Introduction
With the Rex CRM integration enabled it eliminates the need to enter market appraisal appointment data (i.e. client name, address, contact details, appointment date and time, etc) into Acaboom.
When a market appraisal is booked in Rex CRM software, the appointment details are sent to Acaboom, where the pre-appointment presentation is automatically sent to the homeowner and the main presentation is created ready for the valuer to add comparables, etc.
Initial setup
We understand the importance of a smooth and efficient integration process. The initial setup steps for the integration can be found here, should you have any question about the setup or require assistance, please do get in touch.
Live with the integration? Please click on the guidance section you require below:
1. Capturing created appointments
2. Important points that must be fulfilled for the appointment to be processed
3. Useful notes about the integration
4. Capturing appointment updates
Capturing created appointments
The integration will capture all created appointments of type 'valuation' in a user's Rex calendar and transfer them over to Acaboom.
To book an appointment inside Rex, go to the 'Calendar Section' and then click on a desired / time square box.
A modal window for adding appointment opens as per below.
There are some important points that must be fulfilled for the appointment to be processed:
The integration is built for market appraisals. The appointment types are editable on an account level, and the name is a free text field. Currently in REX there is no way to differentiate the 'category' to be a sales or lettings valuation. Rex has a default type for 'Valuations' in general. If you are currently using this default or indeed your own, for the integration to work, a new appointment type is need (or editing a current one, whichever is applicable). The appointment category must be of type 'valuation' and the 'name' should be the following:
For Sales the text must contain: Market Appraisal
For Rental the text must contain: Rental Market Appraisal
The appointment date and time (field name is starts) must be in the future at the time of the booking, as the integration will only process appointments that are yet to happen. If the appointment date and time has passed, the valuation will be ignored by the integrations.
The owner of the calendar must be a valid, active, existing user in Acaboom (we check if the valuer exists in Acaboom by email address)
There must be at least 1 guest of type 'Contact' (section Guests). These are essentially vendors in Acaboom. The integration will fail if there is no 'guests' added. Please note: Each contact record should contain only one individual and, if applicable, can be linked to other contact records through relationships.
There must be at least 1 record type 'property' (section Records). This is the property the appointment is linked to and contains all the essential info to book an Acaboom presentation.
In Rex, properties can often be pre-linked to contacts (owners) and locations can be linked with properties / contacts, so picking the property or location first could auto-fill some of the other fields.
Useful Notes
1. Adding a contact ad-hoc
If a contact does not already exist in Rex, and is added ad-hoc via the + ADD CONTACT option, some of the contact details fields will be missing:
As seen on the image above, one example would be the missing 'title' for the contact and only 1 'phone' field.
To add more details to a contact, we would need to edit that specific contact in the contacts page.
Note: Not having a title for a contact can lead to poorly composed greetings when generating the Acaboom Presentation.
2. More than 2 guests (contact)
If there are more than 2 guests of type 'contact', only the first 2 contacts will be used in Acaboom (vendor 1 and vendor 2)
3. More than 1 property
If there is more than 1 record of type 'property', on the first property will be used in the Acaboom. (Acaboom support a single property per presentation).
4. Sending of the Acaboom Pre-appointment
A pre-appointment is sent based on the settings in Acaboom (please contact Acaboom support for assistance). Currently there is no option to choose whether to send the Pre-appointment ad-hoc when booking the appointment in Rex.
5. Disabling Rex vendor confirmations
In addition to the above, when saving the Appointment (inside the 'add appointment' window) a confirmation message pop-up will appear (depending on your settings):
This confirmation message dialog can be disabled on an appointment type basis.
To disable it visit https://app.rexsoftware.com/admin/settings/appointment_types
Select an appointment type > go to listing owner confirmations for valuations (note this needs to be down on a per-account basis).
Capturing appointment updates
There is a separate webhook for appointment edits, used to capture some of the main updates in an appointment.
If the appointment was not initially booked with type 'Valuation', but it was later edited and updated to 'Valuation', this would create a new presentation in Acaboom.
When saving an edited appointment, the same rules from appointment creation apply.
To edit an appointment inside Rex, we go to the 'calendar' section and then click on an existing appointment inside the calendar:
A modal window for editing appointment opens:
The following appointment edits CAN be captured and be updated for the following:
Updating the appointment date / time
Updating the valuer of a presentation (calendar owner)
Updating the list of guests (contacts) (replacing a contact with a different one, or adding a 2nd contact)
Updating the list of records (properties) (replacing the property with a different one)
The following appointment edits CANNOT captured via the integration:
Capturing any changes inside an existing contact that's part of the appointment. Example: a contact's name got updated, this is not considered an appointment changed, so the original contact in the appointment will remain as it is. The contact change will be present in any future appointments.
Note: Cancelling / deleting an appointment in Rex archives the corresponding Acaboom presentation.
Setting up the integration and adding webhooks
In order to achieve a connection between the REX CRM software and Acaboom, webhooks needed to be setup.
Step 1
The 1st Step is adding the 'Acaboom Integration' user to the Rex Account the integration is to be switched on for.
(Note if you have more than one account this needs to be performed on each account.)
To add a user into an account go to the 'Settings' menu and then 'Users & Security'.
Click the + sign to add a new user
Enter the acaboom integration email - [email protected]
Click invite
Once 'invite' is clicked, you will be redirected to the manage user page and an invitation needs to be sent:
Before the invitation is sent/accepted, the list of users will have a small 'not invited' badge next to the Acaboom integration user:
Once the invitation is accepted, the 'not invited' badge will disappear, and the user will be active.
(Note: Our Acaboom Integration user is a 'Verified integrator', meaning it can be added to an account, without taking up a user slot and should not incur a cost)
Step 2
The 2nd step is granting the Acaboom Integration user access to the contacts and webhooks sections. For this we stay in the 'Users & Security' section. Open up the 'Acaboom Integration' user and click on the 'Privileges' tab. Once inside, click on 'Switch to advanced privileges mode' button:
In the advance privileges page, please scroll down the list to 'CONTACTS'. Click to expand the section and tick the 'Read Any' checkbox. (Note: this automatically ticks the 'Read (w/Permission)') checkbox). The read contacts permission is needed because when we receive the contact through a booked market appraisal some of the contact details are missing. The option enables us to fetch the contact id and make a separate API call for that contact, pulling in all the additional information.
After this we need to scroll a little further down the list until we get to 'ADMIN WEBHOOKS / ZAPIER'. Click on the area to expand and tick the checkbox ('Manage webhooks / Create zaps') and click 'Save changes' at the top.
This grants our Acaboom Integration user access to the account's webhooks. Once that is completed, Acaboom can proceed with setting up the webhooks in that account, starting the integration.