Alternative naming is a function in Aptly that allows you to add variant names to buildings, units, and ad sources. This can be helpful as internally you may refer to a location as “EB-126,” market it as “Sunset Vista by the River’s Edge,” and list it in your Property Management System as “Rivers Edge.”
It’s also useful in the case of Ad Sources where you might want to call ‘Apartment Guide’ something different on reports rather than the Aptly default (let’s say “Apt Gde”).
With this feature enabled, cards created via inbox rules or email parsers can identify a building, unit, or ad source by any of those names.
In this article, you will learn:
- How to set up alternative naming.
- How to use alternative naming with Ad Source
- What aliases to add
How to Set Up Alternative Naming
Alternative naming is available for Portfolios, Buildings, Units, and an Ad Source board. This section reviews how to set up alternative naming for Portfolios, Buildings, and Units. Ad Source board details are below.
From either Portfolios, Buildings, or Units, click on Card Settings in the Board Settings menu on the left.
- Locate the field titled Alternative Naming in the Card Details.
- Once the field is enabled, you can start to add the different iterations of your location's name. Click + icon and type the relevant aliases. Case matters - include both an uppercase and lowercase version if it appears in this manner.
- Enter the alternate name and hit enter. Alternative naming works in a similar way as tags.
How about Ad Sources?
Ad source alternative naming works the same way. The Ad Source card’s primary name will be in the card’s title spot, and any aliases you want to roll up into that name you add to alternative naming.
So, in the original case above (Apartment Guide renamed to Apt Gde) the card title would be what you want to see on reports (Apt Gde) and you’d add the standard Aptly naming that card is created with to the Alternative Naming field (Apartment Guide)
How Do I Know What Aliases to Add?
Whenever you see a red exclamation point in a building, ad source, or another field this is a good sign that Aptly is receiving data from an external source that doesn’t match what you’ve set up. You will likely want to copy the text from these tags and use them as an Alternative Name on the building so that the system can auto-match these in the future.
Follow the same process as above - identify the correct item, open it up, and add the name variants to the card.
