Release Notes EPS 2.0 July 2012

An updated version of ePermitting, with new features and enhancements, is now active. Important changes to ePermitting include:

Highway Occupancy Permits and Permit Printing

PennDOT will send email notifications to applicants when their permit application has been approved. Permits will be sent as email attachments and are available to users for printing as an Adobe PDF document.

The format of the electronic version of the permit has been enhanced to accommodate unlimited work descriptions and all permit conditions. It also provides municipality names instead of codes.

A Permits section has been added to the Application Information page with links directly to the permit, conditional permit (for recording purposes), and the Permit Information page.

Court Recording Process

The majority of permits do not need to be recorded at the County courthouse; those that do mainly involve a change in property ownership or restrictions for driveway use on limited access roads. Now, ePermitting speeds up the process by automatically sending an email containing the Recording Notice to the applicant for completion.

A new status has been added that is related to the recording process, Conditional Response. Permit recording activity time, when the applicant has not returned the Recording Notice to PennDOT or while the Permit is with the Recorder of Deeds, is not tracked with application processing time.

Fee Information

The addition of Customer Information Management System to ePermitting resulted in several changes to the Fee Information screen. The significance of the change is the ability to select a billing account using the Lookup feature in ePermitting. Selecting a billing account number triggers the auto population of the new Bill To section of the screen with billing name, address, and contact information. It also populates the account number in the account number field.

Other Fee Information changes include:

Blanket Security Amount

Verification of Insurance

Construction Restoration Cost Estimate

Fees and fee exemptions cannot be entered on the same application. Doing so will result in an error message.

Work Summary and Locations

Reviewers can now add work summaries during the review process.

Reviewer Complete (Level of Effort)

The action is now available to reviewers on the Review Summary (Level of Effort) screen. This allows reviewers to enter level of effort hours and complete their review on the same screen. The action is still available on the Review Team screen for those who do not track level of effort.

Email Notifications for Returned Applications

Permit applications are sometimes returned for revision and not resubmitted within a reasonable time. In order to alert applicants to these returned applications, a series of emails will be sent to the applicant team at 30, 90, 150, and 180 days.

Applicants can avoid receiving these emails by withdrawing an application if they do not intend to resubmit. The notifications are intended to serve as reminders until at 180 days PennDOT sends the final email and withdraws the application.

Pre-ePermitting Application Indicator

Outstanding applications that were submitted on the M945-A form and returned to the applicant for revision prior to the October 31 ePermitting implementation can still be resubmitted. After July 15, printing permits and invoicing from IMS HOPS will no longer be possible. Therefore, the returned applications must be entered into the ePermitting system before a permit can be issued.

In order not to skew averages and statistics, a Pre-EPS indicator has been added to the Application Identification screen. This will alert the system not to count statistics from these applications for reporting purposes.

Utility Invoicing

The addition of Invoicing to ePermitting provides PennDOT with the capability to electronically generate and deliver invoices to utility business partners with Blanket Billing Accounts, who have been approved for invoicing. Billing accounts are invoiced based on fee information captured from permit applications.

There are several benefits gained by incorporating Invoicing in EPS. One is the elimination of the need to reenter fee information from ePermitting permit applications into IMS. Another benefit is the elimination of printing invoices at a remote location and delivering them to Central Office, and the elimination of the manually handling and mailing invoices.

Invoicing works hand-in-hand with the new Customer Information Management System.

Customer Information Management (CIMS)

The Customer Information Management System (CIMS, pronounced KIMS) is new and accessible with an ePermitting login by two new internal PennDOT roles, CIMS Account Manager, and CIMS Read-only. It replaces the account information stored in IMS/HOPS and the matching Account Information Master File tracking spreadsheet, both of which were manually maintained. It provides a billing structure based on two accounts, a Customer Master Account and a Billing Account. Each of PennDOT business partners who currently have a billing account, have been contacted and set up with a customer master account and at least one billing account. Each master account must have at least one Billing Account.

The Customer Master Account is the parent account that can have one or more associated Billing accounts. The customer account contains MASTER information about the business partner; name, address, contact information, and an account description, which defaults to Utility. In addition, the Customer Master account contains the securities information; insurance, bond, and letter of credit and attachments. CIMS also tracks security document expiration dates and sends an email alert to business partners when a security is about to expire.

Each Billing Account identifies who should receive an invoice. This is also the account that generates the invoice. There can be multiple billing accounts for each customer account. As an example, if a PennDOT business partner has district or regional offices that should be invoiced separately; one billing account is created for each office. This allows CIMS to send the invoice to the correct location for payment. This change eliminates the restriction that allowed only one billing address for each business partner. It provides invoicing flexibility and decreases the possibility that an invoice will go to an incorrect location, for instance to a parent company, when it should have gone to the company district or regional office. A billing account can have the same name and address as the customer account.

EPermitting HOP invoices will be automatically emailed as an attachment on the first business day of each month. An exception to this is the first billing period after implementation. The final billing date from IMS/HOPS will be July 14. These will be the last invoices generated and sent through postal delivery. The first invoice from CIMS will be sent on September 3rd for the billing period July 15 through August 31st. After this, billing will be on a monthly basis.

CIMS provides the following account functionality: Create, Update, Delete, Inactivate, Suspend, Reinstate, Search, and link a billing account to a customer account.

Permits Issued Report

The Permits Issued report shows detailed permit information for all permits with a status of Issued within a selected time frame.

It replaces and improves upon the IMS/HOPS report Ledger and Microfilm Transmittal from (Date) to (Date).’ This also replaces report 900 Permits by Action Date within Specified Organization and report 950 of Permits by Permittee within Organization. The report has been renamed Permits Issued and offers parameters that can be selected to customize report data, such as a date range.