🏠 PropertyPal User Guide

PropertyPal is a desktop application that helps real estate agents manage their client information and preferences efficiently. It offers tools to store, search, and organize client information — such as names, contact details, preferred areas, and property types — all in one place.

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Quick start

1. Ensure you have Java 17 or above installed on your computer.
   Java 17 can be downloaded from here. Make sure that you choose the correct Operating System.
   Mac users: Ensure you have the precise JDK version prescribed here.

2. Download the latest .jar file from here.

3. Create a new empty folder at a location of your choice on your computer.

4. Copy the file to the folder you created in step 3 to use as the home folder for your PropertyPal.

5. Open a command terminal, navigate into the folder you put the jar file in, and use the java -jar PropertyPal.jar command to run the application.
   A GUI should appear in a few seconds. Refer to UI below for more details. Note that the app contains some sample data by default.
   Alternatively, you may also double-click the jar file to run the application (depending on your OS settings).

6. Type the command in the command box and press Enter to execute it. e.g. typing help and pressing Enter will open the help window.
   Some example commands you can try:

   • list : Lists all contacts.

   • add i/sell n/John Doe p/98765432 e/johnd@example.com a/John street, block 123, #01-01 pt/HDB 3 room flat pr/470000 : Adds a contact named John Doe to PropertyPal, with the intention to sell his property.

   • delete 3 : Deletes the 3rd contact shown in the current list.

   • clear : Deletes all contacts.

   • exit : Exits the app.

7. Refer to the Features below for details of each command.

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UI

The application has a Graphical User Interface (GUI) with the following components:

1. Contact List: Displays the list of persons stored in PropertyPal.
2. Result Display: Shows the outcome of user commands, such as success or error messages.
3. Command Box: The text input field where users can type commands to interact with PropertyPal.

Contact List

• The Contact List displays all persons stored in PropertyPal. Each entry shows the person's intention, name, phone number, email, address, property type, and price. Each field has its own column.
• Users can adjust column widths by dragging the edges of the column headers. This helps with dealing with long values that may get cut off.
• Users can reorder columns by dragging and dropping the column headers to their desired positions.
• Clicking a row highlights it, making it easier for users to focus on a particular contact.

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Field Validation Rules

All fields in PropertyPal are case-insensitive — searches and comparisons ignore case, but entries are displayed exactly as entered by the user.

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Features

The INTENTION parameter in the add and find commands refers to the client's intention regarding property transactions: selling or renting. This helps in categorizing clients based on their property-related goals.

• Accepted values: sell or rent (case-insensitive). Inputs are accepted in any case and will be normalized to lowercase internally (e.g., Sell, SELL, and sell are all valid and stored as sell). Other values, abbreviations, or synonyms are not accepted.

Viewing help : help

Shows a message explaining how to access the help page.

Format: help

Adding a person: add

Adds a person to PropertyPal.

• A warning will be displayed if there already exists an entry with the same name and/or address in PropertyPal. However, it will still be accepted if at least 1 field is different from the existing entry.
• An input that is fully identical to an already existing entry is considered a duplicate and will not be accepted by PropertyPal.

Format: add i/INTENTION n/NAME p/PHONE_NUMBER e/EMAIL a/ADDRESS pt/PROPERTY_TYPE pr/PRICE​

Examples:

• add i/rent n/John Doe p/98765432 e/johnd@example.com a/John street, block 123, #01-01 pt/HDB 3 room flat pr/4700
• add i/sell n/Betsy Crowe e/betsycrowe@example.com a/Caldecott Road #12-34, Singapore 756467 pt/Condominium pr/1200000.50 p/+65 81234567

Listing all persons : list

Displays all persons in PropertyPal, sorted by:

1. Name (A-Z)
2. Phone number (text sorting, so "100" comes before "99")
3. Address (A-Z)
4. Email (A-Z)
5. Price (lowest to highest)
6. Property Type (A-Z)

Format: list

Editing a person : edit

Edits an existing person in PropertyPal.

Format: edit INDEX [i/INTENTION] [n/NAME] [p/PHONE_NUMBER] [e/EMAIL] [a/ADDRESS] [pt/PROPERTY_TYPE] [pr/PRICE]

• Edits the person at the specified INDEX. The index refers to the index number shown in the displayed person list. The index must be a positive integer 1, 2, 3, …​
• At least one of the optional fields must be provided.
• Existing values will be updated to the input values.

Examples:

• edit 2 p/99099090 e/aaron@gmail.com Edits the phone number and email address of the 2nd person to be 99099090 and aaron@gmail.com respectively.
  • A prompt showing the edited contact with the new information will be displayed. (e.g. Edited Person: Aaron Tan; Intention: [sell]; Phone: 99099090; Email: aaron@gmail.com; Address: 12 Bishan Street 22 #04-118; Property Type: condo; Price: 1450000)

Locating persons by prefix: find

Finds persons whose name, phone, email, address, intention, property type, or price contain any of the given keywords. Apart from the price field, the search uses substring matching (e.g. ali matches Alice).

Format: find [i/INTENTION]…​ [n/NAME]…​ [p/PHONE_NUMBER]…​ [e/EMAIL]…​ [a/ADDRESS]…​ [pt/PROPERTY_TYPE]…​ [pr/PRICE]…​

• At least one prefix must be provided.

• You may include multiple prefixes in the same command — results are combined using OR semantics (a person matches if any field matches).

• Words separated by spaces are considered separate keywords.

• Parameters can appear in any order.

• The order of the keywords does not matter. e.g. Hans Bo will match Bo Hans.

• Persons matching at least one given keyword will be returned. Each keyword is separated by a space. e.g. find n/Alice Casey will return Alice Tan, Casey Low as results in the contact list.
  
  

• Finding by Price:

  • finding with an exact value (e.g. pr/2000) will return contacts who match that exact value.
  • finding with a range of values (e.g. pr/2000-3000) will return contacts who fall within the range of values specified (inclusive).

Examples:

• find n/Alex — finds persons whose name contains “alex”.
• find n/John p/9123 — finds persons whose name, phone match any of the given keywords.
  

Deleting a person : delete

Deletes the specified person from PropertyPal.

Format: delete INDEX or delete n/NAME [n/NAME]…

• Deletes a single person at the specified INDEX, OR one or more persons by exact NAME(s). Do not mix index and names in the same command.
• The index refers to the index number shown in the displayed person list. The index must be a positive integer: 1, 2, 3, …

• Deletion by name:
  • When providing a NAME to delete (e.g., delete n/John Doe), PropertyPal will match and delete all persons whose full name exactly matches John Doe (case-insensitive). If the name matches multiple entries, the application will display a confirmation warning listing all matched entries and append a note such as:
    • Note: Multiple entries found for 'John Doe' — all matching entries will be deleted.
    • You can then type yes to confirm or no to abort.
      
  • If any given name is not found, nobody is deleted and an error listing the missing names is shown.

Examples:

• list followed by delete 2 deletes the 2nd person in PropertyPal.
• find n/Betsy followed by delete 1 deletes the 1st person in the results of the find command.
• delete n/John Doe deletes the person named John Doe.
• delete n/John Doe n/Jane Smith shows a confirmation message listing both persons; re-run with yes to proceed.

Clearing all entries : clear

Clears all entries from PropertyPal.

Format: clear

Exiting the program : exit

Exits the program.

Format: exit

Saving the data

PropertyPal data are saved in the hard disk automatically after any command that changes the data. There is no need to save manually.

Editing the data file

PropertyPal data are saved automatically as a JSON file [JAR file location]/data/propertypal.json. Advanced users are welcome to update data directly by editing that data file.

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FAQ

Q: How do I transfer my data to another Computer?
A: Install the app in the other computer and overwrite the empty data file it creates with the file that contains the data of your previous PropertyPal home folder.

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Known issues

1. When using multiple screens, if you move the application to a secondary screen, and later switch to using only the primary screen, the GUI will open off-screen. The remedy is to delete the preferences.json file created by the application before running the application again.
2. If you minimize the Help Window and then run the help command (or use the Help menu, or the keyboard shortcut F1) again, the original Help Window will remain minimized, and no new Help Window will appear. The remedy is to manually restore the minimized Help Window.

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Command summary