News & Alerts widget

Of the many widgets that make up the Matrix home page, the News & Alerts widget is definitely one of the most important.  It is so important, in fact, that it is the only widget that cannot be moved or hidden.  It will always appear as the first widget in the top left corner of the home page:

The reason that News & Alerts is permanently locked in the top left corner of the home page is that it is designed to allow the MLS to deliver important messages to our membership.  It is a more effective means of communicating than mass emails.

We try not to bombard our users with too many messages (we are fully aware that everyone gets tons of emails and other messages every day), but when there is something that we really want to be seen, we will post it to News & Alerts.

Please do not just click I've Read This without actually taking a quick look to see what the message is about.  Not only do we send out alerts about important system updates, billing information, etc., but we also use News & Alerts to send individual users targeted messages, such as when they have a listing that is about to expire.

The news articles in the News & Alerts widget are not permanent- they run for a short period of time, usually a week or two, and then expire.  Many of the articles are notifications about time-sensitive topics (such as training sessions/webinars), so there is no need for an archive for those. Once that particular date or session is passed, the information is no longer relevant and disappears permanently.

However, for those news articles that are not time-sensitive (for instance, notifications about new Matrix features), you can see a running list in the Latest News section of the SmartMLS Member Dashboard:

You can also access it by clicking here .