Accela Upgrade and Other Tips and Tricks

Hoping that everyone is now getting into the groove with the new user interface that came with the recent Accela upgrade, and finding that the bumps are smoothing out. If you have not had a chance to read the upgrade documentation (Delegate User changes, Global Search changes, Known Issues with the upgrade) – take this opportunity to read this extremely important documentation.

​Tips and Tricks

• Setting a custom “Home” page when you first log in – instead of seeing the Accela Dashboard when you first log in (tasks cards of assigned items), you can now bubble in the ‘house’ icon on the specific page that you would like to make your ‘Home’ page, such as the RECORD LIST or MY TASKS. This can save you some clicks and load time, especially if you don’t use the Dashboard view, which many agencies don’t – instead they opt to using MY TASKS which shows all the same information, just in a more organized and digestible way.

• Report Page naming – as a result of the upgrade, we realized a bug where our report page naming was not displaying – instead users are seeing, Report 1, 3, 4, and 5. You may or may not see all of these depending on which modules your agency is using and/or that you have permissions to.  Designations are as follows:

                 o Report 1 = BUILDING
                 o Report 3 = PLANNING
                 o Report 4 = PUBLIC WORKS
                 o Report 5 = ONSITE

If you lose track or forget, once you open a report page, there will be a category named for the module-specific reports – so that’s a quick way to ID what report page you are on.

• Adding favorite reports to MY REPORTS for ease of use – to avoid having to hunt down the reports you use daily or with some frequency, you can add reports to a MY REPORTS category.  Go to the Reports list for the module you wish (see above Tip and Trick on Report Page naming), expand the various categories to locate the report you wish to ‘favorite’. Then right-click the report name and an option to ‘Add to My Favorites’ will be displayed, select this to add it to MY REPORTS.  Now when you go to the reports page(s), you can quickly jump into MY REPORTS to access all the reports you use most often.

• New Record Banner missing some address elements – this isn’t really a trick, but an important note and tip. The new Record Banner that shows across the top of every record, that includes various key record elements, is missing the pre- and post- street direction and unit number, if those are applicable. You must still access the complete address through Record Summary or the actual Address tab.  This has been reported to Accela.