Notifications and Messages
TracFax will notify you of all relevant activity on your account - for example each time a bid is received on one of your projects. The most recent notifications can be viewed on the right hand side of the homepage after you login to the TracFax service.
You can use the TracFax “Messages” system to communicate with one or more of the Service Providers associated to a specific Project. Subscribers to the TracFax Corporate Edition can also use the system to send messages to other members of their company’s property management team.
You can view all Messages associated with your account on by clicking on the “Messages” tab at the top of the TracFax page. For more information on this feature, see our help guide on “Sending and Receiving Messages”.
Email Notifications
By default, a copy of each notification or message sent to you on TracFax will also be sent to your contact email address. If you wish to stop receiving email notifications of this kind, you will need to access the “Account Settings” page by clicking on your name at the top right of the TracFax page.
To stop receiving email notifications from TracFax, uncheck the box beside the words “Copy all TracFax messages to [your email address]”.
If you wish to update the email address to which notifications are sent, please see our guide to “Resetting Your Password and updating contact information”
Sending and Receiving Messages
You can use the TracFax system to communicate with one or more of the Service Providers associated to a specific Project. This may be used, for example, to request further information from an individual service provider or to provide an update to all service providers on your requirements.
Subscribers to the TracFax Corporate Edition can also use the system to send messages to other members of their company’s property management team. For more details on how to do this, see our guide “Managing Users for a Corporate Account”.
This guide will show you how to:
- Send Messages to Service Providers
- View Your Sent/Received Messages
- Reply to Messages
- Archive Messages
Sending Messages to Service Providers
To send a message, locate the relevant project in the TracFax system (for details on how to do this see “Managing Your Projects”) and open the project dashboard by clicking on the “dashboard” icon in the Projects screen.
In the project dashboard screen, click on the “Send Message to service providers” link in the “Additional Actions” section on the right hand side. In the pop-up window that opens, use the tick-boxes to select or deselect the specific service providers you wish to send this message to. Type your message in the Message box and press “Send”.
Alternatively, you can send a message to a specific service provider who has bid on your project from within the project’s “bids” screen. To access this screen, locate the relevant project in the TracFax system (for details on how to do this see “Managing Your Projects”) and click on the “bids” icon alongside the project name.
Select the service provider you wish to send a message to by clicking on their name within the list on the left side of the bids screen. Click on the “Send Message” button at the bottom of the “company contact info” box on the right of the screen. Type your message into the pop-up box. You may upload files to be attached to the message by clicking on the “upload files” button in the pop-up window. When finished, click the “Send” button.
Viewing Your Sent/Received Messages
When you have received messages, a number will appear alongside the “Messages” button at the top of your screen. The number indicates how many new, unread messages are in your inbox.
You can view a summary of all the messages you have sent or received by clicking on the “Messages” button. Each conversation is displayed in this “Messages” screen as an individual line-item with the date and time of the most recent contact. You can view the individual messages in a conversation by clicking on the “Open” button on the right hand side of the “Messages” screen.
Replying To Messages
To reply to a message, or to send a follow-up to a message you have previously sent, locate the original message in the “Messages” screen and click on the “Open” button on the right hand side. Type your reply/follow up message in the white box and click “Send Reply”. You may upload documents (for example contracts) by clicking on the “Upload Files” button. This will allow you to select one or more files from your computer which should be sent along with the message. Once you have finished typing your message and uploading documents, click on the “Send Reply” button.
Archiving Messages
When you no longer require access to a conversation, you can archive the messages in that conversation by clicking on the “Archive” button on the right hand side of the summary screen. You will be prompted to confirm whether you really want to archive the message.
Users cannot manually retrieve messages which have been archived. However, if you send a new message to the same user or Service Provider in the future, all messages from your previous conversations will automatically be retrieved from the archive and will be displayed along with the new messages as a single conversation.