We’re charging full steam ahead into development in 2018 to ensure Maestro continues to be the best software available for downtowns.
We’ve also been very fortunate to hold our first Maestro Boot Camp! It was great to spend a few days working with Maestro Communities and talking about everything facing their downtowns. It was great to see them learning from each other, and the discussions about Maestro were extremely beneficial to us. What’s more, it was energizing for us to see their passion for their communities. After all, that’s why we built Maestro – to give organizations a tool that will make it easier to carry out their mission of downtown revitalization.
There are great new features and tools coming to Maestro that we will be sharing with you in the coming weeks. We’ll also be continuing to work with our communities to get feedback, hear success stories, and make sure that our development continues to make your jobs easier. If you have suggestions, email or call us and share your ideas.
