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Grant County Now Offers Full Services!

6/7/2019

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​On May 13, 2019 Grant County went live as an OSM Full Services agency. Grant County previously tracked their legacy data on a spreadsheet that was converted into Accela.  They are using the Building and Planning modules in Accela and soon will offer Onsite. Welcome Grant County!
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Revised Inspection Type Brochure Available

6/7/2019

 
We have revised the inspection brochure with available inspection types, the brochure is available in both English an Spanish.
English: https://www.oregon.gov/BCD/epermitting/Documents/brochures/osm-inspection-codes.pdf
Spanish: https://www.oregon.gov/BCD/epermitting/Documents/brochures/osm-inspection-codes-spanish.pdf

Contact Types - Survey

6/7/2019

 
As your business grows in ePermitting, we have begun receiving more requests for additional Contact Types. When you create a new contact, you are required to assign the contact a ‘role’ in the form of a Contact Type. We have recently approved requests to add the following types: Complainant, Property Manager, Tenant, Bank, Attorney, and Trustee (yellow highlighted values in the image below). Contacts are considered Reference Data your agency manually creates that are then associated with incoming applications - we at ePermitting want to assure you have the basic Contact Types needed to assign to your Contacts as you create them.
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Note: This list cannot be exhaustive, so we will be taking the most requested types submitted thru this survey process. Follow the link to complete the survey: http://dcbs.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3dzEoA1R9ONVhjv.

In the Spotlight: City of McMinnville

6/7/2019

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Written by Heather Richards
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​In February, 2019, after one year of planning, preparation and training, the City of McMinnville launched our new epermitting program with the State of Oregon’s Accela program. And we are so glad that we did. This program has allowed us to add more efficiencies to our building and development program, with the electronic permitting capabilities, and internal coordinating and tracking of permits. We brought on the building, planning, and public works modules, and added some outside partners to the program for enhanced delivery of services to our customers.  

We never could have accomplished this without the team at Oregon ePermitting. The staff went out of their way to accommodate us and help us through the transition. We are a small program and transitioning to a new software program is never easy, but the state team was very responsive to all of our questions and concerns, even adjusting their training to help our team feel more comfortable with the software. I was very impressed with the state team’s knowledge of the system, knowledge of the state building program, awareness of what it means to serve building program customers, and experience as a building permit technician. Our project manager worked with us and advised us along the way based upon our needs and goals with the program. 
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When it came time to go live, the state team was on-site with us helping our staff navigate the software program while serving our customers. We were trepidatious about the learning curve and adjustment to the new software, but it has actually been much easier than we thought to implement it and our customers love the new system.
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SelecTXT Brochure and Demo Video

6/7/2019

 
The State of Oregon ePermitting has launched SelecTXT, a new service allowing contractors and homeowners to utilize interactive text messaging to:
  • Schedule inspections
  • Reschedule inspections
  • Cancel inspections
  • View inspection results
  • Include comments/instructions for Inspectors
This new solution simply uses your existing cellular text messaging functionality for scheduling inspections. It’s easy and fast, and does not require installation of an app, keeping an app up to date, or any other add-ons. With one word, users can begin the inspection scheduling process and SelecTXT will guide them from there. Helpful hints will ask them for their IVR tracking number and inspection code to complete the process in just a few key strokes. The commands are simple to remember and intuitive. It also offers “Express Commands” where users can complete the scheduling process with one single text message making it one of the fastest ways to schedule inspections offered.

An end-user brochure is available for your lobbies, to provide with issued plans, or to hand out to your contractors along with an informational/instructions document for agencies. We have also created a short video tutorial to demonstrate how easy SelecTXT is to use.

OSM Future Implementations

6/7/2019

 
  • Yamhill County - Go-live July 2019
  • City of Brookings - Go live July 2019
  • Clatsop County - Go live Summer 2019

Permit Fee Retention for Work Completed

6/7/2019

 
A Permit Fee Retention can be charged by an agency as a way to recoup the cost of work already completed on a permit (i.e. inspections) that ends up being withdrawn by the applicant. The Oregon Standard Model has the Permit Fee Retention broken out into 3 standard percentage rates to assist with this.

20% Permit fee retention - plumbing
50% Permit fee retention - plumbing
75% Permit fee retention - plumbing


The Permit Fee Retention process precedes the consideration of any refund and because it is the retention of actual permit fees, it invokes State Surcharge, which is based upon the percentage of the total amount of permit fees retained. Note: Retention of Plan Review fees are not subject to State Surcharge.

To process the Permit Fee Retention, go to the Fees tab in the record navigation pane. Select the applicable permit fees that have been invoiced and paid and void them to credit if they have not been credited already. 
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​Then click the Add fee button. 
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Locate the percentage rate that you are going to retain of the permit fees paid based upon work already completed.

Enter the total amount of permit fees that were paid and are eligible to be potentially refunded (excluding previously paid State Surcharge) in the Quantity Box.
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​Click Submit – the Permit Retention fee will calculate the percentage at the rate you selected and will automatically recalculate State Surcharge at 12% of what is being retained. Invoice the new Retention and State Surcharge fee items.
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​Go to the Payment tab. Note that you now have Unapplied fees (from voiding the permit fees to credit) in the Amount Not Applied. Select the source payment in the Transactions section that shows a Not Applied balance (transactions appear at the bottom of the Payment screen). Select the Apply button to now reapply these monies.
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​Apply the monies to the Permit Fee Retention and the State Surcharge that are showing an outstanding balance. Consider paying any other fees that still show an outstanding balance if the work has already been performed – if it is not appropriate to pay any other remaining unpaid fee items, void them prior to beginning the next step in the Fees tab to show they are no longer applicable. 
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The Amount Not Applied balance that is remaining is what is then eligible for the agency to refund to the customer.
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Refer to How to complete a Refund documentation on Kayako: http://orepermittinghelp.kayako.com/Knowledgebase/Article/View/15

OSM Changes from Last Few Months

6/7/2019

 
  1. Added Erosion Control Inspections. (4-8-19)
  2. Added an additional switch agencies can elect to enable that will prevent users from submitting planning payments on ACA - "ACAPaymentPlanning." (4-15-19)
  3. The dropdown label and value was updated for the Residential Mechanical code edition. The applicable code for a residential mechanical permit should be the ORSC NOT the Mechanical Specialty Code. (4-16-19)
  4. Fixed an issue where licensed professionals and owners were not being carried over to newly created records from their parent record. (4-17-19)
  5. Updated all user groups to show GIS button. (4-18-19)
  6. Added texting option message (SelecTXT)  to reports. (5-6-19)
  7. New Notification Templates & Scripting to execute templates so that all Citizen Access emails are saved under “Communications” on the record. (5-7-19)
  8. The Building permit has been modified so that agencies can add a custom comment that will appear on each permit.  The comment will appear above the state wording on the permit.  To add or remove an agency custom comment please submit a help desk ticket. (5-14-19)
  9. Updated user permissions were updated to prevent users from deleting/replacing the workflow on a record. (5-17-19)
  10. Fixed an issue where online payments were sending the permit/receipt, no matter the status. (5-17-19)
  11. Updated the scripting for New Affordable Housing CET Scripting to give agencies more flexibility regarding accounts for commercial affordable housing CET. (5-23-19)
  12. Updates to Temporary C of O workflow statuses and functionality: New filters, Denied and Expired statuses added, TCO report is now also saved to the parent record. (6-3-19)
  13. ACA Admin Setting, "Allow multiple inspections" was turned off for some child agencies for the Onsite module. This has been resolved so that public users can always schedule any inspection even when it already exists on the record. (6-5-19)

Financial Batch Export Upgrade Coming Soon

6/7/2019

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The ePermitting Program is working on a project to standardize the financial export process for all OSM agencies.  The daily export file will also be generated a little bit differently behind the scenes to make maintenance and upgrades more streamlined for our team. But most importantly, we are standardizing the Payment Methods that will be included and excluded in each daily export.  The following Payment Methods will now be included in the daily export:
  • ACH
  • Cash
  • Check
  • Credit Card
  • Credit Card (Other)
  • Fund Transfer
  • Internal Transfer
  • Restore Payment (NEW payment method that will be implemented with these financial export changes.)
And these Payment Methods will always be excluded from the daily export:
  • Billed
  • Credit Memo
  • Fee Waiver
  • Journal Entry
  • Refund Check
  • Write Off
We plan to roll out in Production on August 5, 2019 for those agencies who currently use the daily financial export and make it available for any other agencies to implement, if needed.  There will be a one week testing phase from 7/23/2019 – 7/30/2019 where it will be your responsibility to test the new export and compare to your current export to make sure all is working correctly.  More information will be provided to agencies who currently use the daily financial export as we get closer to this date.  We will also be providing more details regarding the new “Restore Payment” payment method that will be available for all OSM agencies on Aug 5, 2019.

​Since this is potentially a big change for our agencies, we will be providing four Q & A sessions moderated by Kelly Marshall and Chrissie Deibel where you can ask questions after the testing phase but before moving to Production:
  • 7/29/2019 (10:30 – 11:30 AM)
  • 7/29/2019 (2:00 – 3:00 PM)
  • 7/30/2019 (9:00 – 10:00 AM)
  • 7/30/2019 (1:30 – 2:30 PM)
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July 1 Fee Updates

6/7/2019

 
We will be rolling out fee update testing requests soon. 
Thank you! If you have any questions regarding fee updates, please contact our helpdesk at epermitshelp.BCD@oregon.gov. 

Online Payments for Planning Module

6/7/2019

 
We will be enabling online payments through Citizen Access for the Planning module on July 1, 2019.  We understand that some agencies do not want to accept online payments for Planning so we have developed a method for blocking online payments for those agencies who choose not to.  Click here to see the process from the perspective of a Public User when agencies opt out of accepting online payments.

1950 TCO Requested – Enhancement coming in June 2019

6/6/2019

 
​In April we made several changes to inspections, including the addition of 1950 TCO Requested. Friday, June 7th, we will be rolling out some additional changes to OSM agencies that will enhance the use of the 1950 TCO Requested inspection. The changes will be active in all OSM agencies by end of day. Once the changes have been pushed out to your agency, scheduling the inspection will now create a TCO (child) record directly instead of having to update the workflow manually (you can still create a TCO record via the structural record workflow). 
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This inspection must be scheduled by staff users (public users do not have access to add the inspection). The inspection can be scheduled via the back office or the inspector app. Once the inspection has been scheduled, it will kick off scripting that will:
  1. Add the inspection to the record
  2. Create a child TCO record with a status of App Submitted
  3. Update the workflow task status for Inspection Process on the parent record to Temp C of O Requested with the comments noting it was updated via Inspection
  4. Update the overall parent record status to TCO Requested/Under Insp
  5. Add a condition to the parent record
  6. Automatically result the 1950 TCO Requested inspection as Information Only using the current date. As soon as you schedule this inspection, the scripting is kicked off (even if you schedule the inspection for a future date)

Important criteria for making this work:
  1. This feature is only available to Commercial Structural, Commercial Phased Project, Residential Structural, Residential Phased Project and Residential 1 & 2 Family Dwelling record types
  2. The Inspection Process task must be the active task on the Structural record
  3. You must add the 1950 TCO Requested inspection as Scheduled. The scripting only works when you “Schedule” the inspection (not pending or resulted). 
Once the Child TCO record has been created it will need to be processed just as it is today, this new feature only offers another option for creating the TCO record and was specifically created to make it easier for inspectors in the field.

To aid you in monitoring, and follow-up on the processing of these TCO requests, we’ve created some new Filters:

Record List:
  • TCO – Awaiting Review: TCO records where the TCO record status is Awaiting Review or App Submitted
  • TCO – Open (not issued): TCO records where the TCO record status is not TCO Issued, TCO Complete or TCO Withdrawn
  • TCO – Created in Past 7 days: TCO records that have an opened date within the past 7 days
  • Temp C of O Record - TCO Issued was renamed to TCO Record – TCO Issued
Inspection List:
  • 1950 TCO Requested (Last 7 Days): 1950 TCO Requested inspections scheduled within the last 7 days

    Disclaimer

    Please be aware that this content is relevant at the time it is published, but as time goes on may become out-of-date. We will do our best to keep the content alive and relevant.

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