IVR Upgrade

​When we went live with Accela in Azure we also upgraded our IVR with our vendor, Selectron. Please see below for important information related to IVR and this upgrade:

IVR PINs
One primary change related to this upgrade was the discontinued use of the IVR User ID – this is no longer required and the system now only requires an IVR PIN to access the Inspector Menu (9#). However, one glitch came with this change – the only IVR PIN information provided to Accela now is for users indicated as actual Inspectors. The IVR PINs assigned to any non-Inspector type staff, such as Permit Techs, is now excluded. We understand that Permit Techs are often the users assigned to retrieve contractor messages left on IVR-scheduled inspections, however previously assigned PINs to these staff will no longer work. For Permit Techs needing to retrieve contractor messages, please now use the IVR PIN of one of your actual inspectors to simply access the Inspector Menu (9#) to manually retrieve messages – if you are unable to get a PIN for this purpose, please contact our helpdesk at 503-373-7396.

Restrict Inspection Scheduling if Fees are Owing
This restriction has been a default in the IVR setup for agencies for the past several years , however there are a few agencies that do not use this feature. In the back office, there is scripting that restricts issuance and final of building records if there are any outstanding fees – so any fees assessed post-issuance and prior to final would still allow further inspections to be scheduled if not restricted. The type of fees typically assessed during this period are reinspections and, additional permit fees, revision/plan review fees. If you do not currently restrict inspection scheduling if fees are owing and wish to change this setting for IVR-scheduled inspections, please submit a helpdesk ticket to [email protected].

Allow Contractor Messages
In this upgrade process, we reviewed the agency settings for all of our participating agencies and we noticed that several of our agencies are not allowing contractors to leave messages associated to their IVR-scheduled inspections. For those who don’t, the issue always seemed to be the added manual work of retrieving these messages and then adding this information to the scheduled inspection. For ease of use, we now offer the option of receiving all contractor messages via email so that agencies no longer have to go in to the IVR to manually retrieve them. With this upgrade and given the IVR PIN changes mentioned above, we would invite all agencies to take advantage of this email enhancement. Please submit a helpdesk ticket to [email protected] to request this IVR email setup (or to request more information) – a shared email is preferred so that more than one person can check and process these incoming messages as needed. The staff task of adding this message information to the scheduled inspection would still be required. Note, you can still PIN in to the IVR even with this email enhancement.
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Auto Assign
Since the upgrade, we were experiencing intermittent issues with Auto Assign for some agencies that are using this functionality – this has been resolved. The IVR settings should match the setup of your back office if Auto Assign is configured there. If you feel this should be turned on or off for your agency, please submit a helpdesk ticket to [email protected] and we will do the necessary research or corrections.