The ePermitting team will start updating the login screen when needed to share news, maintenance alerts, and more.

​The Valuation (Calculator) tab provided on all building record types would be required in several business cases. The Valuation Calculator would be populated whenever occupancy would need to be granted – when there is new square footage being added (Type or Work = New, Addition), or when the permit is for a Tenant Improvement (Category of Construction = Tenant Improvement, Type of Work = Alteration). The Valuation Calculator tab values are used to populate the Certificate of Occupancy report where Occupancy and Type are requirements. Even if you are not using the Valuation Calculator to determine the fees in reference to valuation rules, the Certificate of Occupancy report still requires it be populated.  Note, you are indicating which you are using for fees, Valuation Contractor or Valuation Calculator, using the Fee Calc Factor dropdown on the Fee tab.

From both the Inspections list page directly and from the Inspections tab on the My Tasks page, there is a View Log button available to most users (there is a certain level of permissions required to have this button display). If you are receiving questions/concerns from customers that they scheduled an inspection and no one came out, or that they scheduled for a certain date that you are not seeing in the system, they say it was scheduled a certain way that didn’t work, and any of the other questions about scheduled inspections that you likely get – you can use the Inspection Log functionality to resolve many of these.

Checkbox the inspection in the list, select View Log > Inspection Log – the inspection log details will be displayed in a pop-up window.

There is a variety of details provided that can greatly assist you in resolving any inspection scheduling issue. We often get calls or helpdesk tickets that are resolved using this same Inspection Log. 

If you have any questions on how to use this log, please submit a ticket to the agency helpdesk at epermitshelp.BCD@dcbs.oregon.gov. 

Important Reminder to all agencies - any time you are increasing fees, adding new fees you have not charged formerly, or adjusting a fee method/calculation in such a way that it results in a fee increase – BCD Fee Notice would be required.  

We sometimes receive helpdesk tickets regarding fee increases/changes where the agency has not gone to BCD Fee Notice or was not aware they had to.  On this note, submitting fee changes to ePermitting does not fulfill the BCD Fee Notice requirement, it is a separate process that your agency will need to also complete.

BCD Fee Notice information is provided at https://www.oregon.gov/bcd/jurisdictions/Pages/proposed-fees.aspx . See the Changing Fees section primarily.

We are continuing our pilot program for the video inspection/photo upload features of the Oregon Inspector app.

Thank you to the inspectors and contractors in Deschutes County, who are doing extensive testing of these features! 
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Thus far, it is going well and we expect to start rolling this out to other jurisdictions by May.

The Certificate of Occupancy now displays tenant information when the record type is Commercial Structural and there is a contact with Contact type = ‘Tenant’.  This is intended for Commercial Structural permits where the Type of Work = ‘Tenant Improvement’.  The report will show the name, business name (if available) and address for the first or primary contact type = ‘Tenant’ associated with the permit.

​Here is the ‘Tenant’ contact information for the Certificate of Occupancy shown below: 

We are installing the newest version of Accela in a test environment this week. The ePermitting team will be testing the new version extensively over the next 6-8 weeks. Once we’ve completed the first round of internal testing, we’ll be upgrading the Config environment where users will have the opportunity to do some testing and exploring of their own for approximately two weeks. We anticipate upgrading the production environment in early June. Along with performance and security enhancements, both Chrome and Edge will now be fully supported. We will be providing you with regular updates and more information in the coming weeks as we progress through our testing.  

​The February 2022 ICC Building Valuation Data has been loaded into Accela for all agencies and will become effective and available for use on April 1, 2022. On April 1st, you will see that the version dropdown will now appear like the screenshot below, with the new version appearing first in the list and the most recent former version will now appear in the list with a “P-“ proceeding the version number. This change was made last year when we upgraded to our current version of Accela because of the way Accela changed the functionality of this dropdown.