VISOA Knowledgebase for Strata Owners

0:00 – Why VISOA Built a Knowledge Base

0:00 Wendy Wall: So my name is Wendy Wall, I'm from the Vancouver Island Strata Owners Association, and we have been busy building a knowledge base for strata owners. And one of the things that we found, and you've probably found, is that these days we don't tend to type in a website and go to a website, we tend to Google, or use whatever our web browser is, to search words. That can be good, that can be bad.

0:27 There's great information out there, we love it when you find VISOA's site. CHOA is another good site, of course. The BC Housing strata website is also excellent. But as you know, you'll sometimes get other things. There's some excellent blogs out there by lawyers, but sometimes you don't realize that you're on a site from Ontario or Australia or the USA, so sometimes you're not getting information you need for British Columbia.

1:01 We want to make it easier for you to find and search what you're looking for. So VISOA has been around for over 50 years, and we're a non-profit society that provides education, support and advocacy. So all we really want is for you to find the information that you need to help run your stratas. So today, I'll just mention that our website is visoa.bc.ca.

1:50 – New Website and Resource Center Tour

1:50 Wendy Wall: But when you come to the new website you'll see a page like this that makes it really easy for you to decide what you want to do. And from here you'll be able to log in and submit a question to our strata support team if you're a member. But there's also, if you look at the green box on the bottom left, there's a looking for answers. So this is going to take you to a resource centre, which is a knowledge base.

2:15 Before I go there, on the homepage you'll also see latest news. So if you're not looking for basic information, you just want to know something really current, you can always go here and find out what's going on. Now, when you go to our resource centre it's going to look like this. So I'm going to jump into the real thing in a second, but I just wanted to give you a screenshot.

2:40 And then the login screen is where our members would log in so that they can get extra things, member only resources. We're trying to set up a really simple interface, really easy, user friendly, for everyone to just have a really great experience. And once you're in your account, again a really nice simple dashboard. The three most common things that people are going to want to do is access the public resources, the member only resources, and then how do you submit a question to our strata support team.

3:14 So those are the three main things that people will be doing when they're members on our website. So let's take a tour. So here's the real thing, and I'm going to go into our resource centre and show you around. So what we've done is this really clean, simple, not a lot of fancy graphics. This is a resource centre where we're going to encourage you just to search, just like you would on a web browser.

3:47 We just want you to search what you're looking for. But if you want to browse by the types of information, we've set up eight major categories. So I'll just go through them real quick. We've got strata 101, just the basics; operating your strata; bylaws, rules and legislation; finances; maintenance and depreciation reports; and then we've got EV charging and energy efficiency; and resolving disputes and legal resources. If you're a member you'll also be able to find troubleshooting articles to help you log in, reset your password, how you submit a question to our support team, things like that.

4:30 But that just gives you an idea of the overview, and there will always be the most popular article showing up on the right hand side.

4:35 – Searching Articles and Trusted Links

4:39 Wendy Wall: But I just want to give you an idea of how to find things. So for example, let's say you wanted to find something about a building envelope, and you don't really know what article that might show up in. When you start typing any word, it's going to suggest articles for you based on highest relevance. So in this case it's come up with a few ideas, and I want to go see strata maintenance guides, that sounds fun to me.

5:09 So when I get to this article — all the articles are structured in a way that is kind of like frequently asked questions — so when you start, the contents are like chapters. You can jump to any one of those questions and see the answer, or you can read the whole article all the way through. But some things that you're always going to see are helpful links.

5:30 So yesterday in one of the presentations it was mentioned, the BC Hydro maintenance matters series. Of course you can go to their website — sorry, did I say BC Hydro? I meant BC Housing. They've got the maintenance matters publications and they're excellent. So one of the things that was our goal with the knowledge base is not to repeat information where there's other really good resources. We will send you to those reliable resources if they're out there, that we found, that we think are the best ones for you.

6:05 And so it's not just about what is VISOA telling you, it's VISOA saying, hey, we've searched for the best guides, here they are, so that you don't have to go looking. So you'll see, if you were to search a roof, you're going to come to all this stuff about a roof, etc, etc. So hopefully you find the resources you need to continue on your journey of learning about whatever topic it was.

6:22 – Heat Pumps, Human Rights and Member Resources

6:30 Wendy Wall: You can always return to the top and navigate again. One thing that people have been searching a lot is heat pumps. Again, what articles does that show up in? Well, a few. So here's one, handling requests for heat pumps. So again it's got all of the contents. Almost all of them have quick links at the top, so these are going to send you again to some other resources that are really helpful.

7:06 In this case there's a bunch of videos on this topic. And another one that comes up a lot lately is human rights, so let's see what comes up for that. So heat pumps and air conditioners comes up again, but let's go explore the about human rights article. And here again, all through the chapters. But one thing that you might also find is our member only resources. So if you click down you're always going to see if there's something extra for the members when they log in.

7:51 Some topics are kind of obscure and you might not know whether we even have an article about it. So for example, sometimes we have questions on our support team where people are saying, well, what's a building scheme? So it seems kind of, you know, not a popular topic, but sure enough it's going to show up in the article about bare land stratas. I'm going to show you one more search.

8:22 Lately we've been getting a lot of questions about, can we give notice of an AGM by email?

8:27 – AGM Notice Rules and Templates

8:30 Wendy Wall: So let's go to the article called getting ready for an AGM or SGM. This is one where I want to show you not just all the articles — it's going to tell you how much time you need to give, how much notice is required, that's the time frame, what has to be in the notice — but also the member only resources. So there's going to be all sorts of templates for creating your notice of the AGM, for a waiver, for a registration sheet, all those things.

9:03 So we're really, really hoping that you'll find a lot of resources and tools all in one place. This is the type of information that doesn't really expire, doesn't really go stale. But one of the things that it will link to, if there's a resource for you, is our YouTube channel. So I'm just really quickly going to show you that. On our YouTube channel we have a lot of useful videos.

9:30 I'm just going to zoom in so you can see, but we have all of these playlists. So you'll often be referred to a video or a playlist. And we've got training for secretaries, for treasurers, repairs. The one about EV charging has our brand new video about getting low carbon fuel credits if you're doing EV charging. Heat pumps, all sorts of things in there. So there's a lot going on.

10:00 And I'm just going to flip back to our slides. Ryan, remember which slides I'm on? Okay, so that's just my closing slide, just to remind you where our current website is. Hopefully when the video for this presentation is up, hopefully our new website will be launched. So visit it often to see if it's launched. And you can also follow us on Facebook, X, or through our mailing list to get updates, to find out when all of this stuff is going to be happening.

10:34 – Search Research and Website Navigation

10:38 Wendy Wall: And Ryan, do you want to just stop sharing the screen?

10:40 Ryan Grant: Sure.

10:40 Wendy Wall: There we go, now we're back, just us. Okay, do we have time for questions?

10:50 Ryan Grant: Yes.

10:50 Wendy Wall: I'll just mention, how did this all start? What we found, we did our research, our search engine research, and we wanted to see what are people looking for. And it was fascinating, because more than 80 percent of the questions were what I would call the fundamental questions. What is a strata council? What does the secretary do? How many days notice do you have to give for a meeting?

11:15 All of those things. So that's what the resource centre is trying to address.

11:21 Ryan Grant: Yeah, and I know how much of an improvement it looks compared to the old website and way of navigating. Maybe you can explain a little bit more to people how that current experience was compared to the new. You know, to me it's a big revamp, right?

11:39 Wendy Wall: Well, as anybody knows, on a website sometimes the navigation menus and the submenus, and sometimes even the sub sub menus, sometimes those make sense to the people in the organization, but it's really easy to miss if you're a visitor. And we always feel that if you're on a website and you click more than three times and you haven't found the page you're looking for, then we're not doing our job.

12:00 We want you to find it easily. So we basically have no sub menus, we have about five tabs at the top for navigation, and the bulk of the information that most people are looking for is in that resource centre. So you shouldn't have to leave the resource centre very often, unless you're checking to see if we have any events going on, or what publications are for sale, or that latest news to see the blog posts.

12:28 We just really, really wanted to give one simple place, and hopefully it's a one-stop shop for people.

12:35 Ryan Grant: Yeah, it definitely looks that way. I can see how it's going to be super nice and handy, where you go and learn about some things, some workflows, right, like running the AGMs.

12:41 – Q&A: Member Login and Membership Benefits

12:46 Ryan Grant: And then you also got the templates, right, if you're a member you can log in and grab the templates and stuff too. So it's all nicely tied together. So you guys have done a great job. We do have some questions. So, is there a login screen for the current website?

13:03 Wendy Wall: There isn't, and so this is one of the improvements we wanted. Right now when people sign up to become a member you don't have anywhere to log in and see, well, am I an individual member or is my strata a member? What is our expiry date? How do we renew? So we found that we could easily create a better user experience if you're able to sign up as a member and pay and be a member instantly.

13:30 You can access resources right away, whereas, like any office, we're only open in business hours. So for some members it takes a few days for that to be processed, depending on what day of the week it is. Today, as anybody here who's from the tech community knows, people want things instantly, they want self-service, and they want to find what they need instantly. So we really wanted to create an experience — this isn't new tech obviously, logging into a website is not new — but it's a huge improvement for our members to have a better experience.

14:09 Ryan Grant: Perfect. We do have some more here. Can you tell us more about the membership and other VISOA benefits?

14:17 Wendy Wall: Absolutely. So we have two kinds of membership. Individual members: you're just a strata owner. You don't even have to be a strata owner, if you don't own a strata lot but maybe you want to know more about stratas because you're going to be buying one in the next few years, you can be an associate member. So it's the same as an individual member, it's just that you don't own a strata lot and you don't have voting rights at our AGM.

14:40 The other type of member is what we call a corporate member, because the strata corporation joins, and in that case every single owner in that strata can access our services. And it's a much better value, economies of scale. And then for the member benefits, the most important benefit for 50 years has been our strata support team. People send so many questions in every year. And then what we're trying to do with the new website is give members more benefits.

15:13 So right now when we do a workshop for best practices for secretaries, or new to council, things like that, members do get a discount on that ticket price. But we want to give our members more, so that new site is going to give us the opportunity to develop more tools that are just for them.

15:33 Ryan Grant: Wow, that's awesome, that's a huge value added. And people don't realize as well how much the volunteers and everyone that's at VISOA really helps out the community. It's a lot of work, I've seen it over the years, and I've even called you for help with my own strata before. Even though I'm a business member at VISOA with our company, nonetheless I call from time to time to get a little help too, and it's really great.

16:00 So I take a lot of value from everything that the organization provides, thank you.

16:06 – Q&A: Article Updates and Public Access

16:09 Ryan Grant: Let's see: how often are the knowledge base articles updated?

16:15 Wendy Wall: One of the things that's kind of beautiful about the knowledge base is that they're not about news, they're about things in the Act that don't really change. We've seen a lot of change in the last 18 months with depreciation reports and electrical planning reports and contributions to the CRF, things like that, but normally we don't see a lot of change. The concepts and the requirements in the Act are quite static, a lot of them have been in place for 24 years.

16:45 So these articles are going to be the basics, and they're going to be easy to keep updated because there is rarely change. But we also have the flexibility, if somebody reports something that's unclear or needs to be fleshed out with more information, or they want a brand new article on something else, for example electrical planning reports, then we can add things. But if people want, you know, what did the government say on Thursday, that's going to be in the blog post, because that's news.

17:15 Ryan Grant: Yeah, exactly, perfect. Let's see, then someone else wants to know, do you have to be a member to view the VISOA website?

17:29 Wendy Wall: No, it's public facing. Right now, visit our website, everything that you see there is available to the public, and we just wanted to reorganize it on the new one and make it better.

17:46 Ryan Grant: Perfect. That seems to be all the questions for now. Okay, we have your next presentation starting in less than two minutes, so I guess we can maybe have a little break if you wanted, or did you have anything else you wanted to say?

17:59 Wendy Wall: No, I think I'm ready to go when it's time.

18:06 Ryan Grant: Okay, then yeah, we'll pop off for about one minute there and pop back in. See you everyone shortly.