The MAGNET Plan Review Process Step allows users to manage case reviews. This is typically related to reviewing the plans associated with the case, but can also be utilized for general case review or other types of reviews that require the tracking of comments. For this documentation, we will focus on performing standard plan reviews, however the process would be the same regardless of what the Plan Review step is being utilized for.

Overview

Once a Plan Review step is added to a case(either manually or automatically) a new process step object will be displayed on the Process Steps tab.

Plan Reviews allow for one or more departments to review a submitted plan and note any issues or concerns relating to their department. If issues are found, a “Comment Letter” can be generated and sent to the citizen to let them know what problems were found so they can amend the plan as needed. lan Reviews allow for an unlimited number of “rounds” of review to track each time the plans are submitted and the outcome of each review. Additionally any issues identified in a round are brought forward to the next round to make it easy for the reviewer to identify previous issues and make sure they have been resolved.

Setting up Reviews

This section reviews the initial steps that are needed in order to setup the Plan Review object and release it to the appropriate departments for their review.

Managing Reviewers

The first element of a Plan Review is the “Reviewers” that should review this case. Depending on your configuration, the step will be added with the default configured review departments.

To change or add reviewers on the Plan Review, click on the “Assign Reviewers” button as highlighted above.

After clicking this button, you will be presented with a list of all possible departments that can be assigned to this Plan Review.

Assigning Reviewers

On this screen you are able to indicate which departments should review this case as well as assign specific users(if available) and control the order of the reviews as well as if a department has “Veto”(this will be explained further below).

To assign a department, simply click on the checkbox in the “Assign” column for all departments that should review this case. By default the “Reviewer” dropdown will show “Department”, which means that any user in the assigned department can accept this review. If configured, this dropdown will also allow for the selection of individual users to assign this Plan Review to.

The “Order” column allows for the managing of the order in which this review must be completed. Typically, the order of all departments is set to “1”, which means that any department can review this plan in any order. If you had a situation that one department should review this case before another one, you would simply adjust the order to indicate which department must review first.

For example; if Planning must review this case before any other department, the “Planning and Zoning” department would be set to an order of “1” and all other selected departments would be set to an order of “2”. This would prevent any other department from starting their review until the “Planning and Zoning” review has been completed.

By default when a department completes their review, regardless if they approve or deny their review, the remaining departments will still be able to complete their review. In situation where one department should be the primary reviewer(such as the example above where “Planning and Zoning” is set to be the first reviewer), you may want the review to stop completely if a department find issues in their review. This is done by clicking the “Veto” checkbox for the intended department. When this option is selected, if any of the departments that are set with the “Veto” option deny the plan review, the remaining reviews for any other department will be cancelled.

Releasing Reviews

After assigning the appropriate departments, the Plan Review is ready to be released for review.

To release the review, simply click on the “Release Submission” button highlighted below.

After clicking this button, the review will be open for users to accept and begin the Plan Review.

Completing Reviews

This section details the process in which reviewers will accept a plan review step, add any issues and complete their department review.

When a Plan Review is available for department review, the Process Step will display a “Start Review” button for each department that was configured to do this review as highlighted in red below. In this example the Planing and Zoning department has already began their review, while the other departments are still waiting for a user to begin the review.

Performing a review

Once ready to begin a review for the department, the user will click on the “Start Review” button. This will log that the review has begun for this department and open the review for comments and ruling.

After starting the review, the user would perform whatever departmental duties are required as part of their review(Reviewing plans, case details, etc.). When ready to assign comments or rulings to the review, the user simply clicks on the their review to open the review worksheet screen.

Review Worksheet

The Review Worksheet screen allows for the managing of “issues” for a department as well as completing the review and issuing a ruling.

Worksheet Overview

The screen features three tabs, a “Create Issue”, “Issue Ruling” and “Reset Review” buttons.

Tabs

• Open Issues

  • This tab lists out any issues that were added in a previous review round that still need to be resolved.

  • This tab will always have “0” issues on the first round

• New Issues

  • This tab shows any issues that have been added in the current round of review

• Resolved Issues

  • This tab shows any issued that were added in a previous round and marked as resolved.

Buttons

• Create Issue

  • This button allows for the entering of any new issues for this department review.

• Issue Ruling

  • This button allows for the completion of the departments review and the issuing of the departments ruling.

• Reset Review

  • This button will reset the current rounds review and reset it to be back in it’s initial state prior to the review being started.

Creating Issues

To add issues to a review round, from the worksheet, click the “Create Issue” button as highlighted below.

This will open the issue creation menu, allowing for the entry of the details of the issue that you are adding.



The main text area on the left allows for entry of the exact details of the issue. Additionally the fields on the right of the text area allow for additional information relating to the issue described:

• Document

  • This field allows for typing in any document that further explains the issue

• Code

  • This field allows for the selecting of any previously configured codes that further identify the issue being described

• References

  • This field allows for any further code references to further clarify the issue being added.

After typing in the details of the issue, click on the “Save” button as highlighted above. This will add the issue to the “New Issues” tab as shown below. This should be repeated as needed to add all identified issues.

Completing department review

After all identified issues have been added and the user has completed their departmental review, the user can issue their ruling by clicking on the “Issue Ruling” button. This allows for the assigning of the final ruling for this departments review.

After clicking the “Issue Ruling” button, you will see the following screen which allows for the selection of the final reviewing for the current department review.

The available ruling are configurable per client, and may differ from the ruling shown above. However, there will always be a ruling to denote “Approved”(Recommend for Issuance) and “Corrections Required”(Recommend Return for Corrections) regardless of the label.

If no issues were identified, the user should select the ruling indicating “Approved”, otherwise if issues are present that would require the citizen to make corrections, the ruling indicating “Corrections Required” should be selected.

After selecting the ruling, and clicking “Issue Ruling” the Plan Review will update to indicate the selected ruling of the department.

This process would be repeated for all other departments required to review this plan.

Finalizing Plan Review

After all departments have completed their review, or the reviews are cancelled due to “Veto”, the overall Plan Review can be finalized. This is done by clicking the “Finalize Submission” button on the Plan Review. After doing this, the date of the review completion will be logged and the review will be closed and ready for final decision.

Completing review round

After finalizing the review, the “Comments Letter” can be generated if any issues were identified, or the review can be marked as completed if no issues were identified. If no issue were identified, once the review is set to complete, the review is done.

Pass/Approve Plan Review

To approve the overall plan review, select the option for “Pass” or “Approve”. This will close the review step with no further action required.

Waive Requirement

In situation where the workflow requires a Plan Review, but the case does not merit the need for a Plan Review, the requirement to complete the Plan Review can be waived by selecting the option, if available, labeled “Waive Requirement”. This will close the review step with no further action required.

Fail

If the Plan Review has been completed and rejected, and for whatever reason the plans will not be returned to the citizen for corrections, the review can be failed by selecting the option for “Fail” or “Deny”. This will close the review step with no further action required.

Generating Comments Letter

In situations where issues were identified by one or more departments during the review, the next step to complete the review round is to generate the comments letter. This is accomplished by selecting the option “Generate Comments Letter”. This will close the review step and allow for the plans to be returned to the citizen and resubmitted for additional review.

After selecting the “Generate Comments Letter” button, you will see a preview of the letter being generated.

After reviewing the letter, you can select to either “Generate Template” or “Generate Template & Send Email”.

• Generate Template

  • This will generate a PDF of the letter and attach it to the case. This letter can then be printed or emailed manually as needed.

• Generate Template & Send Email

  • If the contact on the case has a valid email address entered, this option will generate a PDF of the letter, attach it to the case, as well as automatically email a copy of the letter to the select contacts on the left side of the screen.

After making a selection, the system will generate the documents(and email if selected), then provide a report to show the process has been completed.

You can now close this window by clicking on the red X in the lower right hand corner.

The Plan Review Step will now update and make available the “Return Submission” button.

Returning Submission

Once the Plan Review is completed and issues logged, the next step is to return the plans to the citizen. This step is logged on the plan review step to keep track of the current status. When the plans are returned to the citizen click on the “Return Submission” button as highlighted below.

After clicking the “Return Submission” button you will be prompted to enter the name of the party who picked up the plans.

After entering the name of the person picking up the plans, click “Submit”. This will update the review step to log the date the submission was returned and make the “Receive Submission” button available.

Receiving new submission

Once the citizen makes the needed corrections and submits the new plans for review, you can log the receipt of the new plans and start a new round of review by clicking on the “Receive Submission” button highlighted below.

After clicking on “Receive Submission” you will be prompted to enter the name of the party submitting the new plans

After entering the name of the person submitting the new plans, click “Submit”. This will update the review step to log the date the submission was received and start the next round of the plan review.

The the review step refreshes you will notice that all previous ruling and dates appear to no longer show. This is because you have now initiated the submission of a new review round. You can always navigate between all current and previous reviews, using the “Submission” tabs on the bottom of the Plan Review as highlighted below

The process for any subsequent round is generally identical to the previous round, with the primary differences being the Review Worksheet will already be populated with any open issues from the previous rounds and the Comment Letter will clearly indicate previous issues that have been completed or new items that have been added. These items will be highlighted below.

Resolving previous rounds issues

After starting the new review for the department and opening the Review Worksheet, any items previously entered on past rounds will show up on the “Open Issues” tab.

After reviewing the open items and determining if the issue has been resolve or not you can make the needed updates to the open items.

If the item was resolved, simply click on the “Resolve” icon as highlighted below

If the issue has not been resolved, you can simply leave the issue alone on the Open Issues tab. Additionally, if needed you can also edit the original issue to provide additional details or clarifications by clicking the “Edit” icon as highlighted below

After resolving any completed open issues and adding any new issues as needed, you can issue a ruling on the review.

After all reviews are complete, if additional or preexisting issues remain, you can once again generate the comments letter and return the plans to the citizen.

As you can see in the example above, any new issues added during the round will be Bold and Italicized, while any completed issue will be struck-out, finally any preexisting issues that were not resolved will appear as normal text. This is also clarified on the comments letter itself in the “Comments Legend”.