Apps Script Library (Beta)

Visata offers a Google Apps Script (GAS) library for customers that allows them to add, update, and read data to and from Rent Manager with simple lines of code. Here's an example that gets a list of all prospects who have an interest level greater than 5:

RentManager.getProspects(

  ["ProspectID","Name","Email","InterestLevel","Property.Name"],

  ["InterestLevel,gt,5"]

)

For each prospect, it returns their name, prospect ID, email, interest level, and the property they're assigned to.

Similar to this, with just a few lines of code, we could do other things like create a new service issue, update the status of a unit, add a history note to a tenant, pull the information for a specific property, etc. This guide will walk you through how to write code to do almost anything you want in Rent Manager. Then you can have your code execute automatically when something happens (i.e. someone submits a Google Form, someone edits a cell in a spreadsheet or document, or every Monday at 10am before an important meeting, etc).

 What is Google Apps Script?

Google Apps Script is a coding environment that allows you to write code and automate tasks across Google products. For instance, here's a simple piece of code that sends an email:

GmailApp.sendEmail(

  "recipient@domain.com",

  "Weekly Delinquency Report",

  "Hi <Recipient Name>, please see attached delinquency report"

)

Building on the example above, I could automatically pull a list of all prospects with an interest level greater than 5 and then send an email to each of them with an announcement about a community hot chocolate meet-and-greet coming up.

Okay, enough talk. Let's actually do some coding.

Step 1: Create a project

Open the Apps Script homepage at script.google.com. Click the + New project button to create a new project. You should see something similar to the image below. The section highlighted in red is where you can write your code:

Step 2: Write some code

Inside the myFunction, let's add the code from above to try sending an email. Go ahead and put your own email as the recipient so you can see that it works. The full code altogether should be:

function myFunction() {

  GmailApp.sendEmail(

    "youremail@domain.com",

    "Subject goes here",

    "This is a test message. Let's see if it worked!"

  )

}

Press the Save button (or press Ctrl + S):

Step 3: Run the code

Next click the Run button. The first time you run it, it will pop up a permission box like below. Click Review permissions:

It will ask you to select your google account:

Next it will confirm that you're okay allowing the script to do certain things. Although it may say "read, compose, send, and permanently delete all your email from Gmail", it will only do what you tell it to in the code box. In this case, we're just sending an email, not deleting our entire inbox. Click on Allow:

It should then send the email and if there are no error messages it will look like the screenshot below and you should have received the email in your inbox.

Step 4: Add Visata's Rent Manager library

Now let's add Visata's library so we can interact with Rent Manager. Click the + button to add a new library:

In the box, paste the following Script ID:

1So_UTHnLfhLILaoW-S9CV_BJqwHpN8XX1ru9aQe3drhyjFIjvLyX1xaG

Then click on Look up:

Rename the library identifier to "RentManager" like below, and then click Add:

Note: it may say a number bigger than 19 under Version for you and that's okay.

You should now see that library showing up as in the screenshot below:

Step 5: Pull data from Rent Manager

Now let's pull some info from Rent Manager. Let's use the example from before. Change the code in your myFunction so that it now pulls a list of your high interest prospects:

function myFunction() {

  RentManager.setCorpId("your_company_code")

  let high_interest_prospects = RentManager.getProspects(

    fields=["ProspectID","Name","Email","InterestLevel","Property.Name"],

    filters=["InterestLevel,gt,5"]

  )

  Logger.log(high_interest_prospects)

}

What's going on exactly? Let's break it down.

To see a list of available fields for any data type, you can use the logAvailableFields function. For example, this line gets all available fields for tenants:

RentManager.logAvailableFields("Tenant")

Similarly, this function would print all available filters for tenants:

RentManager.logAvailableFilters("Tenant")

Step 6: Make changes back into Rent Manager

We don't currently have resources about how to make changes back into Rent Manager. What we can tell you is that if you already have experience with the Rent Manager API, you can use the RentManager.post() function to run any post command. If you don't have experience with the Rent Manager API, please reach out to us to get help.