STRATA CORPORATION DOCUMENTS ON-LINE, ORGANIZED & SEARCHABLE

A few months ago my strata corporation was facing a problem regarding the sale and purchase of a particular strata unit. Although we have been with the same property management company for years, our property manager was new and was of little help. I was relatively new to being on council and the other members had different recollections about what happened when the unit was sold. I started searching through years of strata corporation meeting minutes looking for relevant information about the problem. That's when I said to myself "I wish these minutes were stored in the ezPublisher and published on the Internet so that I could just search through all of them at once".

The ezPublisher was developed by EZ Text Inc., a Vancouver based company, to enable corporations to publish large volumes of text, such as policy and procedure manuals, to a secured publication site on the Internet. By publishing the manuals to the Internet employees can quickly search the manuals using key words. Being part of the EZ Text team and a member of my strata council it was a natural fit for me to get my strata corporation's documents online. I have found this so convenient that I thought it was time to expose other strata corporations to the ezPublisher.

Before becoming a member of my strata council I used to think that the minutes were "junk mail". When it came time for our AGM I wasn't very informed about what was going on within my strata corporation and within my investment. I now realize just how important it is to keep and maintain a complete set of organized strata council meetings minutes and other documents pertinent to the strata corporation. This is part of the key to a smooth running strata corporation. Whether your strata corporation is self-administered or using the services of a property management company, the ezPublisher is an effective and cost efficient tool to update, archive, and distribute your strata corporation documents.

What a simple idea: store, organize, and publish strata corporation documents online hence enabling all of the documents to be searched within a matter of seconds. The ezPublisher will store MS Word, Excel, WordPerfect and PDF documents. Your strata corporation's ezPublisher administrator controls which documents to import into the ezPublisher, how the documents should be organized and who has access to view and/or edit the stored documents.

When it comes time to publish the documents to the Internet, no special skills are required. With a few clicks of the mouse the documents will be published and made available on a secure publication site. The publication site is only accessible with a valid user id and password. It cannot be altered nor can it be searched via any search engine such as Google; it is only searchable from within itself.

Some of you might be thinking that it would be just as easy to use email to distribute your strata corporation documents. There are several disadvantages to using email:

1. Valid email address distribution list must be maintained.
2. Viruses can be easily passed onto another computer via attached documents.
3. Attachments don't always come through.
4. The sender and receiver must have the same or new versions of the software in which the original document was created to be able to open and read the attachment.
5. People are becoming more concerned about giving out their email addresses because they don't want to end up on a junk mail list.

With the ezPublisher all of these issues disappear and the strata corporation's publication site is available 7/24.

The ezPublisher is as easy to use as the file manager system on your PC. There are no hidden cost or setup fees. The software and all updates are available free of charge.

For $1.00/strata unit/month your strata corporation can organize, store, and distribute its documents. Compare that to what your strata corporation is currently paying in administrative charges. Like me you might be appalled to discover what those few pieces of paper are costing you. If your strata corporation is self-managed then ezPublisher is the perfect tool to storing and organizing documents. If your strata corporation currently uses a property management company then it's time to request of them to go online to help you reduce your cost. After all, the software is distributed for free.

Of course there may be some resistance to using the Internet to review strata corporation documents. It's human nature to resist change, but like instant teller banking, cell phones, and 10 digit phone numbers we soon forget the transition phase. The ezPublisher enables you to embrace the power of the Internet.

EZ Text is committed to building strong working partnerships. We offer full support at no charge. Training is always included and should you need help setting up the ezPublisher to fit your needs, we will assist you.

To access a general overview of the ezPublisher please visit our website www.eztext.com and click on 'Presentation'.

To learn more about the ezPublisher and EZ Text please contact Karen, at 604.482.6407 or via email at ezPublisher@eztext.com.