This week's changes put the right information in front of people at the right time. General meetings get a proper notice, the manager can send you files from your building's Drive folder, and a solar proposal shows what your roof could make.
Notice of a general meeting
The law sets how far ahead owners have to be told about a general meeting, and what the notice has to say. Until now, Quarter emailed owners an invitation the moment a meeting was saved, often before the agenda was ready.
Saving an AGM or another general meeting now emails nobody. The meeting's page has a Notice panel for the committee instead, and giving notice is a step you take once the agenda is ready. Quarter checks the notice period in New Zealand, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia.
To give notice, open the meeting. The panel shows the last day to give notice for your date, what has to go with it, and any owners Quarter can't email. Read it with Preview the notice, then press Email the notice. Every owner gets the notice with its motions, the documents attached to the meeting and a calendar invitation. If you gave notice on paper, record the day under Gave notice another way?
In New Zealand, an AGM starts with the notice of intention, which the same panel sends first. A general meeting you have already scheduled reads "Not given yet" until you give notice or record that you did. If the last day has passed, Quarter asks you to move the meeting or confirm that you are giving short notice. Committee meetings still send their invitations when they are saved.
Files from your Drive folder
Many committees keep their building's papers in a shared Google Drive or OneDrive folder. The manager could already search and read a connected folder, but when you asked for a file from it, all it could do was tell you where the file was.
Now it hands the file over. Ask in a chat on the web and the file appears as a download under the reply. Ask by email and it comes attached, with anything too large for one email linked instead.
To connect a folder, open Documents, press Connect Google Drive or Connect OneDrive, and select the folder that holds your building's documents. A new folder starts visible to you alone. Once you have seen what synced, you can share it with the committee, the owners or everyone. Then ask the manager for what you need, such as "send me the insurance certificate from our Drive folder".
The manager only sends files to people who are allowed to see the folder. Google Docs, Sheets and Slides arrive as PDFs. On WhatsApp, and for files over 50 MB, you get a link to the file in your drive instead, which opens only for people the drive lets see it.
Solar potential on a solar proposal
A proposal to put solar on the roof draws the same questions from every owner: how big, how much, and how long until it pays for itself.
An Install rooftop solar proposal now carries a panel headed "Solar potential at" your building, between what the proposal is for and its motion. It shows how many panels the roof has room for and the size of that array, what it would generate in a year and for each home, about what it costs installed, what it saves a year, and how long it takes to pay for itself. Every line says where it came from: Google's model of your roof, and the published prices for installation and electricity where you are.
There is nothing to switch on. When a solar proposal is drafted for your building, Quarter looks up the roof, and the panel appears on the draft, on the proposal's public page and on the proposal inside Quarter.
The panel only appears where Quarter is sure the roof it measured is your building's. Where it isn't sure, or the roof hasn't been modelled, it shows nothing rather than a guess. The cost figures assume the power is shared among the building's homes through an embedded network, and the panel says so. The roof figures are kept for 30 days, so an older proposal may no longer show them. Treat them as estimates to weigh quotes against, not as a quote.