• The Basic Features
• This is the stuff that you're probably coping with in some combination of MS Office programs and scraps of paper. Nacelle does it better.
• Corporations
  • corporation vitals
    

    Nacelle presents vital information about the corporation in one convenient record including: the name, legal number, address, and the start/end dates of your relationship.

  • multiple addresses
    

    Often larger corporations have multiple associated postal addresses. There is no limit to the number of addresses a corporation can have in Nacelle and they are easily associated with the appropriate properties. You never need to enter a corporation address more than once.

  • internal nicknames
    

    Full names and addresses are a cumbersome way to disambiguate specific properties especially in writing (we're guessing you already use abbreviations of some sort). Set system-wide short nicknames for corporations and their addresses (if there are more than one). These will be prefixed to property labels in any context in which the labels, by themselves, might be ambiguous.

  • one-click registers
    

    Nacelle will replace your corporation registers for most internal purposes, but that doesn't eliminate their necessity for external recipients (like boards) and for record-keeping. Generate complete, up-to-the-minute registers in either web (html) or pdf formats.

  • corporation statistics
    

    Nacelle provides basic statistics about each corporation: property and individual total counts broken-down by relevant types. It will even tell you what percent of units are 'owner occupied'.
• Properties
  • properties classes
    

    The property 'class' (to be distinguished from property 'class' below) defines a legal status. Abstractly there are three property classes that Nacelle allows you to track: titled, assigned, and common. 'Titled' are, of course, those properties that are legally owned by individuals (ex. suites, titled parking). 'Assigned' are the common areas reserved for the exclusive use the occupants of specific units (ex. assigned parking or storage) and 'common' refers to any other non-exclusive corporation property (ex. meeting rooms or visitor parking).

  • property types
    

    A property 'type' (to be distinguished from property 'class' above) defines what the property is; some examples might include 'Suite', 'Parking' or 'Storage'. Nacelle makes no assumptions about how a corporation is organized or what kinds of properties need to be tracked—property types are fully definable according to your needs. If one of your corporations insists on calling it's apartments 'Love Nests' or you need to keep track of shared lawnmowers, you can do that easily. Furthermore, 'types' and 'classes' are not mutually exclusive: within the same corporation you could have titled, assigned, and common 'Parking'. Setting a couple of parameters ensures that the corporation statistics and mail-merging don't get confused.

  • property setup
    

    Each property needs to be added to the system, but Nacelle makes it easy. All the units in a typical condominium can be added with just one or two steps using 'ranges' to generate identifiers. For example to add 6 units / floor of an 8 floor building (48 units total: 201~906) you can use one command: (2-9)0(1-6)

  • assignment management
    

    Property assignments (for example assigning a parking stall to a specific unit) can be made easily from drop-down menus or all in one step by entering paired lists (which can be copy-and-pasted from text documents or spreadsheets). Once the assignment is made, it shows up in multiple relevant contexts. If you're looking at an individual's record, you'll see both titled and assigned properties listed. Similarly, you can look up the property and see who it's assigned to; or just refer to the big list of property assignments.
• Individuals
  • individual types
    

    Individuals that you need to track have different relationships to properties; there's resident owners, non-resident owners, tenants and emergency contacts and of course, those are not mutually exclusive. Nacelle makes no assumptions about what kinds relationships are relevant to your organization—you can define them according to your needs and by setting a couple of parameters per type, Nacelle's other functions will treat them appropriately.

  • one person, one record
    

    The majority of situations are simple: an individual owns a single property in one of your corporations. But chances are you have one or two special cases: one person that owns properties in more than one of your corporations or a long-term resident who is the emergency contact for four other people in the same building. Possibly you're trying to track the same person in more than one place and worse, you might not even realize it! Then that person gets a new phone number...

    Nacelle unifies an individual's information into a single view regardless of how entangled their situation might be. Of course we also recognize that you're equally likely to have more than one client with the same name—those individuals are equally easy to keep separated in Nacelle.

  • unlimited contact information
    

    Digital address books are often rigid in their construction: they make assumptions based on the typical one home number, one work number, one cell number, one e-mail address. Nacelle has no such restrictions. Define your own contact types ('Home', 'Work') and attach as many as you need.

  • contact preferences
    

    Naturally, when someone has multiple points of contact it starts to get confusing which to use. Nacelle allows you set individual contact preferences for mode (ex. e-mail vs. phone) and, when multiples are listed which is the primary (ex. home vs. work phone number). These preferences are respected by other functions like the mail-merge. Not only does the mail-merging respect address preferences, merge-codes will respect them appropriately depending on the context as well.

  • emergency contacts
    

    Nacelle treats emergency contacts just like any other individual in the database and so if an owner happens to specify someone that Nacelle already knows about, there's no need to re-enter contact information. Additionally, you can optionally define the relationship between the individuals and flag whether the contact has keys to the property. As with any other contact information, there are no limits to how many you can add.

  • correspondence history
    

    Whether by-law infraction letters or mass mailings, you send a lot of correspondence to owners and residents of your corporations—correspondence that tells you a lot about your relationship with that person. Of course, you keep copies of correspondence in either paper or digital form, but how easy is it to refer to? Can you refer to it while on the phone with a client? Can the manager who's covering the building for someone on holidays get easy access to it? Do you include bulk mailings in an individual's file?

    In Nacelle, every individual has a 'correspondence history' tab where you can upload copies of anything sent to that person. More importantly, when you use Nacelle's mail-merging function, that correspondence history is automatically maintained whether addressed to a single person or the entire corporation. At a glance you can see how many noise-complaints someone was sent, or whether that new owner moved in before or after that new policy letter was issued.
• Contractors
  • contractor/corporation relationships
    

    Contractors can be as difficult to keep track of as clients! Particularly because each corporation has their own set of preferences and contracts and because it's hard to aggregate together the experiences your managers have had with various companies and individuals. One manager might know that 'AA Mechanical' is unreliable, but unless you explicitly keep track of that no one else can benefit from that knowledge. Especially when the inevitable emergency call comes in he middle of the night, it's hard to mobilize the most appropriate response if you don't have quick and easy access to that information.

    In Nacelle, you have a 5 point scale to define the relationship between a contractor and corporation from 'Contracted' to 'Do Not Use'. Ratings are displayed using easily recognizable icons and then 'bubble up' to provide an overall rating for each contractor so that at a glance you can see who's good and who's not.

  • contractors and 'sub-contractors'
    

    Much like individuals, you have no restrictions on contact information or types of contact information: in fact you can setup different contact types for use with contractors vs. individuals (ex. 'Main' instead of 'Home'). They are very similar in that regard. One big difference is that you can add 'sub-contractors', which in this context means you can set up individual employees, contacts or workmen all of which can have a relationship to the corporation. It may not always be enough to say that Corporation A and Corporation B use 'AA Mechanical', you may need to contact 'Jessie' at 'AA Mechanical' for Corporation A and 'Chris' for Corporation B.

  • contractor services
    

    Quite often, you're not looking for contractors by name, you're looking for them by the service they provide. Nacelle allows you to define the categories and sub-categories that are relevant to you and then view contractors by the service they provide.

  • contracts
    

    When a contract exists between a contractor and corporation, it's important to keep track of when it expires and what terms there are. In Nacelle, when you define a contractual relationship, you can optionally upload a copy of the contract, set the termination date, set a warning before the end of the period and add notes about important terms of the contract. You'll never accidentally miss an important renewal or termination notice deadline again!

  • dynamic grid view
    

    Contractors, services, ratings... it's a lot of information to try and get a big-picture view of. Nacelle's primary view of contractors incorporates it all into a single, intuitive, dynamic grid view. Services are displayed across the top, contractors along the side. Clicking on any of the services filters the list so you're only looking at the relevant companies and individuals. Cross-hairs follow your mouse around the making it easy to be sure you're looking at the right intersection.
• Boards
  • board members and roles
    

    As the primary point of contact with the corporation, it's vital to know who comprises the board of directors and what roles they play. Nacelle keeps track of boards, board members, their roles and their terms of office—even when changes happens mid-term. Board roles are customizable so if a board decides to add the position of 'Webmaster' or any other innovation, that's not a problem.

  • view board histories
    

    Not only can you view a complete board history of the corporation, individual's board histories are displayed in their records. You know talking to an owner who has board experience might quite different from talking to an owner who doesn't—isn't that a useful bit of information to have at hand?

  • one-click 'E-mail Board'
    

    You shouldn't have to rely on your memory, your e-mail program, or your individual address book to produce complete, accurate, and up-to-date e-mail addresses for such a well-defined group of people that you have to contact regularly. Nacelle, does it for you: simply click one button to open a new e-mail to the board in your default e-mail client and you can be assured you haven't left someone out or accidentally copied the wrong 'Mike Smith'. Nacelle will even warn you if you don't have everyone's e-mail address.
• Notes
  • attach notes
    

    In Nacelle, 'Notes' are one of the most versatile tools you'll use. Notes are your free-form way to add any kind of information to records: individuals, corporations, properties or contractors. Unlike the notes that you undoubtedly make now, everyone can benefit from having easy access to them. And whether you made the note 5 minutes ago, or a year ago, they'll always be easily accessible and show up in the contexts where they are most useful.

  • note priorities
    

    Some notes are for recording keeping purposes, others are meant to remind you and alert others to critical information. Nacelle allows you to highlight and control the priority of notes so the important stuff is always prominently displayed.

  • display notes in multiple contexts
    

    Nacelle presents notes in multiple contexts; for instance notes attached to a property will also appear when you view anyone attached to that property. If there's a critical piece of information about a corporation, you can display that note in every individual's record. Even though notes are attached to specific individual, property, or corporation, you have control over how and where those notes are visible.
• Users
  • easy-to-manage, user-based security
    

    You control who has access to Nacelle with an easy to use console.

  • basic and administrative users
    

    Sensitive functions (adding/removing users, setting site-wide preferences, etc.) are restricted to 'administrators'; individuals you trust not to wilfully or accidentally compromise security or upset user expectations.
• The Exciting Features
• These are the features that really make Nacelle shine—the features that are going to really have an impact on how you spend your time.
• Merging
  • easily generate letters, lists, or mailing-labels
    

    Correspondence is a big part of the manager's job: by-law infraction letters, notices, AGM sign-in lists, budget, government notifications... the list goes on. Whether you're sending a letter to one person or the whole corporation, Nacelle makes generating letters, lists and mailing-labels a matter of select and click. It even keeps the records for you.

  • MS Word templates
    

    There's no reason to reinvent the wheel. MS Word is the standard for word processing and chances are that's where you have already created your letterhead and templates already. However, Word's merge capabilities severely limited and difficult to use; that's where Nacelle shines and gives you the best of both worlds: edit your templates in MS Word using it's full word-processing power and include Nacelle merge-codes, then upload them. The merge-codes are just regular text enclosed with angle brackets: ex. <<Name>> or <<Address>>

  • full-featured file-system
    

    Templates that uploaded to Nacelle can be organized any way you like. Create, move, rename, and delete files and folders; Nacelle's does everything that you would expect your computer's file system to do, right down to the 'trash'.

  • revision history
    

    One thing Nacelle does that your computer's file system doesn't do is keep a revision history. As you tweak or adjust templates, you can upload new versions rather than completely replacing the old ones. This ensures that if you can always go back without having to keep and track endless copies of files yourself.

  • sophisticated merge selection
    

    Wouldn't it be nice if you only ever had to send mass-mailings to the same group of people? Mailings need to go out to individuals, boards, specific groups of individuals, just the owners, just the off-site owners, just the building residents, just the owners with underground parking or balconies or... we could go on forever.

    Rather than having to sift through your mailing labels by hand, Nacelle can select any of these groups (and more) of individuals with just a few clicks.

  • remove duplicates
    

    Do you ever end-up sending duplicate notices or letters to different individuals at the same address, the same individual at different addresses or the same individual who ones more than one unit in the same building? Nacelle automatically eliminates duplicates like this during the merge process.

  • 'Resident' addressees
    

    It invariably happens: an off-site owner doesn't let you know who their new tenants are or a new owner hasn't returned their contact information form. One way or another, you may not know who's actually residing in a particular unit. You may still need to send out important notices to those individuals. Nacelle finds those cases and at merge time optionally allows you to include letters/labels addressed to 'Resident'.

  • individual correspondence preferences
    

    There always seems to be a few people with complicated situations. They want their mail to go to their post-office address instead of their home address or they live half the year at their vacation home, or maybe they don't want to get mail from you at all because they're silent partner-owners or maybe they have a management company looking after their unit while they're on a foreign sabbatical. In Nacelle, you can set their preferences once and then never worry about it again; merging respects the individual contact preferences that have been set.

  • more than fifty pre-defined merge codes
    

    Just about everything in the database can be used in a merge template, allowing far more flexibility than you have come to expect from other merge-capable products. You aren't just limited to 'name' and 'address'— you can: a) be more specific by including details like unit numbers and b) make more generalized templates appropriate for any corporation.

    Moreover, we're not talking about just letters! If you need to generate a list of parking stalls and their associated owners, you can easily do that too.

  • custom merge codes
    

    We don't presume to anticipate all your needs: in Nacelle, you can create your own merge codes too. For instance, rather than putting your mailing address into your templates, you might use your own merge-code for that. Then, if/when your office moves, you just need to change your address in one place rather than updating all of your templates. Perhaps you want to include a 'tip of the month' at the bottom of all your mailings; simply create the code and then just edit the 'tip' each month.

    We don't know how you might use them; we just think it's important that you can.

  • preview and edit at merge-time
    

    Creating templates is a bit of a balancing act between being providing necessary detail and being general enough to capture a variety of circumstances without having to completely rewrite the letter or have a dozen very similar templates. In Nacelle, before you complete your merge, you are presented with a textual preview of what the merge will look like and you will have the chance to edit some fields. You can mark text that you want to be editable at merge-time so that you can provide the details you need to without ever having to edit your template. Additionally, any merge-code that Nacelle finds but doesn't recognize is assumed to be something that you want edit at merge-time. This is an extremely flexible way on not just allowing the user to insert details but also make it clear what information should be provided, for example a bylaw infraction template might include a code like: <<DateOfIncident>>

    If everything looks OK you can also preview the full, final document before committing it to the merge history.

  • correspondence history
    

    The act of merging, automatically creates a 'paper trail' in Nacelle. Nacelle keeps a historical record of all correspondence both globally and attached to each individual where it can be easily referenced or redownloaded—even for mass-mailings. With Nacelle, at a glance you can tell whether the new owner in 402 moved in before or after that new policy notice went out.
• Searching
  • tailored search system
    

    Nacelle's search system has been carefully tailored to the task of pulling up the right information as efficiently as possible. We know that mere seconds will determine the usefulness of pulling up an individual's record when you're on the phone with them, so we've assembled a search system that will get you where you're going with only a handful of key strokes.

  • suggest-as-you-type matches
    

    Just like all the major search engines, Nacelle will look for common matches to your terms as you type.

  • partial / combination searching
    

    Can't remember how to spell 'McGlaughlan' exactly? You don't need to enter a full name: 'McGl' will pull it up too.

    Received a phone call from 'Chris in 204'? You don't need to know the corporation to locate them: searching 'Chris 204' will do fine.

    You can combine full or partial individual, corporation, or property (nick)names to easily pull up records. If there's only one resulting match, you'll just jump right to it.
• Prop. Groups
  • define 'property groups' to associate related properties for mail-merging.
    

    The physical layout of a condominium often lends itself to certain groupings that need to be targeted. Maybe there are multiple buildings, maybe there is both above-ground and underground parking, or perhaps you find yourself always mailing notices to the same column of apartments that share a leaky plumbing stack.

    In Nacelle, you can define 'property groups' based on any relevant criteria to help you keep things sorted out. More importantly, your groups can be used as selection criteria when merging so that with a single click you can send, for instance, a window cleaning notice to 'Building A', or a change of key notice to the owners in 'Storage Area 4'.
• Note Groups
  • define 'Note Groups' based on related content
    

    We don't like to bring preconceived ideas about what information is most relevant to your day-to-day functioning or how that information should be structured. Consequently, Nacelle leverages the 'notes' functionality into a powerful tool for you to define, display, and use information according to your own needs and priorities by allowing you to define 'Note Groups'.

    Fundamentally a note group is just a flag that indicates that a note contains a certain type of content. Some examples might be: 'Emergency Info' ('owner is on oxygen' or 'owner is blind'); 'Pets' ('owner has two cats name Fluffy and Tim'); or 'Maintenance' ('Unit 806 had a leak in the recirc line'). When you write a note, you have the option of selecting any of the define groups (the same note can belong to multiple groups).

  • use note groups to highlight info
    

    When you define a note group, you can optionally choose a highlight colour, making it easy to draw attention to certain information or to skim for content.

  • view note groups together
    

    In some circumstances—Emergency Info, for example— it's important to be able to view related notes all together in one filtered view. When you define a note group, you can optionally choose to create that filtered view.

  • merge to note groups
    

    Note groups can be used as selection criteria for mail-merging. For example, if you used a 'Pet' note group, you'd be able to target mailings to just pet owners with a single click.
• Data Integrity
  • duplication warnings and resolution
    

    When users add new data, Nacelle uses fuzzy matching against existing data to prevent the accidental creation of duplicate records in the database.

    Nacelle also regularly assesses data for duplication that may have been introduced through editing or data imports. Often problems are resolved automatically; when that isn't possible, duplicates are presented for review and interactive resolution by administrators.

  • missing or inconsistent information flags
    

    Nacelle regularly inspects records for missing or inconsistent information (for example there is no current resident information for a particular unit). Attention is drawn to data problems in various contexts using flags and highlights so that they can be resolved when it's convenient, not imperative.

  • warnings can be ignored
    

    The warnings are heuristics, not hard and fast rules; there are legitimate circumstances where deviations might occur. When those circumstances arise, you can easily suppress warnings so they aren't a perpetual nuisance.
• Inline Help
  • contextual help when needed most
    

    Throughout Nacelle, help is just a click away. Wherever terminology or tasks are not completely straight forward, click on the help icon near by to open an on-screen explanation.

  • 'tear-away' help
    

    Usually help is displayed in the same browser window, but sometimes you might want to have the help open on the side and out of the way. Click the 'tear away' icon to open the same help page in a separate browser window that you can conveniently refer to as you browse.
• Brandability
  • brandable with your corporate logo / colours
    

    Each Nacelle instance comes customized with your corporate logo and colours.

  • choose/use your own url/domain name
    

    If you already have your own domain, we can point a sub-domain of your choice (ex. nacelle.yourcompany.com) at your Nacelle site. If not, we'll be happy to help you obtain and set one up. And if you really don't want a domain, you can just use one of ours too (ex. yourcompany.protomentat.ca).
• Updates
  • automatic error reporting
    

    In a system as complex as Nacelle, the occasional bug will inevitably crop up. We take a proactive approach to these errors, and designed Nacelle to report them directly to us. Most likely we'll contact you if we need more information or to let you know the problem was resolved. The nature of our design allows us to address minor bugs very quickly and apply most fixes without any interruption to service.

    In the past, we have been able to permanently resolve problems in a matter of minutes.

  • always up-to-date
    

    Because you don't have to install Nacelle, you don't have to update Nacelle. We believe that maintenance is our job, not yours. Consequently, your Nacelle site will always be the most up-to-date, feature-rich version we have.
• The Road Map
• We're not stopping here. These are the features we're working on including in future releases.
• Merge to E-mail
  • Increasingly more information is being sent digitally; it's more convenient, less labour intensive and more economical. However, the default is still regular post because it's even more labour intensive to prepare both hard-copy and electronic versions of the same document and then figure out which to send to each individual because, of course, there are still people who don't have easy e-mail access or just don't like using it.
  • In future Nacelle versions, we plan to take care of that for you. E-mail addresses will be treated like any other mailing address and when you merge letters or notices, Nacelle will take care of sorting out which is which and preparing the documents.
  • Another feature merge-to-email would make possible is confirming whether an individual has viewed their notices.
• Task / Project Management
  • The next big organizational hurdle in condo management is tracking the myriad recurring tasks, unexpected occurrences and major projects. We're going to streamline that too with an integrated project/task/issue management system that will make sure nothing falls through the cracks and get you planning instead of reacting.
• One-click Management Reports
  • Once you're tracking tasks and projects in Nacelle, generating management reports becomes trivial. Imagine being able click, edit/confirm, and send even automatically including relevant attachments like contractor quotes or invoices.
• Board / Public Portal
  • Eliminate the need for people to contact you in the first place; give them (controlled) views of the information they're looking for on their own. Boards could download current registers or see the status of tasks. Individuals could submit problem reports and submit their contact information.
• Accounting Integration
  • This one is a little more 'pie-in-the-sky' because of the technical complexity; it may even require changing accounting software which may not be feasible for every organization. That said, our grand vision includes integrating accounting views into Nacelle so that the financial state and history of corporations and individuals can be summarized in their records, so that transactions can be paired to projects and tasks for verification and project expense tracking and so that financials and invoices can be automatically included in management reports.
  • Call us geeks, but this kind of potential gets us really excited!

• I have no hesitation in endorsing Nacelle and the services of Sean McLennan and Protomentat. My company has worked with Sean during the development of Nacelle, and we are very pleased with the results. The database program has made our office more efficient and effective, and is enabling us to provide better service to our condominium customers. Sean is a pleasure to work with, and has a unique understanding of the condominium industry and the demands we place on Nacelle, a most important and effective tool for my company.
• Suzanne LeValley, President, Longley Condominium Services Ltd.

Contact us to get a login to our Nacelle demo site!

We will ask you if we can give you short (30 minute or so) orientation either in person or over the web before you try it out. Nacelle is really easy to to use once you know your way around, but a quick introduction to Nacelle's structure and layout will really help get you started. Plus, we can direct you to the features that are the most important to you.

Nacelle is typically priced/billed on a monthly basis and rates are determined by your expected usage as estimated by the number of units you manage. Please contact us for a commitment/hassle free quote.

We believe that the usefulness of the product, not the law, should 'lock you in', but we are certainly willing to discuss longer term contracts and comensurate discounts at any point.

• Nacelle licensing
• Secure hosting
• Daily data backup (with historical retention)
• Initial training
• Ongoing technical support

AND for a limited time at no additional charge:

• Branding (we'll customize Nacelle to be consistent with your corporate branding)
• Hands-on data import support (we'll do everything we can to help you convert your existing data)
• Domain name setup (if you don't have your own web address and want one, we'll get you set up)

• Can I try Nacelle before I sign up?
• Absolutely! We have a demo site all set up (sandbox.nacelle.ca), just contact us for a login.

• Why do I need a login to access the demo site?
• The demo site is a fully-functioning implementation of Nacelle, which means that users can go in and add or remove content at will. Although we regularly clean up the demo site, if it were completely open to the public, we would have a harder time maintaining the content. Plus, restricting access helps us protect our intellectual property.

• Come on, really? Don't you just want my contact information so that you can give me a higher-pressure sales-pitch?
• Well... OK, yes, we do want your contact information but, no, definitely not to give you a high-pressure sales-pitch. We would really like to give you a short orientation to Nacelle before you try it on your own. We've designed Nacelle to be really easy to use, but it's a complex piece of software meant to handle a complex job. A bit of a tour will help you understand what you're looking at and get to the heart of what you're really interested in. We do in-person or virtual orientations as circumstance and preference dictate. They don't take longer than 30 minutes.

• Why can I only use the demo site? Why don't you offer a free trial?
• For Nacelle to make a difference to your day-to-day work, you need to have all your condos, owners, contractors, etc. entered into it. We're prepared to do what we can to automate/streamline that process for you, however that represents significant effort on our part that we can't offer totally free.

• How long of a commitment do I need to make?
• A month. That's our standard billing cycle. If at any time you want to stop using Nacelle you can.

• If I decide to quit using Nacelle, what happens to my data?
• Your data belongs to you, if you cancel our services, we'll export everything in your database, confirm that you've received it intact and purge it from our servers. We'll even export it into a form you specify, although depending on how complicated it is, we may need to charge you a little extra for that.

• What happens if I go over my storage, bandwidth, or unit limits? Will I suddenly get a really big bill?
• No, we'll never charge you more than you're expecting. Before any charges increase, we'll get in contact with you to discuss whether you actually need an increase in service or whether your existing usage can be optimized by, say, archiving older records.