We had a record-breaking number of agency fee updates this past July, approximately 63% of our 80+ agencies had a major fee update.  Given the sheer volume, we ran into several agencies that thought that only sending their fee update for BCD Notice would also come to ePermitting for update – this is not the case.  This misunderstanding caused significant delays and rework for many agencies.  

As a result of these challenges, we wanted to share the ePermitting fee update process and BCD Notice requirement with all participating agencies.

Fee Update process with ePermitting – we ask that you send us your final fee update draft as soon as it’s available, it does not have to be adopted and we highly recommend that you send any fee updates to us PRIOR to submitting for BCD Notice.  

We will perform a fee analysis – reviewing for methodology requirements as per Division 50, fees required by program authority, Policy interpretations, and any ePermitting system requirements (including standardization of Residential/Commercial Plumbing fixture list and Residential Mechanical appliance list).  Upon analysis, we will send back any suggested corrections and/or updates that might be necessary - again PRIOR to adoption or going to BCD Notice – this is key!  Agencies that miss this step or are unaware, often end up delayed in implementing their updated fees, doing rework, and in some cases having to repeat the BCD Notice process – we don’t want this for any of our agencies.  The ePermitting system, records and applications, are designed to incorporate the required fees and methods.

Once the fee update draft is finalized – then it is ready for local adoption and BCD Notice.  The local adoption and Notice processes can happen concurrently.

BCD Notice for Building fees – any new fees, increases to existing fees, or changes in methodology that result in an increase must be sent through the required BCD Notice process.  Teri Watson (teri.a.watson@dcbs.oregon.gov) is the Policy contact that manages this process.  The BCD Notice period is 45 days – so updates should be sent/done in enough advance of the effective date of your fee update.  Please note, that it has recently been determined that Tech fee and any other ‘surcharge’ type fees assessed on building fees, must also go through the BCD Notice process.

If you have any questions about this process, submit a helpdesk ticket to epermitshelp.BCD@dcbs.oregon.gov. 

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. 

It has recently come to our attention that some agencies are still using the ‘Billed’ exceptional payment method to pay permit fees in the Building Module.

Billed: The ‘Billed’ payment method was created to allow the agency to indicate that the customer will receive an invoice or bill and the permit will be allowed to advance through the workflow regardless of when actual funds are received.  This is the decision of the issuing agency and the responsibility to track of the issuing agency.
 
Please note, if you are one of these agencies:

1. The ‘Billed’ paid fees will not be included in State Surcharge reporting, which means no surcharge will be reported up and until you pay permit fees with an actual CASH (cash/check/credit card) payment method.
2. The prescribed process for using the ‘Billed’ exceptional payment method:

• Invoice the permits fees to be paid and generate the Invoice report (you will need this later on and then it will be available in Documents)
• Pay the invoiced permit fees with ‘Billed’
• Run the Revenue Exceptions report (Report 2 > Reconciliation reports > Revenue Exceptions) to track these ‘billed’ records and to send the Applicant/Owner a copy of the Invoice you generated at 30/60/90 days asking for CASH payment  
• When they come in to make a CASH payment – you will void the ‘Billed’ payment which will make the fees outstanding again (as per the invoice you sent), and then post their CASH payment.  Once this CASH payment is posted on the permit fees, these paid permit fees will then be included in the State Surcharge reporting as required.

It is important to be aware and follow the above process above all the way through to receipting a CASH payment.  If you don’t, you run the risk of issuing or even finaling a permit with no actual payment made (we see this happening sometimes in the database) – or of never paying the required State Surcharge on permit fees (we’ve also see this happen).

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.

We are offering a Public Work focus training scheduled on Thursday, Aug. 18 from 9 to 11 a.m.  This training will be offered remotely also thru Teams.  If you are interested in this added training and your agency has the PW module – even if you’ve already been trained by your coworkers, I would recommend this ‘by design’ training to learn some of the unique features and details of this module.

Please send a email help ticket to epermitshelp.BCD@dcbs.oregon.gov to request sign up for this PW training.

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.

If your agency has an upcoming fee increase, or any other fee changes, effective July 1, 2022, send your updates to the ePermitting team ASAP by sending an email to the Kayako Helpdesk.  Important note, your fee update ticket submittal does not have to wait for your agency to adopt or approve them, the fee update process can begin parallel to your adoption/approval process.  Final drafts of fee updates are acceptable to begin this time-sensitive process.  Late submittals might not be able to be accommodated for July 1st start given the volume of requests for update.  Also a friendly reminder – new fees, fee increases or method changes that result in an increase, are required to go through the BCD Fee Notice process; please send ePermitting a draft copy of your fees prior to submitting for Notice to avoid any delays or potential requirement to re-notice.

​In 2018 ePermitting moved to an Azure data center and our Citizen Access (ACA) site changed URLs.  For the convenience of our public users, Accela set up a URL redirect.  This means that when a user visits the old URL for Citizen Access (https://aca.oregon.accela.com/oregon) there is a redirect that automatically and seamlessly routes the user to the current URL for Citizen Access (https://aca-oregon.accela.com/oregon).  Beginning in early 2023, Accela will retire this URL redirect and users will get an error if they try to access the old URL.  To avoid any issues, please be sure to update your browser “favorites” for Citizen Access to www.BuildingPermits.Oregon.gov, update your local agency websites with any reference to ACA, and help pass along the message to your public users!

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.

Recently there has been an increase in the requests for new/added users in Accela; and with these requests, the ePermitting Team has noticed a few spots on our Add/Remove User form that needed to be updated to make the process a little smoother.  We are including information on what has been updated so you know what to expect when filling out the Add/Remove User form. 

We have added a User Jurisdiction field, this will allow you to free type the accountholder’s Jurisdiction since some users work in multiple Jurisdictions. 

We have updated the Department section which is now a dropdown instead of a checkbox selection. The Department determines which dropdown the user will appear in for assignment purposes, and because of this, only one department can be selected. This change makes the answer on this a little more straightforward.  

We have also updated the User Group section – the user group determines the level of access that the user is granted for each module you want them working in. Note: your agency has to have the module turned on and configured in order to grant permission to it, so if you don’t have the Planning, Public Works, or Onsite Module(s) in use - do not select that module’s user group.  We also made the user group permissions a dropdown instead of free type, to make it a little easier to see what is available when you are comparing with the PDF User Group Permissions documents that outline what access is granted for each user group.   

The last update is the addition of a brand new section where you can opt the new user into the epermitting notification emails that we have available.  To opt them in to email notifications, check the box next to the appropriate notification type and the user will be added to that email notification list in the GovDelivery system that ePermitting uses to send out important informational emails and outage notifications to everyone. 
requirement a little more straightforward.

There were some additional updates to the language in the form to help better direct you in what information we are looking for. You can find the new Add/Remove User form, an instructional sheet on how to fill out the form, and the User Group Permissions PDF documents at Adding/Removing User Accounts - Powered by Kayako Help Desk Software. We also wanted to be sure everyone knows that when a user’s account is being disabled, you must also fill out this same Add/Remove User form which includes the removal of any auto-assign if the person is an inspector and to designate the next inspector who should be set up with auto-assign. 

We appreciate that everyone uses this important form and hope the updates make the process smoother for everyone.

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: