Auto-assign of Inspections

​Auto-assignment of inspections by discipline can help organize your jurisdiction’s daily inspection load. We recommend that each discipline is assigned to only one single inspector as the ‘lead’ or primary for that discipline (inspectors can, however, be assigned more than one discipline).This is because if you have 2 or more inspectors assigned to a discipline, Accela will simply “share” out the inspections without paying attention to whether or not inspections are on the same permit or at the same address;  so, you could end up with one permit having two inspectors scheduled for inspections on the same day- not very efficient! 

Example, if Jim and Tom are both certified for Residential Electrical – we would recommend that you only add the Electrical (Residential) discipline as “primary” to either Jim OR Tom’s user profile.  If both Jim and Tom’s users were set up with the Electrical (Residential) discipline, the system would simply alternate between them to assign incoming residential electrical inspections, with no reference to address or project.  If Jim is set up as primary, then every morning he can assess the inspections and logically reassign some of them to Tom.

User Disciplines as provided in the Model:

Auto-assignment helps save a lot of time and assures that the assigned inspector is certified to perform that type of inspection.  It is important to keep track of your inspectors that have auto-assign disciplines set up.  If an inspector leaves your agency, any of their assigned disciplines would need to be reassigned to minimize the disruption to your daily inspections. 

Auto-assignment is also available by district.  A district is a way to break down your jurisdiction into manageable parts for the purpose of inspection.  District data would need to be provided in your APO load as parcel data in order to use this option.  In this case, we could set up an inspector for a given district – as designated in your APO load (this can be added if you don’t already have this)- and they would be assigned all inspections with parcels that occur in their designated district.  This option can be very helpful for counties where it could take hour(s) just to drive to one inspection. 

An inspection is assigned to the discipline associated to the large inspection group it belongs to.  Because of this, sometimes the autoassigned  inspection will need to be reassigned  to another inspector. For instance, 1065 Sidewalk inspection has an designated discipline of Structural (Commercial) , however in some jurisdictions these are performed by a Public Works inspector. This inspection will be auto-assigned to the Structural (Commercial) inspector and would need to be reassigned to Public Works if that is who does the inspection.  There are a small number of inspection types that have a similar conflict like this – if you are unsure, please submit a help ticket to inquire.

If you would like to add/remove/change disciplines or districts on any of your inspector users, please submit a helpdesk ticket to [email protected]  and fill out the Add/Remove user form found here: http://orepermittinghelp.kayako.com/Knowledgebase/Article/View/addingremoving-user-accountorepermittinghelp.kayako.com/Knowledgebase/Article/View/addingremoving-user-accounts.