In response to Agency requests, we are moving Code Compliance out of the Planning module and into its own module! This new module will have the exact same record type/design/functionality but will be in its own dedicated module. 

Providing Code Compliance as a dedicated module, now allows Code officers and staff to much more easily manage their cases apart from Planning applications and other Planning-specific configuration. User access to Code cases and data can now also be more specifically managed and/or restricted. We are also improving upon existing Code reports and have created a new Code-specific inspection work site report, that include the Code-specific inspection results.
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For any agency that is already using the Planning Investigation record type for cases will have all its data moved into the new dedicated module. The record type will be renamed from “Planning Investigation” to “Code Compliance.” 

We will notify agencies in advance of this transition, and work directly with agency staff on the details. 
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Stay tuned!

With the Accela Upgrade, there were some changes to the public facing website(ACA). We have updated the ePermitting Online Training (https://www.oregon.gov/bcd/epermitting/howto/Pages/index.aspx) with updated screenshots.

The training site has a walkthrough of most everything a customer can do on ACA. 

We have also updated the Online Homeowner Applications document. This is the document you the jurisdiction can give to a home owner. So they can walkthrough an application online using the Owner License. The document has a fresh layout and updated screenshots.  

We were recently informed that Bluebeam will no longer allow the concurrent licensing model that we are currently providing for electronic document review. ePermitting will continue to provide Bluebeam, but we will be providing a set number of individual licenses to each jurisdiction. 

We will be paying for the annual renewal costs of those licenses.

We are finalizing our agreement with Bluebeam, so the number of licenses per jurisdiction has not yet been determined.

After we execute the agreement, we will be reaching out first to jurisdictions that are currently using Bluebeam, so that they can continue to use it without interruption. Then, we will then be giving licenses to all ePermitting jurisdictions, since everyone will be required to accept electronic plans by January 1, 2025. We will provide updates through emails/GovDelivery as we get more information.

​Please be sure to read to the bottom of this article for important information regarding the implementation of these changes.

We have created an enhancement to allow ACA applicants to declare their additional Energy Measures when applying for dwelling or residential structural record types. Additionally, we are moving where this information is displayed in the back office of Accela. 

When the Additional Energy Measures fields were originally added to the model, they were included in the building review task. At that time, because of how the Accela back office interface was structured, that made the most sense. Over the years as we have upgraded, changes in Accela have made it more difficult for users to go back and find that information. We’re now adding a new tab to the main menu navigation for residential dwelling and residential structural record types, making it much easier for users to find and/or update.

Previously entered in the Building Review workflow task. Once the review was complete, the user would need to navigate to the building review task in Workflow History to once again view and/or update the information.

​With this enhancement, the information is now available to be recorded and viewed in it’s own tab within the left hand navigation panel (screenshot below is for the Residential Structural Record type and now allows the user to choose from the correct tables based on the size of an addition):

​In ACA, for the DWL record types, there is a single field:

For the Residential Structural record type in ACA, additional energy measures are in their own section in order to provide more context for users to know which table they should be selecting from. We’ve also included a link to the source document (Residential energy additional measure selection (oregon.gov):

​Implementation: This enhancement we will be rolled out one agency at a time. As part of the implementation we will be migrating the current energy measure data (for all existing records) from the building review in workflow to the new tab. When we are ready to start implementing this enhancement for your agency, we will reach out to your designated agency contact with the details of the implementation/migration and to answer any questions they may have. Please keep an eye out for these communications as it will be important for you to respond in a timely manner and for you to communicate the changes to your internal users.

To help agencies specifically keep track of the Air Leakage/Sealing Compliance Method on dwelling construction- a new inspection type called 1465 Blower Door has been added to the Model.

When agencies begin their residential plan review, it is recommended that they PEND this inspection to the record when the plans indicate that the dwelling should be tested to demonstrate the blower door result (rather than a declaration that they are meeting the requirements of Table N1104.8).

Please note the related citation for your information:

N1104.8.2 Sealing required.
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Exterior joints around window and door frames, between wall cavities and window or door frames, between walls and foundation, between walls and roof, between wall panels, at penetrations or utility services through walls, floors and roofs and all other openings in the exterior envelope shall be sealed in a manner approved by the building official.
 
Sealing for the purpose of creating a continuous air barrier shall be in accordance with the applicable requirements of Table N1104.8 or the dwelling shall be tested to demonstrate a blower door result not greater than 4.0 ACH50.

Production Upgrade Schedule
Production is scheduled to be upgraded the weekend of May 5. Oregon ePermitting will be providing regular updates and more information in the coming weeks as we progress through our testing and the upgrade project. You can look forward to some more GovDelivery emails, as well as updates on our Accela Upgrade Information website which can be found at: https://www.oregon.gov/bcd/epermitting/juris_hub/Pages/upgrade-info.aspx

Previously, the expiration letters for all modules showed all the inspection scheduling methods that are available for the public to use. However, some agencies, particularly for the Onsite module, have elected to not allow inspections to be scheduled by the public so this message was confusing. To address this scenario, we have allowed the display of the inspection scheduling methods to be optional for either Onsite, Planning, or the PublicWorks modules. If your jurisdiction does not allow inspection scheduling by the public, please submit a help desk ticket by emailing ePermitsHelp.BCD@dcbs.oregon.gov and we can remove this message on the expiration letters for you. Please note that the inspection scheduling methods will always be available for the Building module and cannot be removed.
 
Example of optional inspection scheduling methods on expiration letters:

​We are now receiving routine updates for Land Surveyors, a new license type available to all participating ePermitting agencies, as of March 1, 2023. This license is issued by Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering & Land Surveying (OSBEELS) and is generally used within the Planning module. These licensed professionals can now be added to records through the back office. However, Land Surveyors are unable to apply for any new applications through Citizen Access.

We’ve made some changes to the required fields for the 1 & 2 Family Dwelling [DWL] record type. The following fields are now REQUIRED at intake for applicants online and also for staff creating new records in the back office:

• Storm sewer - (New Res) Total linear feet
• Water service - (New Res) Total linear feet
• Sanitary sewer - (New Res) Total linear feet
• Work Includes 600 Amp Service or Greater
• Gas Fuel Piping Outlets - we have created an expression that will require the user to enter the number of gas fuel piping outlets only if they select either 'Natural gas' or 'LPG' values from the Type of fuel dropdown provided on the intake form.

These changes were made at the request of agencies who reported that customers were often not entering the necessary information in these fields which impact fees, and that as a result, it was sometimes causing delays in getting permits issued. These changes fall in line with the required fee methodologies for new single-family dwellings.

While we recommend using the 1 & 2 Family Dwelling record type as a true and complete combination permit when possible, please note that ‘0’ is a valid value and could be used, for example, if the plumbing contractor had pulled the plumbing permits separately.

For those of you that do not have a full program, and therefore only offer the DWL_LTD record type, these changes will not affect what the customer is presented for programs that you do not offer. For example, if you do not have the Electrical program, the customer will not see or be required to complete the ‘Work Includes 600 Amp Service or Greater’ field.

The PublicWorks Tracking record type under the "Erosion and Sediment Control" tab has been modified, as of Tues, Feb 28, 2023 to better accommodate DEQ's new MS4 requirements.

BEFORE:
The following existing checkboxes have been removed:

• "Site between 1 to 5 acres"
• "Site greater than 5 acres"

AFTER:
The following two new fields have been added:

• "Site part of a Common Plan of Development" (Y/N field)
• "Land Disturbance" (Dropdown list)

Bluebeam has announced plans to end support for Revu versions from 2019 and older.

We see that some of our Oregon users are using older versions of Revu. Please let your planners or anyone with BlueBeam installed that they will need to upgrade to Revu 20.

With ePermitting's concurrent licenses, you can update to the latest version using the latest Product Key. If you need the latest Product Key, please submit a helpdesk ticket by emailing ePermitsHelp.BCD@dcbs.oregon.gov.

Here are instructions on how to update BlueBeam from an older version: 
https://support.bluebeam.com/articles/revu-upgrade-to-latest-version/

Oregon ePermitting is happy to welcome the City of Estacada, City of Gearhart, City of Seaside, and the City of Warrenton as our newest jurisdictions to joining Oregon ePermitting. 

A new optional workflow email notification is now available for enhanced communication with your customers!  For most Building workflows, under the Application Intake task, there is a new workflow status called Intake Requirements Needed.  If this status is selected, an email will automatically be sent to the Applicant and any additional email recipients that you enter (an example of the email is shown below).  The intent of this new status is to communicate more specifically to the applicant that additional intake requirements are needed before the application can be accepted and/or plan review can begin, as apart from using the Additional Info Needed status.  The bonus part of this email is that it automatically includes the current balance on the record.  Communicating additional requirements to the applicant, including paying outstanding plan review and/or other intake fees, is now made much easier with this simple status update.  You can use this status at any time; no additional configuration is needed from our team.
 
Example email:​

There are new required parameters. Depending on your selections, the report will generate different language.
Record Number = Enter the record number. Please note that single quotes are no longer needed.
Letter Type = Application or Permit
Contact Type = Applicant or Owner
Module = select the appropriate module

Accela 101 Training (3 part series): www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCrlQ45XMyFwGN5psfyyH9At1d8N3wDKj

Code Enforcement Focus Training: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr3HOXhshYc

Planning Module Focus Training: https://youtu.be/UaabyfzMKEQ

A link to the Oregon ePermitting YouTube that includes a few other training videos:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPrRRU13H4Ajohabvo_sRwg 

The receipt has been updated to allow agencies to create specific information for the header when the receipt is issued for a POS transaction.  

Over the past couple of years, you may have noticed that the header for a POS transaction is not related to the module where the POS transaction occurred, but rather to the preferred module for the user who performed the transaction. For agencies using only one module (e.g. Onsite only agencies, Building only agencies and Planning only agencies), this is not a problem.  Agencies using multiple modules may have users whose preferred module is Building, but sometimes perform POS transactions in other modules.

To accommodate those agencies using multiple modules, a new option has been added for Agency Contact Info. The Agency Contact Info POS allows the agency to have specific values for: 

Right now, these values are set to the Building module values for all agencies, except those agencies using only Onsite or Planning modules. If the agency is using only the Onsite module, the values are set to the same as the Agency Contact Info Onsite. For those using only the Planning module, the values are set to those of  Agency Contact Info Planning. 

If your agency wants to customize the value for POS transactions, please submit a help desk ticket and fillout the appropriate submittals found here: http://orepermittinghelp.kayako.com/Knowledgebase/Article/View/agency-contact-submittal-all-modules-pos.

​A new OSM enhancement was completed at the end of September where the Record Link is now available on all record types that are available through Citizen Access.  The Record Link is the direct link to each specific record on Citizen Access.  It can now be easily copied and pasted into any communication to your customer.  The Record Link can be added to the public user’s browser favorites for easy access or can be sent to other interested parties.  It is an easy way for public users to access records without the need to search or log into Citizen Access.  The Record Link can be found on the primary custom fields tab for each record type, toward the bottom of the screen.  The Record Link is also available on Citizen Access and is clickable so users can easily add the record to their browser favorites.  It is expected functionality for the Citizen Access “wrapper” to not be visible when accessing the record through the Record Link.  We hope that this enhancement adds more functionality for communication with your customers!

One of the changes that occurred during the last software upgrade was the inclusion of the “Office” field on the payment screen. In order to avoid negative consequences for jurisdictions that have different offices for accepting payments, we have had to add this field to all jurisdictions’ payment pages.

For jurisdictions that do not have offices, we have defaulted the value to “not applicable” (we are using that instead of no office, so that receipts do not say that the payment was received in “no office”).
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By defaulting this, no one needs to choose a value when taking a payment in a “no office” jurisdiction.

In addition, this change affects financial reports that have an office parameter choice. For jurisdictions without offices, there used to be the choice of, “all, online and no office.”
Now there is, “all, online and not applicable.” The “all” choice will bring up absolutely every payment (even some old ones that have blank office fields); “online” brings back online transactions only, and “Not applicable” brings back the non-online transactions only. 

The ePermitting Program will be ending support of Accela Electronic Document Review (AEDR) and Adobe Acrobat on November 1, 2022.  This means we will no longer support or provide the AEDR client software or Adobe Acrobat licenses to jurisdictions.  We made the hard decision to end support of AEDR and Adobe Acrobat because of the complexity of Adobe licenses, the difficulty of staying up to date with a compatible version of Adobe Acrobat, and the addition of new electronic plan review alternatives.  If your agency uses AEDR with Adobe Acrobat for electronic plan review, please contact us right away, by submiting a helpdesk ticket to epermitshelp.BCD@dcbs.oregon.gov, so that we can help you implement one of the alternative electronic document review products we offer – see below.
 
BlueBeam

• Free licenses provided by the ePermitting Program.
• Does not directly integrate with Accela so the document review is performed outside of Accela.
• Allows plan reviewers to view each other’s’ comments and publish them together during concurrent plan reviews.
• Industry standard.
• Implementation is simple.
• Training - ePermitting Program provides in-house training and there are online training materials available.

 
DigEplan

• The jurisdiction is responsible for paying the annual licensing costs to use the software and the ePermitting Program will reimburse the jurisdiction for the implementation costs.
• Directly integrates with Accela and includes an additional workflow task for Review Consolidation, additional email communication to customers, and no need to save electronic plans outside of Accela.
• Requires an implementation project with TruePoint, an Accela partner.
• Implementation is more in depth but is standardized across all ePermitting jurisdictions.
• Training - provided by TruePoint.

Recently, our team has received questions about the Accela Inspector app and the Accela Mobile App. Neither of these apps work with Oregon ePermitting and will not function properly. 

iOS version: https://citygovapp.com/app/oregoniaios.html​

Android version: https://citygovapp.com/app/oregoniaandroid.htm​

Testing Underway
Version 21.2.5 was installed in our Dev environment in early March, the ePermitting team has been thoroughly testing the new version which is going well. We expect to wrap-up testing in our Dev environment by mid-May. 

Config Refresh and Agency First Look
Accela is refreshing our Config environment this week with current Prod data (except for a few agencies which have been excluded for various reasons). We will then be upgrading Config to version 21.2.5 by May 16th. After Config has been upgraded, we will be inviting users to come take a look. You’ll notice then that there isn’t a big difference. There will, however, be some configuration changes coming with this upgrade that you won’t necessarily see until Production has been upgraded. Some are necessary for maintenance purposes and others are features which, we believe, will be welcome quality-of-life changes for daily users. 

One change you will notice in Config after it has been upgraded, is that some of the forms will look “off”. With this version, Accela has converted all forms to their new form designer. The default conversion doesn’t always work well with the way that we have designed forms, so as part of our upgrade project, we have a subproject to update the critical forms in Prod (e.g. Record Search, Inspection Search and parts of the intake forms) prior to the version upgrade. We will advise you via GovDelivery (sign up here) when that has happened. Along with performance and security enhancements, both Chrome and Edge will now be fully supported (IE11 will no longer be supported). 

Production Upgrade Schedule
Prod is scheduled to be upgraded the weekend of June 11-13. We will be providing you with regular updates and more information in the coming weeks as we progress through our testing and the upgrade project.

More Information
We will be sharing more information about those changes as the upgrade project progresses via the upgrade website which can be found at: https://www.oregon.gov/bcd/epermitting/howto/Pages/upgrade-info.aspx.

As one of the adjustments that ePermitting made to facilitate online transactions during the pandemic, we created  “homeowner licenses.” These “licenses” allowed homeowners to bypass the licensing requirements online and apply for permits. We provided a report that jurisdictions could run to track these applications, and also sent out packets to jurisdictions so that they could choose whether or not to provide this information to customers. We have had a number of jurisdictions request that these "licenses" be made permanent. We also have some jurisdictions that do not want homeowners to apply online. 

The plan for online homeowner application is:

1. To see if we can find a better solution that allows homeowners to apply online without these dummy licenses; this will take some time and will be part of our overall efforts improve ACA.
2. For now, we will continue to maintain the homeowner licenses for those jurisdictions that want to use them; and,
3. For those jurisdictions that do NOT wish to use this option, please let us know by sending an email to the Kayako Helpdesk, we can put a condition on the licenses so that they cannot be used in your jurisdiction. Note: this is an all or nothing decision - if your agency wishes to allow homeowner application case-by-case, you would need to leave this option available.

The receipt has been updated to allow agencies to create specific information for the header when the receipt is issued for a POS transaction.  

Over the past couple of years, you may have noticed that the header for a POS transaction is not related to the module where the POS transaction occurred, but rather to the preferred module for the user who performed the transaction.  For agencies using only one module (e.g. Onsite only agencies, Building only agencies and Planning only agencies), this is not a problem.  Agencies using multiple modules may have users whose preferred module is Building, but sometimes perform POS transactions in other modules.

To accommodate those agencies using multiple modules, a new option has been added for Agency Contact Info.  The Agency Contact Info POS allows the agency to have specific values for: 

• Jurisdiction Name
• Address Line 1
• Address Line 2
• Address City
• Address State
• Address Zip Code
• Contact Phone
• Website Address
• Email From
• FAX phone

Right now, these values are set to the Building module values for all agencies, except those agencies using only Onsite or Planning modules.  If the agency is using only the Onsite module, the values are set to the same as the Agency Contact Info Onsite.  For those using only the Planning module, the values are set to those of  Agency Contact Info Planning. 

If your agency wants to customize the value for POS transactions, please submit a help desk ticket for ‘New values for AGENCY_CONTACT_INFO_POS’  with the desired values for each item.