You may subscribe to either M3Central Reporting or M3Central Diagnostics or both. If you subscribe to M3Central Diagnostics, you will be entitled to a licence for M3Locator Plus – M3’s desktop software for repair diagnostics – at no extra charge.
M3Central comes in two modes: Reporting and Diagnostics.
M3Central Reporting is intended primarily for tenants and residents to enable them to report repair problems as accurately as possible. It is also used by staff, especially peripatetic workers and resident staff, to report repair problems on behalf of residents.
M3Central Diagnostics is intended for both technical and non-technical staff who work with a Schedule of Rates. By default M3Central provides access to the M3NHF Schedule of Rates but it can host any Schedule of Rates, whether based on the NHF Schedule of Rates or not.
All subscribers have access to a control panel. This allows you to view the database that holds details of repair reports made via M3Central Reporting and allows you to change settings such as the default Schedule of Rates and set up email addresses and URLs to get data in and out of the system. The control panel also allows you to download resources such as the list of repair problems as MS Excel spreadsheets.
The Control Panel has an online editor with which you can customise any of the available resources including, but not restricted to, the repair problems, the advice, and the Schedule of Rates itself. Plus, you will be able to test all changes before making them available to your users.
As well as the settings in the Control Panel, you can also have different profiles of M3Central by modifying the link to the service.
M3Central is a web-based system and can be used as a standalone or incorporated as a component of a larger web-based housing management or repairs ordering system. These systems can then integrate M3Central in a way that is seamless to the user. Many of the major suppliers have already integrated M3Central and others are planning to do so. Some of our larger customers have integrated M3Central with their own in-house systems.
M3Central Reporting is effectively an upgraded version of M3Housecall. It has two principal advantages over M3Housecall:
M3Central and M3Housecall share the same database so you can switch over without losing access to all your historic reports.
M3Central Diagnostics has two principal use cases which distinguishes it from M3Locator Plus:
M3Central is a web application that runs on M3 servers hosted in a UK-based data centre (technical details of the data centre infrastructure are available on request). M3 does not offer an option to host the system locally.
M3Central can be secured with SSL by switching the protocol from http to https. This is especially important if the hosting service that connects with M3Central is also secured with SSL.
Although M3Central does not require users to enter confidential information, such as financial or medical information, we still take user privacy very seriously.
By default, M3Central Reporting does not store any user information in its database, although customers can elect to do this. The system is P3P compliant and has a comprehensive privacy policy, which also covers its use of cookies.
By default M3Central stores all user selections (whether repair reports or Schedule of Rates items) in the browser’s local storage and automatically retrieves them. This means that if a user loses their connection, they will not lose their selections, which will be retrieved when they connect again. In addition, the M3 road map for M3Central includes extending its offline capabilities so more operations can be completed without a live internet connection.
M3Central software is fully GDPR compliant
M3Central holds customer data (if the option to store this has been selected) and repair reports in a database that runs on a separate server. Each customer also has their own area where their amendments are held.
M3Central always checks for customer-specific resources first, before loading the common ones. You can also download any of the available resources as Excel spreadsheets. This includes, but is not restricted to, the advice, the repair problems, your repair reports (M3Central Reporting only) and the Schedule of Rates (M3Central Diagnostics only).
What would a typical report from M3Central Reporting look like and contain?
Email reports are delivered as plain text and POSTs as XML. Email reports can be configured so that your email address appears in the “from” field of the address, allowing you to provide an automatic acknowledgement to the user.
Whatever the format, repair reports all contain similar information. Details of the repair problem delivered by email will look like this:
Category: Walls and Floors
Problem involves: Plaster problems
Repair concerns: Plaster cracked
Details: Cracks need filling
Reports from M3Central Reporting may also contain:
M3Central Reporting delivers repair reports either by email or by a POST to a server. You can use either method, or both, adjusting them to suit your needs.