Dear CyberAgent user,

2007! And we stand at the end of yet another awesome year.

Let's take a look at some of the highlights;

• We saw a tremendous growth in the number of users (nearly 1000)
  
• We had to employ four more staff members
  
• We continuously upgraded our CyberAgent application
  
• We held various open day sessions here in Johannesburg and in the Western Cape - View Gallery
  
• We formed new alliances with Funnel, Brabys and Gravity and now updates to 11 different sites simultaneously. We will be adding a few more at the beginning of the New Year - Read more
  
• We launched our new CyberAgent Anywhere, allowing agents, agencies, and franchisees to work anywhere at anytime - Visit the CyberAgent Anywhere Website

They say that a gift is something acquired without compensation. Read more in Our gift to you

May joy and happiness snow on you, may the bells jingle for you and may Santa be extra good to you!

Merry Christmas and a prosperous 2008!

From the CyberAgent team

We would like to thank each and every CyberAgent users for their continuous support and mainly for their efforts. We are proud of what we, together with our clients, have achieved in 2007!

Click here to open printable .pdf file

A two month FREE subscription to CyberAgent Anywhere. Sign up now for this application (Agents and Agencies) and you will only start paying the monthly fee from February 2008. (Quote "gift" when you do your enquiry). Offer ends 31 December 2007.

For more information please email sales@cyberprop.com or phone us on 011 955 9100

Cost - R 150.00 per month - Best of all, if you sign up for CyberAgent Anywhere it is included in the monthly fee

Backups – why do you need them?

In today’s information age, losing critical data can be very damaging to any business. A loss of productivity, the inability to trade, lost important documents and contracts are all consequences of not backing up, and yet it’s a task that doesn’t take place nearly as regularly as it should. Read on to find out how you can simplify this task

What is backing-up?

Your data is considered backed up when it has been saved to another place, other than your computer’s hard drive. The aim of a backup is to prevent the total loss of data in the event of a hard drive ‘crash’, theft of the physical machine or system failure. There are a number of ways to backup your data:

One is to buy an external hard drive and do the backups manually. This is suitable only if you have the time and discipline to do regular backups. Once you have saved your data to this external drive, you should then store this hard-drive in a safe place, away from your primary drive.

Storage media, like rewritable CD’s or DVD’s is another option, especially if the amount of data to be stored is small. However, it becomes difficult to manage if the amount of data stored is large.

In essence, these traditional backup methods are not ideal because we get busy or simply forget. If your business doesn’t have a dedicated staff member or IT provider to do daily or weekly backups, inconsistent backup procedures result. Traditional backup tasks can also be time consuming and keep valuable staff from performing other critical tasks that benefit your business.

But the good news is there is a way to handle the backup of large amounts of data on a regular basis to a safe place, automatically and reliably – online backups.

What is online backup?

Online backup trough our CyberAgent Anywhere application is a simple, time efficient way of ensuring that your information is safely housed off-site, away from fires, floods or theft. It is an automatic way of backing up and storing critical data files, reliably.

How it works…

The first time you update through CyberAgent Anywhere, your files are automatically copied, compressed and sent via a secure Internet connection to a remote server where they are stored. Every time you make any changes and do an update these files are searched for changes and the updated document is encrypted, compressed and transferred to the same remote server.

Why get CyberAgent Anywhere for online backup?

1. Separate location: In the event of a disaster at your office or home your data will be stored somewhere safe and will be available to you. This is the greatest advantage of online backups.

2: Requires no input: Backups will occur automatically without your having to remember to do them.

3: Backup and access your files from anywhere: If you are often on the move, then using traditional backup techniques may be physically impossible. With online backups, your files are always just an Internet connection away and you can backup data from your computer, and restore it to any PC from anywhere in the world.

4: Incremental backups of important files: After the initial data transfer has taken place, only the changes that you make to a document will be sent to the online backup server. This way of doing things saves a huge amount of time.

5: File encryption: When you backup online, your files are encrypted as they are transferred over the Internet to prevent prying eyes examining your data. This ensures their safety

6: No equipment or consumable costs: Using online backups means you are using hardware owned, maintained and operated by someone else to store your data, so no need to buy backup consumables like CDs or DVDs, or hardware to perform the backups.

Issues to consider

Online backup is an excellent, time- and cost-efficient service. However, if you are still using a dial-up connection, then online backups are probably not for you. The slowness of the line speed makes backing up over a narrowband connection very cumbersome and time-intensive.

Also bear in mind that if your Internet access is down for any reason, you obviously won’t be able to backup or retrieve data while you’re not connected.

Cost - R 150.00 per month
Best of all, if you sign up for CyberAgent Anywhere it is included in the monthly fee.

View only rights for agents

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As administrator it is now possible to set the following rights for each agent in your agency:

• View Only for Properties
  
• View Only for Contacts
  
• View Only for Agents

To change these settings;

• Click on the Agency Setup icon
  
• Click on the Agent Defaults button
  
• Locate the agent in the list displayed on the left
  
• Click on the hyperlink to load the settings for the agent
  
• Scroll down to the bottom of the page from where you can change the the View Only setting for Property, Contacts and Agents.

If the View Only is set to NO, then the agent will be able to edit his or her property, contacts and agent detail. If set to YES, then only viewing rights are assigned to this agent.

Changing password of agents

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We have added a password field.

This will enable administrators to change the password of the agents in their agencies

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For more product enhancements visit our blog on;

http://anywhere.cyberagent.co.za/weblog/default.blog

and the CyberAgent Version update page at:

http://www.cyberagent.co.za/SoftVersion.adm

Take note that we will not be closing office for the Festive Season.

We will however have skeleton staff on duty from 14 December 2007 to 07 January 2008.

• Our website department will be closed during this period
  
• The accounts department will do the final invoice run on Thursday, 13 December 2007
  
  

Cape Training stops:

11 December 2007 until 15 January 2008

USP Training stops:

13 December 2007 until 07 January 2008

"Once again I must express my total satisfaction and delight with the outstanding service we at Chas Everitt receive from your dedicated service driven team.

It seems like nothing is too much trouble and when occasionally a request cannot be fulfilled the response is always proactive and constructive with alternatives suggested.

It is absolutely no wonder that Cyberprop has grown from strength to strength over the years.

The energy and enthusiasm of your colleagues is refreshing and the passion is genuine. Service is clearly not lip service slogan on your wall but a foundation to your approach. What a credit you are to the South Africa real estate industry.

I remain a dedicated fan with very good reason - you help our business grow every day!"

Andre de Villiers
Chas Everitt International

"My feelings exactly. Well done team cyber"

Berry Everitt
Chas Everitt International

"Before I get to the end of the day. Let me start now already to say ‘thank you’ it has been wonderful working with you all at Cyberagent in 2007 – even though we have not met in person, except Chris, who is now here sorting out problems. I have learnt so much from all of you, it is incredible. Thank you. And a big thank you for all your patience as well, when I have not always been the most patient person around!

Regards and cheers until 2008!"

Karin; Kapstadt Properties