Good Afternoon! We are excited to announce a couple new features within beacon that come as a direct response to requests made by both our clients and users alike.
We hope that you will find these new features beneficial to your day to day activities.

beacon™ Map Tips ON/OFF setting:

Now when viewing the map with the “parcels layer” selected users will have the option to switch the beacon Map Tips feature either On or Off based on individual preference.

- This new setting can be found in the upper right
hand corner of the map.

- Because the On/Off switch is setup as a cookie,
your setting will remain each time you enter the
site.

Updated Measure Tool/Printable Measurements Feature:

When utilizing the measurement tool you can double click after measuring a parcel’s boundary or area of interest and the total of the measurements will display in the center of the parcel or selected area.

The next feature is one that we have seen a lot of requests for. Now when taking measurements in the map view, users have the ability to print what is displayed for easier and more convenient reference.

Each of these enhancements are available in beacon™ today. As always, your feedback is very beneficial. Check out the new features and let us know what you think.

Want to see what other users think? Have some ideas for beacon that you would like to see implemented? Post them here in the beacon user forum.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me.

Sincerely,

Tyler Poling

Beacon Product Manager

317.826.7333

tpoling@schneidercorp.com

Are you on Twitter? Want to see what beacon and the Product Development team are up to? Follow beacon on Twitter!
http://www.twitter.com/beacon_info

LaPorte County’s beacon™ portal features a public site which provides important property taxation and assessment information, with detailed reports and advanced searching capabilities. The beacon portal also provides users the ability to view an interactive map of the County’s Geographical Information Systems (GIS) data and aerial photography, as well as convenient tools to collect specific parcel information.

“Beacon is allowing La Porte County Government to provide better services to its tax payers,” said Melissa Mischke, LaPorte County GIS Coordinator. “It is also allowing better information sharing within Governmental agencies.”

Beacon is able to provide benefits to the county by reducing requests at the courthouse counters and telephone lines, allowing county employees to complete their work more effectively. Beacon will also give users 24-hour access to public records so they can get needed information from governmental entities, even when the courthouse is closed.

“It is well structured, easy to use and gives powerful tools all in a single spot,” said Mischke. “It was very easy to get started; we had a prototype very quickly.”

Because all website set-up, development, hosting, and maintenance tasks are handled by The Schneider Corporation, there was no need for LaPorte County to purchase additional equipment. Beacon has been designed with a component-based architecture which allowed for a rapid deployment of the product to the county.

“LaPorte County has always been a pleasure to work with,” said Tyler Poling, Schneider’s Beacon Product Manager. “They have been extremely helpful throughout the beacon implementation process and are very eager to provide property information access to their community via the web.”

beacon™ Map Tips:

This new feature, allows users to do the following while viewing the map:

- When a user stops moving the mouse for .75 seconds, the tip box will appear and dynamically fetch the content for that specific parcel.

- Users are now able to view a snapshot of the basic parcel information (Parcel I.D., Owner Name and Address, Parcel Acreage, Assessed Value and Photo if available) without actually selecting the parcel.

- Then when a user moves their mouse again, the tip will disappear

- Tips will also disappear when a user clicks on the map or causes the page to post back.

- For security and privacy preferences, this feature has the ability to have the Name, Photo, and Assessed Value disabled if desired through the roles feature of your beacon site.

Updated Comparable Search

With this upgrade to the comparable search tool, search criteria is now

un-checked by default when a property has been selected for a search.

Here’s an example:

http://beacon.schneidercorp.com/Application.aspx?AppID=9&LayerID=35&PageTypeID=2&PageID=250&Q=1266928045&KeyValue=63280000070

In the past, all of the criteria would be checked in the “Use” column.

Now, the user can choose which criteria they want to include. Based on feedback, this should be more intuitive for beacon users.

Both Enhancements are available in beacon™ today. As always, your feedback is very beneficial. Check out the new features and let us know what you think.

-Tyler/Product Development Team

These are exciting times for beacon. We have seen the release of many new features and upgrades as well as the public release of many county and city sites including Montgomery County, IN, Houston County, MN, The City of Ames/Story County, and recently Brookings County, SD. We are also fresh off of our first User conference of 2008 in Ames, IA. We were able to gain some great feedback and generate excellent dicussions about beacon that we have begun to work through and apply to beacon’s future.

The Product Development team has also been working hard to continue to introduce innovative additions to beacon. Currently we are working to release new functionality that we feel our users will find very beneficial.

Keep your eyes open for these new additions as they are released and let us know how what you think. Your thoughts and feedback are the most important piece of our development process.

Thanks!

Tyler and the Product Development team

Have you tried Guidepost™ yet?

Guidepost is a web-based tool that works as a search engine for beacon portals. Guidepost lets you search across multiples counties within a selected state for information like names, addresses, cities and parcel ID’s in a matter of seconds. Once information is provided and a search is initiated Guidepost will return multiple results from multiple counties depending on how specific your search is.

Guidepost also allows you to select a parcel ID from the search results page and jump to the beacon™ portal or other county specific page to view information about that parcel.

Other searching features:

Documents
- Book – Page- Document Ref#

Valuation
- Assessed Value

Legal Description
- Sect-Twp-Rng

Try Guidepost today and see how it can assist you in your multiple state and county searching needs.