Video: iGUIDE 3D tour privacy options and how to control access - Masterclass | Video courtesy of iGUIDE YouTube Channel | 15 November 2021

Transcript (Video above)

Chris White (@Chris_iGuide): [00:00:00] - Back to the topic. Today, we are talking about privacy and security settings for your iGUIDE. What we're going do, so I'm just going to hang out here on the portal, find a property, let's find a good one. These are all crummy. I should have loaded it ahead of time. I usually use a dentist.

I think where I'm going to start things off is discussing [00:00:30] what we're talking about. I'll give a brief description.

There are different ways to share data on the Internet. The vague statement, but it's true. You can share with everyone, to my point earlier, you can share with a very select group of people or you can share with no one, that happens sometimes people just make stuff and then they hide it for fun.

I don't know why, but it usually because you're not ready to share yet, [00:01:00] you've taken a portrait photo but you're waiting until the appropriate time to share it or something like that. Just using an example that's not real estate or unrelated. It's really all about controlling who sees what data. That's really what we're talking about today.

You might think, well, why do I really care? Is it a big deal for me? I mean, obviously you're here listening to me you must care a little bit, but if you don't care very much or you don't care at all, I'm going to help you out.

The reason [00:01:30] you want to care, is that there are some scenarios where you get into pretty big trouble if you don't properly control who sees what data. Now that I've said it, I've put it in your brain, I'm going to make you paranoid, but that's okay. It's probably safer that way. Let's go through some reasons why you might want to share or hide data. Let's do sharing. That's an easy one.

Obviously, you want [00:02:00] to be sharing your iGUIDE, so that everyone sees them as many people as possible. That really lends itself to a lot of different things. Sharing can mean anything, so posting on social media, indexing on Google, that means if you search for the iGUIDE it'll come up and that's a big one.

We'll talk about that in a minute. Unless there's anywhere you would post that information and where you want to share so that you'd want to be doing that to market the property.

Typically when you hand over and iGUIDE, that's usually what happens. [00:02:30] You give it to someone and this is for real estate. If you're in a different industry, the rules are different. We can talk about that later, but we'll just use residential real estate or commercial real estate is an example right now.

Typically you're marketing a property. Anywhere you're marketing a property, you want as many people to see it as possible. Why would you hide it? The only time you would ever hide it as if you were trying to create some gated content where you'd say, well, only this select group of people can see it because they're special.

I think [00:03:00] an only fans group and you want to show that what I got in there, go for it. But that's pretty weird.

For marketing purposes, typically, in terms of controlling who sees it, you want to everybody to see it. So that's easy. That's the easiest way to have things set up. Because then there's no restrictions at all.

The difficulty comes down to getting people's eyes on it. It's not about giving people access. It's about actually getting them to look at it. That's a whole separate issue. [00:03:30] That's one way to look at it. Another way to look at would be that you want to use a property for marketing but you want to do something a little more sophisticated.

I'll give you a couple of examples from real estate. There's a good one in here from personal experience that I'll share. Good example rather. You've got a private viewing scenario.

The house really, it's not on the market yet, but it's is, I forget what [00:04:00] that term is. Maybe Kelly can put it in the chat where people put it up, but it's not really listed yet. In that case, you are literally creating an environment of exclusivity where if people want data about the house, they have to do something to get it.

You can't just go get it off [inaudible 00:04:15] . They have to go to the agents in some way and request it, and then the agent gives it to them.

Typically that would be a message of private open house, but virtually that could be an iGUIDE. That would mean the iGUIDE itself, yes, it's accessible [00:04:30] online, but it wouldn't be something that would be shared on social media.

It wouldn't be something that's searchable. It's something that you have to request specific. It's more like private. Accessible? Yes, but only when accesses is given to the correct location.

That means really just an actual literal nuts and bolts. It would mean that the URL is live on the Internet, but unless you know that URL, well, you can't see the progress.

That's useful for [00:05:00] private viewings. It's also useful to have that setup before a property is listed, but after it's captured and shot the iGUIDE and you don't want it to go public yet because it doesn't get listed until next week, which does happen from time to time.

We're pretending you're an agent or not. You're the photographer so you show the agent, they want to see it so they can move it up. So it's not public, but they can still see it more privately and then you've got the scenario where the agent wants to show the homeowner.

Check [00:05:30] out what I'm doing for marketing. I'm going to put this live on Tuesday. They can show it to the homeowner, so people can still see it if the location where that data is stored is given to them.

The reason that one's super important if you haven't encountered this yet and you don't know about this, you will. The default behavior on iGUIDE is created is that it is public.

What that means is that as soon as it's created, unless you configure it differently, it will be by default, made [00:06:00] publicly available as in the URL is live anyone with the URL can click on it and it will be indexed on Google, which means people can find it so they can search the address.

The reason this can be a big problem is that, that's what you want 99 percent of the time. You don't want to wait. Get it up there, get on the Internet. Most people want the house listed yesterday, so you're not even on time, but let's suppose you have this scenario and this has happened to me once or twice, and it's very unpleasant.

You [00:06:30] created an iGUIDE and that iGUIDE has been published, and the agent denounced to you has not actually listed the property yet, they never communicated that that the iGUIDE should have been locked or made private. Then someone like the homeowner Google their own house and found their house online before their house was listed, and then they freak out and then the agent then calls you and freaks out.

So you want to avoid that [00:07:00] if you can't because that's not a fun conversation. Sometimes you want that information private up until a specific date where you'd want to publish so that the right people find it at the right time.

Then just to continue along that line of reasoning, there are some times where you don't want people to see that data, for the lifetime [00:07:30] of that data, you don't want them to see it unless they have the full on login credentials, like with the password and everything. It's not something you would ever share with anybody privately.

You wouldn't even take a chance with it. Maybe it's sensitive data. There is a setting in the iGUIDE for that and that basically, if we're going to compare the three types of data, one is totally public, that's the first one I mentioned. I need to go on Google and search for it. That's the default for an iGUIDE.

Second is private, so you can configure and iGUIDE in private, and there's no passwords or anything. It just means that if you don't know the URL [00:08:00] there's no way for you to find it. You can't search for it.

Fully other side of the spectrum, you have password protected where unless you're given specific permission to do that iGUIDE with a login, you can not see that data. There's a few different combinations here, there as well.

I'm going to mention one more thing about privacy and security. There is also an aspect of iGUIDES with regards to the images. [00:08:30] Just as an aside, you can turn PAN-OS on and off.

This isn't an iGUIDE guide setting exactly. I mean, it is a setting, but it's way to configure it. Sometimes you'll turn PAN-OS off specifically so that people don't see them, and that's a way of controlling that data.

It's not really the subject matter for this webinar, but I thought I'd mentioned that because it does come up with regards to sensitive information, I'll give you a couple of examples.

You're in an office and you're shooting office and have whiteboards and stuff, just [00:09:00] be aware that turning actual visual data ON and OFF can hide things like intellectual property, actual notes on those whiteboards or family photos or whatever people don't. There's data control within an iGUIDE as well in terms of the visuals, by turning PAN-OS ON and OFF. Moving on, I hope that made sense.

I see something in the chat. Let me just check. This is indeed happening to me where the agent complained because the clients said that I could push it, yes.

That is exactly what happens and it's sucks. [00:09:30] I've had at least two angry phone calls for that and I'm going to show you exactly how you can avoid that. Problem arises not with the ability to do it, it rises with the fact that certain communication has to occur.

Chris White: Yes you can hide that. Yes, here I can show you that hold on. Let me check my notes, make sure I'm on track. [00:10:00] I gave you that example, okay, cool. How much time do we have? Yes, okay we've lots of time. I'm trying to keep this around 30 minutes and then let you guys ask questions because it's not a dense topic exactly, but it is a little dry and I don't want anybody to fall asleep.

You guys can always go back and watch the video and just rewind and pause over stuff endlessly I'm sure. Let's talk about public views first because that's the easiest one. I already mentioned it. A public view means [00:10:30] that it is indexed on Google, so that is the default behavior of every iGUIDE and then I already gave the example that that's a problem because everyone gets access to information and they can Google it.

There are some advantages obviously in that it's easier to share. It's easier for people to find, you don't have to worry about anything. But there's one really weird hidden advantage and you've just pointed it out. I'm just going to quickly go here, I hope you guys can see my screen.

[00:11:00] In order to change the URL for an iGUIDE, you find your iGUIDE, you click the iGUIDE Details button. You're going to go to this screen right here. If you create a public view, you will have control over the URL.

But on all subsequent views that you create, you will not have control over that URL. I probably didn't fully explain this so I will. You can have an iGUIDE with multiple views. [00:11:30] There's lots of knowledge-base articles on it.

I'm going to describe it to you in a second but if you need more information on views, it's a whole thing there's a zillion uses for it, it's awesome. But it's all about controlling information.
Basically, if you have a public view, you have control over that URL. But if you create a private where you're restricting access, you don't.

But on all private views, actually I can go back and show you. If I find my dentist office again there you go. I guess you can't really tell but all of the views have [00:12:00] randomly scrambled URLs. It doesn't have any addresses or anything, but it's also not configurable, so that's kind of annoying.

The public view, getting back to that, that's your default and it's actually called the Default and you can see it here, so that's accessible to anybody who has the URL, it's also indexed on Google, that's the default behavior. But let's suppose that right from iGUIDE creation or at anytime [00:12:30] the iGUIDE exists.

You think to yourself, "hey, I don't think I want people to see this." There's something that you have to do in order to lock it down which is exactly what I just said, which is lock it. As soon as you create the iGUIDE, I won't go through that process I'll just describe it. You click Create and then you go through those steps and click Create at the bottom.

You then have to go to the iGUIDE, click on Details and click on Lock. It's not published yet, but you've [00:13:00] locked it. If you do that, it will not be indexed by Google. If you obviously just let it go, it will be indexed by Google and if you wait two weeks and then lock it, there's a lag time. It's not like it instantly vanishes from the Internet.

Oh funny fact, a publicly viewable iGUIDE is also viewable on [00:13:30] the iGUIDE map. That's still exist? Yes, it does. No that's Google map sorry. Is this URL? It's probably the URL.

There you go. Okay, so all the iGUIDEs that are like public and live appear on this map and there's tons of them. It's very rare that someone would find their property here and be upset but it's possible, so bear that in mind. That's another way that it's made public.

Either way, [00:14:00] when you are considering the next choice you want to create a private view, I'll show you exactly what it looks like. You'll go here, you click iGUIDE Details and then you would scroll down and you're going to see that you have these.

Now this one is probably already has a lot of views, so this is what it look like if you made quite a few. But the default view will always have this rectangle down here with the little globe on it. I like a little ribbon globe.

I don't know what that signifies but to me it's important. The default [00:14:30] view is the one that is indexable by Google, so if you don't want people to see it, right when you create your iGUIDE, you create the iGUIDE, you go to your My iGUIDE list, click iGUIDE Details and then you click Lock.

We are aware this is cumbersome and we're working on it and a few other security things I can't mention that there's some stuff coming. Very cool. Okay, so the reason that this is a problem, and I'm sure that, Todd you're familiar [00:15:00] with this is that you might go out and shoot a property like everybody's private business, the agent doesn't tell you all the information that you need to know.

That can be anything. Maybe the homeowner is there and they have eight dogs, there's an RV in the driveway, but also they might not tell you that the property is not going to be listed right away, so maybe it's in two weeks and they don't tell you that. If they don't tell you to lock it, how would you ever know?

Then this raises the question, okay, every time I shoot a property, [00:15:30] do I have to ask the agent when they're going to list it and the unfortunate answer is yes.

Which totally sucks but it is what it is and if you want to avoid the scenario where they find the property listed before they're ready and they don't communicate to you when it's being listed, then you have to set that expectation that look, as soon as this thing is done, it's going live. Is that what you want because that's the default.

Then once you have that conversation with people, like it's a habit, it's not a big deal. [00:16:00] They get to know that and then if you have a good relationship, they should be aware.

The problem actually comes with people who maybe you haven't worked with very much.

They don't know how iGUIDE works, that's very common and you're trying to describe so much then you're trying to sell up, you get floor plan, you get room dimensions, you get totals and there's a lot to digest so that one more thing seems like a lot, but it's pretty big deal, so Cory, I'm just going to try to answer your question real quick. Is it possible to not [00:16:30] include the address at all?

I know you can hide it in settings, but it still shows up in the web link address for demo purposes, I would like to hide the actual real address. Just to clarify what I said earlier, yes.

Here's how you hide the address. You create a separate view called a private view and you do that as I mentioned before, you find your iGUIDE on your list. Click iGUIDE Details, you're going to go to this page right here.

Scroll down and click Create New View, and then you can lock the original if you want you don't have to, but you can, [00:17:00] and then your new view will have, Oh, here you can see them right here actually.

You can see the URLs are a little goofy for all the private views. I could just like URL iGUIDE and then some nonsense character, so you won't see the address there, downside it's not configurable, you can't change it but then to your point, you can then go into your settings and then you can change the title, so instead of saying your address, it says anything you want.

That's a very common thing to want to change that for something like a model home where the address is like irrelevant, [00:17:30] like you don't care. You just say Model 7 or something or heritage craftsman. With that private view, you can completely hide the address and no one would ever know.

Now, there's one thing that you have to change that everybody forgets, and that's the map. I'll just show you how to do that so down here in the settings, I can find it. You can turn off the map somewhere. There you go. Hide map that was easy. If you don't [00:18:00] hide them map, well, that's the address, so if you click on the map, we're going to go and they're going to see it.

Sometimes what people will do is they will use a fake address, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with that but it means that the map is just straight up wrong.

But if you don't care, that's fine too. Sometimes you want the map to be there just as a demo, so on your website you want it to show that it has a map, but you don't want it to be actual location, so you just make the address nonsense and then that's fine too, there's nothing [00:18:30] wrong with that.

As long as you're okay with that pin on the mapping somewhere in the middle or wherever you put it. I hope I answered your question there.

The other thing I want to mention while we're still talking about private views, and we'll go back here, is that you can create basically as many private views as you wish, so that means that not only can you have a view where you control the information, you can have multiple ones that show people different things.

I've used this example in a few webinars, [00:19:00] you're very welcome Cory, and that's when I sold my house I made two views. I had the public one, which was very just everything you'd imagined for marketing purposes, and then I made a separate view that had all the really weird panels turned on because I thought people would want to know that.

I don't even really know if my agent used it, but it was a really good idea so I keep saying how great it was.

But basically like the basement was rough and closets, they are all sorts of panoramas that you would typically turn off I just left on, and I could have made any [00:19:30] number of views that were like that. Let's suppose you really wanted to be very upfront about everything above ground, but then you didn't want to show the basement.

Go ahead and make a view for that. Or let's suppose that you want to have one view that's just exterior panoramas for some reason I don't know why. Just the show off the outside.

You can do that too and it only costs you have very small amount time creating a separate view and then turning off all the panoramas in that view that you don't want people to see or that you [00:20:00] didn't want people to.

That's another cool way that I referenced earlier about sharing your information, so private views, just to reiterate, are not indexed by Google, they don't appear on the map and they don't have configurable URLs, they're scrambled. You can have as many as you want, but bare in mind you have to share them with someone for them to do anything otherwise no one's going to just randomly [00:20:30] find it.

Then just to cover this again, the main default view, the Default is public indexed on Google on the iGUIDE map and if you know ahead of time you don't want that you have to immediately mark it before it gets published.

I hope that makes sense. I'll reiterate again before we're done. Okay, so the last type is what's called the protected view so why don't I load that up and show you. [00:21:00] Let's go to Create iGUIDE and I'll show you where to find it there. I'm going to put in a fake address, 46 Magic Street. Is that a thing? Yeah, totally it is. Awesome. Okay, Magic Street. Cool. That will work.

Chris White: It's not working. But I was so clever. We're going to use 301 King Street. [00:21:30] There you go that's better.

If we are creating an iGUIDE, and we fill out all the regular stuff, choose your package, do you little tick boxes, you ignore that, that's for me. Putting your address, the branding, upload your data, but then you click on "Advanced Options," look in here, hidden there, right in the middle is this Protection Option. "Protected" if I click it, it [00:22:00] even tells me, the cycle will be created with a protected default view.

What that means is that the default view is essentially locked down. It's not indexed on Google, you don't have to go lock it or anything, it's just automatically inaccessible and not findable online. That's far toward the secure side of the spectrum as you can get.

What protected mode means is that if you want to share that [00:22:30] iGUIDE with someone, you have to go, actually here I'll enable on actual iGUIDE so I can show you for sure exactly what I'm talking about.

Sure. Let's do this. It's going to make this one protected. Let's see here. You want Settings. It's already protected. Even funnier. Cool. It's almost like a planned that. So you can see here Protected as a section [00:23:00] for viewers. Right now, there's three people who can see this iGUIDE.

In order for someone to see this, they have to have an account on the iGUIDE portal, and they have to be added here. If they're not added here, they don't have an account, they cannot see the iGUIDE. That's pretty locked down.

That's a lot of extra work but In some cases, it's worth it. For most people in irregular real estate contexts, [00:23:30] I mean, you're not going to use Protected Mode if you want to hide something, essentially you're going to make a private view to lock it down. That way, you know that let me no one's going to get access to it unless they exactly and precisely have the URL you give it. Sorry, that was a mouthful.

What that means is that Protected View if for special cases. Ninety-nine percent of the time, we probably just use a regular default view. [00:24:00] One percent of the time, you might use private views. Not maybe more, maybe up to 10 percent.

Then Protected views is really special. That really makes sense outside of real estate, I would argue. I could be wrong, if I'm wrong, you can just let me know in chat, but for the most part, the Protected view is a little overkill.

Now there is some middle ground so I'm not making any promises, but at some point there may be some other security options so if you [00:24:30] have security options on any other software that you really like, we are always having discussions about what features to add to the iGUIDE.

If you have security-specific ones, this is what I wanna suggest you do. Go to the iGUIDE Forum, go to the Feature Suggestions Category.

I feel like I can hear people rolling their eyes now, but it does work, I promise. Go there and write your suggestion down, and even reference this webinar. Chris said [00:25:00] to come here and say that we need individually password in iGUIDE with a generic password or something like that, whatever you're suggesting, put it in there.

I just gave you one for free, but basically, there's also different security options online, some of them are more locked down than others. If you've got something very specific for your use case, you know, go on the Forum and explain it and in the Feature Suggestions Category.

That's really great because that goes right to the developers and there's the discussion quickly group. [00:25:30] Cool. Let's see, Protected Views. Did I get everything?I'll recap. You've got your iGUIDE use, their index on Google.

They're public, everyone can see them. They are on the iGUIDE map. You've got your Private Views. You can have both. Private user accessible only via the link, but if you want, you can have both, you can have the Public View and the Private View just as I had suggested in my previous example where I said that I had both when I sold my house. It can be useful.

You can have the Default View locked [00:26:00] and then you can turn it on later. Maybe the listing isn't going to live until next Thursday. So the agent tells you this, you mark the iGUIDE then at the appropriate time, you will then turn it on, and then it will be indexed by Google.

Or you can not have it indexed by Google at all and just do private if you want. You can have as many private users you wish so that's pretty cool.

You can also have Protected Views where you can give specific [00:26:30] people access. They must log in to the iGUIDE portal to view and to edit. That's the most cumbersome and difficult way to do it. I'm just going to point out one last thing and then we're going to do questions, if you have any. If you don't have any questions, I'll just sit my soda on screen, you can watch me.

When you create an iGUIDE, the Protected option is there on Advanced Settings, but the locking [00:27:00] one is not. I'm just going to harp on the same thing I already said. If you want to lock it right from the get-go, create the iGUIDE, then go to your "My Guides" page and click, iGUIDE details, scroll down and click "Lock", and that will lock it. You can always go back and click it again to unlock it.

There's nothing wrong with that. Let me go and I'll show you. When you click that button, if I recall correctly, yeah, okay. Perfect. It has [00:27:30] this goofy thing signifying that it's locked around. That works all.

We're dashed red line, so I'll show you, which is quite cool. It also has a big button that says an indicators is locked and expired as well.

That's it. I'm just going to briefly mention again, PFRE. If you're not going but you're thinking about it, you should totally go, it's going to be awesome. There's only 25 spots left. Please join our YouTube [00:28:00] channel, subscribe.

Please go join the Facebook group and talk about stuff. Please post funny photos, just whatever, I just love reading this stuff. Not that I don't have the form, it's cool too, but the Facebook group is a little bit more fun, I'll say that.

Then one other thing I'll mention in case you guys don't know because it's quite a few people who know. We have a Master Class schedule. You probably already know because you're here.

[00:28:30] But if you go to Media and click "Master Classes', all of the Master Classes are all lined up here.

That means that if you want to see what the next one is, apparently it's drafting standards of floor plans, holy smokes, that's going to be exciting. That's what the Evan, Moly.

Actually for talking about stuff that's coming up, social media is pretty cool, everybody not struggles with that, but everybody has questions about that. But then an inside look into drafting, if I recall correctly, Kelly can [00:29:00] correct me if I'm wrong.

But this is the one with Marius, yeah it says Marius here. We're just going to hammer them with questions. By Hammer, I mean, delicately ask these really nice guys.

There's a lot of questions that come up about things like delicately, yes exactly. There's a lot of questions about things like, how much data do I need in this scenario, and how close should the camera be at this to get the right data?

We try to answer those questions as best we can. But sometimes it's a good idea to roll up [00:29:30] your sleeves, push them up or whatever, and get an expert on and get into that data and have a look at it. I don't want to oversell it, but it's probably going to be the best Master Class we've ever done.

Also, are you going to join in on that one, Kelly? Yeah, she is. It's going to be fun to that. I'll be there and Kelly would be there, and Marius.

We'll talk over each other and it'll be great. Or it will be a training. That's it. We're [00:30:00] all done. Thank you, everybody, for coming. Thank you so much. Let me stop sharing my screen. There we go. Say Hi.

Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Please join our Master Class next week. This one is recorded, it'll be on Internet the next few days. Have a great rest of your day.