Wabash County Converts to Odyssey- Your Doxpop Access is Unaffected.

During the weekend of September 22nd, the Courts in Wabash County will convert to the Odyssey case tracking system, this means their Case Management System is now administered by Indiana Trial Court Technology.

This move does not affect Doxpop users because Doxpop buys access to a real-time feed of court data from the Odyssey system from the Division of State Court Administration. Your access to Wabash County court information through Doxpop will not be interrupted during this transition.

A few of the services we provide will look odd during the transition because there will be a four week period when both the old data and the new data are available. In particular:

• If you use the personal calendar feature to keep track of hearings connected to your Bar ID, you will see two colors for Wabash County on your calendar. Every event will be available, but the older cases will have a different color from the newer cases. When we complete the merge process, these will go back to being a single color.
• When you look at our "County Details Page", you will find two entries for each court until the merge is complete.
• When you are doing searches, you will find two entries for some cases. This is because while we are loading the information from Odyssey, we will also be maintaining the old data until the operation is complete to ensure you don't miss anything. When you see two case entries, please look at both to ensure you have the most current information.
• If you use any of our "watch" services to keep an eye on cases or people of interest, we will be moving those watches over so they point to the cases and people that are a part of the Odyssey data feed. We run a process to convert these every hour, but it is possible for notification of events to slip through the cracks between conversion runs so you may want to periodically do a manual check between now and October 22nd. After then, we'll be back to normal.

Tax warrants will not be affected at all by this transition.

Finally, one deficiency in the Odyssey system is that financial information is not exported in their data feed, so that detail will not be available after the transition. We regularly ask that TCT add this to the data feed, but so far, we are told that it is not allowed because the clerks using the Odyssey system have requested that TCT not make that information available to us. If this information is important to you, please encourage the clerks you work with to tell TCT differently so we can get the information back online.

As always, we are available to answer any questions in person, so don't hesitate to call support at 866-369-7671 if you have any questions.

Looking for the court calendar for a specific court?

In our last blog post about the updated look, I forgot to point out where we moved the court calendars, a feature many of you count on.

Previously, you could access a court calendar through the court cases tab where we listed all the courts and their coverage periods. To clean up the tab for our increasing number of mobile device users we removed that info from the tab itself but not from the site.

Now you can find that info, and table of counties, by clicking the Indiana map either on the welcome tab in the court case section or on the court case tab. Either link will open in a new window with the court coverage list (just scroll down), along with the link to the county details page you are used to.

We've got some new looks and some new tools!

Our developers have been doing some great coding to streamline your work and we now have some great new features ready for your use.

A much simpler look!

The first thing you may notice is how streamlined we've made each "tab" on our site. If you look below you'll see our new dashboard feature to the left (outlined in red) then in the middle if you want to know more about that particular service, just click the green bar. The search widget is in the same place but with our coverage map to the right. Want more details on coverage? Just click the map.

Let's talk about the exciting new feature- The Doxpop Dashboard

For each of the records services we offer you will now see a dashboard to the left of that service's 'tab'. This dashboard provides at-a-glance access to some of the things you care about most. This is pretty self-explanatory so we won't go into detail. Instead, just take a look at what dashboard for each of the three records services look like below:

Simply click the item on the dashboard and you will be taken right to the place were you can view related details.

We are also working on a dashboard for e-filers, so look for that useful addition in the near future!

These dashboards were developed based on customer feedback. We really appreciate our customers who have taken the time to suggest improvements. Keep 'those suggestions coming!

Update: Looking for the court calendar for a specific court?

See our blog post here. 

Should you ever have any questions about Doxpop's features and services, or you just want to give us a suggestion, email us at support@doxpop.com or give us a call at 866-369-7671.

New: Clear e-filing forms with just a push of a button!

You asked and we delivered! Now you can clear your e-filing forms with the click of a button on both the new filing and subsequent filing pages.

To do this simply use the [Clear this Form] button at the top of the filing area. 

New Case Page

Existing Case Page

Then just confirm that is what you want to do. 

A quick process will run to clear all of your selections and you can start again. 

The problem with fee calculations is ongoing, but we expect a fix Wednesday evening!

Update: We have been notified that the State is going to release a fix for this problem at 7 PM Wednesday evening (Sept 12th).

Back on September 4th, we learned that an update on the EFM (the State's side of the e-filing system) done over Labor Day weekend broke the fee calculations for all EFSPs.

The first communication from the State about this issue indicated that it might be fixed in the next weekend update, but that time has come and gone with no fix, so at this point, we're in the sad position of having to wait for someone else to finish a repair, with no prediction of when it will happen.

In the meantime, you can still e-file... Just ignore the incorrect fee calculations and file as you normally would. The clerks have been instructed by the State to include a manual step in their process that will correct the fees before the filing goes through.

Some important notes related to this issue:

• It doesn't happen with every case. Some cases will look fine.

• If you are paying for Sheriff's service on a civil filing, that payment will still show up in your initial fees. That means you can still use the first "Notice of Electronic Filing" email that you receive as proof of payment when you provide the papers to the Sheriff for Service.

• You can still access the details of your fees in the "My Electronic Filings" Page on the Doxpop system. The difference will be that the fees will not show up correctly until the case is accepted.  This is important if you need to be able to account for fees billed back to your client.

• The extra manual step will make processing harder for the Clerk's offices until this problem is resolved, so expect some delays in processing, and please be patient with the Clerks. This isn't their fault, and it is making their work difficult too!

• Appellate filings are not affected by this issue.

• If this problem has caused you to miss a deadline and you need to file an Affidavit of Inability to E-file per Trial Rule 86(N), take a look at the bottom of our previous post for a few details on where to find that rule.

As soon as we hear more about a final fix from the folks on the State side of the system, we'll provide an update. Hang in there!

Did the fee calculation issue on Tuesday, Sept 4th cause you to miss a filing deadline? Here is what to do.

NOTE: This article will be updated as we learn more 

UPDATE as of 2:45pm 9/5:
Message from Indiana Courts:

"We promised an update today regarding the e-filing issue related to the collection of filing fees. Clerks continue to have the ability to accept new cases. This weekend we plan to make a system upgrade."

So our previous instruction still stands that you can continue to file and the clerks have been instructed to process and accept the filings. When the clerk processes the filing to the proper code, the filing fee should update and your MEF page will then reflect the proper amount. 

Note: We previously noted the accepted email will have the correct amount. This was an error and is not the case as this email does not have payment information. Rather you can reveiw your 'My Electronic Filings' page for the correct charged amount. 

-------

On the morning of Tuesday, September 4th while working on a customer call Doxpop noticed that new case filings in e-file were calculating fees at $0 which is not correct. We quickly worked to verify this was an issue affecting all e-filers regardless of their service provider and then notified the appropriate contacts with the e-file manager and the state trial court helpdesk. 

Not too long after that, the state did send the following message:

"E-filing is currently experiencing intermittent issues related to the collection of filing fees. As a result, new cases may be rejected by the clerk. We are working with Tyler Technologies to correct this issue. We will provide an update. If problems prevent filing, refer to Trial Rule 86(N)."

We will note based on customer reports this may be affecting fee collection on the clerk's side for filings that were done in past days as well. 

As a result of this message we felt it was important to once again communicate our guidance for handling time-sensitive filings during an e-file "outage" under Trial Rule 86(N).

If you missed a deadline due to this issue, take a look at Trial Rule 86(N)(1), which essentially provides for a one-day extension when a lengthy e-filing system outage prevents filers from meeting a deadline.

We expect that the Trial Courts will all be aware of the scope and timing of this statewide outage via direct communication from Trial Court Technology. However, if the court you are working with requires a statement from Doxpop to attach as an exhibit to the motion described in TR 86(N)(1)(d), please let us know and we'll be happy to supply documentation in support of your motion. (Simply attaching a screen print of this blog post may be sufficient.)

On the appellate side, take a look at Rule 68(M)(1)(d), which appears to be nearly identical to the Trial Court rule on this topic.