Doxpop - Tools for Attorneys and Public Information Researchers: 2019

Monday, December 23, 2019

Doxpop's 2019 Holiday Closures



Happy Holidays from all of us at Doxpop!

In order to allow our teams to spend this time with family and loved ones our office will be closed during the following days:

Tuesday, December 24th
Wednesday, December 25th
Wednesday, January 1st

During this time our support department will be closed but we do understand that sometimes you have to deal with an emergency situation during a holiday. Here's how to get help over the holiday:

We will not be monitoring phone lines, so you must use email. One of our managers will be checking email periodically throughout these times we are closed. If you have an emergency, please send an email to support@doxpop.com which contains a brief description of the problem and phone number we can call to reach you.

Please be respectful when using this option. It's for emergency situations that can't wait until after the holiday.

Thursday, December 5, 2019

Daviess and Newton Counties Convert to Odyssey- Your Doxpop Access is Unaffected!

On December 2nd, the Courts in Daviess & Newton Counties converted 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 Daviess and Newton 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-six 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 Daviess or Newton 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 December 23rd. 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.

Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Doxpop offices will close 5pm EST Wednesday, November 27th in observance of Thanksgiving.

We understand that sometimes you have to deal with an emergency situation during a holiday so here's how to get help over the holiday:

We will not be monitoring phone lines, so you must use email. One of our managers will be checking email periodically throughout the Thanksgiving break. If you have a real emergency, please send an email to support@doxpop.com which contains a brief description of the problem and phone number we can call to reach you.

Please be respectful when using this option. It's for real emergencies that can't wait until Monday morning.

Our offices will re-open at 8am on Monday, December 2nd. 

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Search results that are too large will no longer be partially displayed



In the past, when a Doxpop user submitted a query that resulted in too many records to display, we showed some of the returned records with a warning at the top saying that the displayed results were incomplete.

Recently a researcher pointed out to us that displaying partial results is misleading. Even with the warning, a person might think that because the records appear to be in order, they are complete list of the first "chunk" in whatever order they appear. This is not true. The list really is incomplete, sometimes containing a gap in the records displayed. Therefore nobody should depend on it. We just displayed it because we thought it would feel better for people to see they were getting some results.

That was a bad idea. We're sorry and we're fixing it.

From now on, if you submit a query that would return more than 500 records, (for Recorded Documents) or 1,000 records (for Court Cases & Tax Warrants) Doxpop will just display a message explaining that the query was too broad. You'll need to narrow down the results by adding constraints to decrease the number of records returned. There are several good strategies for narrowing down results:

  • On the court side, consider looking only for the type of case you are interested in, or searching only for pending or disposed cases. 
  • Searching for one county or region of counties at a time will significantly narrow results. (Here's how to search a region.)
  • On the recorded document side, consider only searching for a particular type of document or group of types. 
  • Searching for date ranges is useful if you really want to sift through thousands of results, and want to break it into chunks. 

 Why do we even put limits on the size of searches? It's simple enough. We charge by the search, and just like you, we need to make a living. We think providing 500 or more results per search is good value, and allowing more would invite abuse of our system by people using automated "screen scrapers" to gather data. In addition, the government offices we source the information from require that we not make bulk data available through our web site. This is a reasonable concern to prevent data mining efforts by people who are up to no good. For these two reasons, we have a policy limiting results to what we think a human can reasonably scan visually.

As always, let us know if this change has affected you in a way that we didn't intend.  We're always trying to make this system better, and your feedback is our best test of how we're doing. You can comment below, or better yet, just call 866-369-7671 so we can talk about how to best support your business processes.

Wednesday, November 6, 2019

Search results are now back to one full list rather than multiple pages.


On 11/6/19 Doxpop released some updates to the display of search results on Recorded Documents, Register of Deeds and Tax Warrant pages that removed the results being present in a set of multiple pages that the user could select, up to 100, on how many they see. Now they will show in one complete list up the maximum number of results we return.

We made this change after receiving feedback from a number of users that presenting the results in that way was hindering effective workflows.

If you have any questions or feedback for us feel free to send an email to support@doxpop.com or give us a call at 866-369-7671


Friday, October 25, 2019

Vigo County recorded document data incomplete (Now fixed!)


Update: This has been fixed! If you did any searches based on legal descriptions in Vigo County between 10/7 and 10/25, please re-run those and let us know how many searches you had to re-run so we can credit your account for them.

Doxpop just learned that Vigo County's recorder server has not been sending us legal descriptions since 10/7/19. We are working with their indexing system vendor to resolve this, but in the meantime, any searches based on legal description (Section/Township/Range or Subdivision/Lot) will not return documents filed after 10/7. You can still search on any other indexed fields, but obviously this severely limits the use of our system for this county. We'll be sure to post more information as soon as we have a plan for recovering this data! Keep an eye out for the yellow message alert area in the top of our web site for further notices.

Thursday, October 24, 2019

Printing of recorded document and register of deeds results improved.


You spoke, Doxpop listened!

We've revamped the printing of the results in the recorded document and register of deeds section of our site. As a result, the search results text is slightly smaller and closer to the size we originally had on that page.

Old Print View
New Print View


Validation Date Added:
In addition when printing searches on specific counties we've also added the validation information you needed on the printed results. 



Tuesday, October 15, 2019

Recorded Document Searching: It's fixed and has new abilities!


Most of our Recorder and Register of Deeds users are aware of some issues with the default sorting since we rolled out a number of new features to those portions of our site. We apologize for the inconvenience these couple of issues caused and wanted to let everyone know we've gone ahead and released some fixes and an enhanced sorting feature.

Introducing the "secondary" sorting feature, allowing you to sort the results by multiple levels.

The big difference you will notice is column headings that are involved in the sort will be colored indicating the columns used to sort the list.

Default Sort:
When you perform a search we will now sort the results in the same order we did prior to the main update.

Party name search:
- Full name
- Document Recorded Date
- Document Public ID

Other search criteria:
- Document Recorded Date
- Document Public ID

Name Search default sort

Custom Sorting
You can use this feature to create your own custom sort of search results by clicking on the first column you want to search by, then hold the shift key and click on the next column you want to sort by.
Custom sort (legal, type, date)

We hope this helps you work more efficiently and if you have any questions or feedback feel free to contact us at support@doxpop.com or call us at 866-369-7671. 



Monday, September 30, 2019

An addition to Trial Rule 86 paves the way for e-filing protection orders and workplace violence restraining orders.


Many of you have inquired about why Protection Orders cannot be e-filed.

The answer is complex and has to do with a federal regulation that prohibits posting some parts of protective order cases on the Internet. That rule creates some conflict with the Indiana rule that Protection Orders are public. In addition, Protection Orders are often filed pro se by the protected person on their own, or with the assistance of an advocate who is not an attorney, so there is a good reason to set up a guided filing process for cases of these types.

The State Court has now come up with a solution in the form of an e-filing portal that is only used for protection orders and workplace violence restraining orders. The new e-filing portal for protection orders will be available statewide on October 1, 2019. This portal is located at https://public.courts.in.gov/porefsp

In preparation for e-filing, the court has also recently added Trial Rule 86(Q) which covers filing and service for these cases. This rule becomes effective on October 1, 2019:

(Q) Protection Order Cases, Workplace Violence Restraining Order Cases, and Child Protection Orders: Issuance of Summons and Service of Petition and Ex Parte Order or Equivalent Proceeding.
(1) The Protection Order Registry E-Filing Service Provider (POR EFSP) is the only provider for e-filing of all initial complaints or equivalent subsequent pleadings and all subsequent filings for civil protection orders and workplace violence restraining orders (PO case types) and for requests for child protection orders (JQ case types).
(2) Where service of process is required by Trial Rule 4.1 through 4.16, for any document filed in or issued by the Court in a civil protection order or workplace violence restraining order case (PO case types) and in a child protection order case (JQ case type), that service must be accomplished by the Clerk, a Sheriff, court official, or other person appointed by a Court to complete service of process.

Sunday, September 29, 2019

A new look and new features for Recorder and Register of Deeds services!


Doxpop is proud to announce a new look and added features for our Recorded Document and Register of Deeds services. We are posting this “Sneak Preview” on Monday, 9/30 to prepare you, and we will release the changes on Wednesday, 10/2. (Update: The changes have now been released.)

If you already use our tax warrant service, you will find these updates very familiar. There is no change to the data that is available or how your searches function, we’ve just made the system a little easier to use.

We have made changes in three areas:

  • The search criteria on the advanced search page have been rearranged for ease of use.
  • New tools have been added to the result list and document detail screens. 
  • You can now browse through the detail pages of your search results without returning to the search results page between each detail view.

First, let’s take a look at the streamlined advanced search page:

  • The layout is changed to make it easier to locate fields.
  • Since land can be platted or unplatted,  but never both, when you start entering information in Lot/Block/Subdivision the non-platted land fields become inactive and the reverse occurs if you enter information in the Township/Section/Range.
  • Michigan users will notice that we changed the order on a few of the less common fields towards the bottom.

Indiana Searchers (click to enlarge):
Indiana Advanced Search
Michigan Searchers (click to enlarge):
Michigan Advanced Search

Search results have several improvements:

  • A [reset sorting] button has been added that resets the column sorting to default.
  • A  “Filter” box has been added to quickly locate items in large result sets. To use the filter, just start typing in the filter box and the result set will narrow to only entries containing the text you entered.
  • Finally, there’s a simpler way to save or set email alerts on documents! Click on the star to save a document. Click on the bell to set an alert on the document. A second click turns each of these off.

Search Results

Here’s what we changed in the document detail area:

  • At the top left of the details page, there is a back arrow that will return you to your search results. In the center are navigation buttons that will walk you through the details of each document in your result set without requiring you to return to the search results.
  • The top right has the star to save a document and bell to set an alert.
  • The image preview link is now more prominently displayed right under the document heading to the left.

Document Details

Our goal with these features is to make your work more pleasant and productive. Please explore these features when they are released on Wednesday and let us know how we did! If you have any questions about the changes or need help, please contact our support team at 866-369-7671 or support@doxpop.com.

Sunday, September 1, 2019

About that lengthy outage on Saturday, August 31.


On Saturday (8/31/19) Doxpop had an extended outage of all of our services from roughly 9:00AM to 10:30 PM.

The root cause was an outage in Amazon's cloud computing service that affected many of their customers. However, after Amazon restored their service, we found that our database files had been corrupted, which meant a busy day for our operations team as they worked to restore our services.

For the most part, everything is back to normal now. All of the public records information for Court, Land Records and Tax Warrants are in good shape. E-filing is also functioning fine. The only loss of data was for some of our customer transactions that occurred between 5AM and 9AM on Saturday morning. We'll be following up with a few customers on Tuesday about that, but the damage was minor. Let us know if you see anything we ought to check out on your account that happened during the window from 5AM-9AM Saturday.

Since the courts were closed and it was a holiday weekend, we don't anticipate any issues with e-filers missing deadlines. However, if we're wrong, and if you missed a filing deadline on Saturday, remember that Trial Rule 86(N) provides a remedy for inability to e-file, and don't hesitate to contact us if you need an affidavit to back up your claim under that rule.

Our apologies to anyone who was inconvenienced by this outage! We know you have come to depend on us for reliable service and we work hard to never let you down, but every once in a while we have a really bad day, and Saturday was one of those days.

Tuesday, August 20, 2019

Subsequent e-filing on JC case types not available on Tuesday, 8/20.


Update: On Wednesday, 8/21 we have confirmed that the fix for this problem is in place, and JC cases are back to normal.

Several E-filers have reported problems with filing on JC case types today (Tuesday, 8/20.) 

Doxpop was not able to locate a problem in our system. We then inquired with Indiana Trial Court Technology and the vendor that maintains the State's part of the e-filing system. They responded that this issue is due to a misconfiguration in their system at the State level and have promised it will be fixed tomorrow morning. 

If this delay will cause you to miss a deadline, please take a look at Trial Rule 86(N)(1) "Indiana E-Filing System Failures". Specifically, 86(N)(1)(c). The quote (with highlighting added by us) from the State's vendor below should give you reasonable substantiation:


"Case #7230829has been updated.
Assigned To: XXXXXX XXXXXXXX
Status: Open

Description of Issue: IN-PROD Getting case type error on subsequent filing

Support Notes: We have diagnosed as related to configuration. We have escalated to our development or implementation team to take corrective action.You should see the change by tomorrow after the nightly cache flush. This affects all JC case types.

Thank you,
XXXXXXX
Online Support Case: 7230829"

Monday, August 19, 2019

Welcome to the Fayette County Recorder's Office!

Please join us in celebrating some big changes in Fayette County, Indiana!

Fayette County is the 43rd Recorder to join Doxpop


The Fayette County Recorder's Office, led by Recorder Ruth Nutty, has transitioned to a new, local software package that allows us to add them to the Doxpop Public Access System. Having completed that technical conversion last week, they are ready to increase their public access offerings by making these land records available 24/7.

Scanned images are available to view and purchase, along with a searchable index for all documents filed since January 1994. Anyone wishing to look up recorded documents on-line may visit http://www.doxpop.com to use the service. A low-volume search plan is available for free, with higher-volume subscriptions available to commercial users for a fee.

Friday, August 9, 2019

We welcome Sullivan County to e-file! The final county to join e-filing.


UPDATE: Sullivan will not go live in e-file until Saturday, August 10th due to an unexpected issue. Here is the update we received from the state e-file manager:

"We have identified an issue which is preventing e-filing in Sullivan County. We are working to correct the issue, and e-filing into Sullivan County courts will be available tomorrow.  We apologize for the delay."

On Friday, August 9th, Sullivan County was the final Indiana county to join the rest of the of counties in the Indiana e-file system. 

This is a reminder that if you have open cases in Sullivan County now is the time to use our batch service contact attachment feature to get your preferred service contact attached to all your cases. In addition to finding your Sullivan county cases, this will catch any other open cases you may not have your private service contact attached to yet in any e-filing county.

Important for ALL e-filers: E-filing is now available for ALL Indiana county courts!

Now that all counties are in the Indiana e-file system we highly recommend you take time to run this batch attach again, regardless of where you typically practice in the state. Doing so will ensure that your preferred service contact is the one attached to any case you (or your attorney) is an attorney of record on.

We hear from users on a regular basis that have not done this and we can tell you it's a headache to deal with cases someone else attached you on.


We have a quick video showing you how it works if you click on this link.
Note: Public service contacts are now available in your service contact tools as well!


For more information about how private and public service contacts ended up working this way, visit our initial and follow up blog posts linked below:

Friday, July 26, 2019

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

During the weekend of July 26, the Clay County Courts will be converted 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 Clay 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 about 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 Clay 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 August 26th. 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.

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

E-filing downtime on Tuesday, July 23rd. Here is what you need to know.


--Updated 4:24pm 7/23/19--

The e-file manager informed us about 4:20pm that the e-file system was back up and running. Please review the information below for assurance that allowance has been made in the trial rule for prolonged e-file outages.

----
Previous post:

Beginning at roughly 3:15pm on Tuesday, July 23rd, the State's side of the Indiana e-filing system is experiencing sporadic outages and issues, thus preventing users from e-filing on most cases. At the time of this posting, we have received confirmation of the issues from the Office of Judicial Administration and E-file manager noting they are working to resolve the issue but have no ETA at the time of this posting. We will update this blog when the issue appears resolved. 


If you are reading this before midnight on 7/23 and have a deadline today, please note that Trial Rule 86(N)(1), 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.

Wednesday, July 3, 2019

Reminder that Doxpop offices will be closed July 4th in observance on Independence day.


Even though we are closed we understand that sometimes you have to deal with an emergency situation during a holiday so here's how to get help over the holiday:

We will not be monitoring phone lines, so you must use email. One of our managers will be checking email periodically throughout the day. If you have a real emergency, please send an email to support@doxpop.com that contains a brief description of the problem and phone number we can call to reach you.

Please be respectful when using this option. It's for real emergencies that can't wait until Friday morning.

Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Kosciusko and Dubois e-filing. Sorta fixed, but it's complicated....


Per Indiana Trial Court Technology:

"At this time, filings to initiate a new case can be submitted. However, attorneys who filed into existing cases on Monday, June 24, may experience problems. If the same case returns multiple times, you should not proceed with your filing."

Sigh! Here's what we think this means:

If you're initiating a new case, no problem! Proceed.

If you're submitting a subsequent filing on an existing case, then:
  • If you get the message "2 (or more) cases exist with this case number", stop and report it to us. We'll pass it along to the folks at Trial Court Technology and let you know when they've got it fixed.
  • If you get no message about multiple cases with that case number, then there's no problem. You can proceed normally.
We believe that very few filings will be affected by this, but thought you should know. As we mentioned in the notice yesterday, if this issue should cause you to miss a deadline, refer to Trial Rule 86(N) to learn about your options.

Update: At 2:10 PM, we received a message from the State indicating that all e-filing issues in Kosciusko and Dubois have been resolved.

Monday, June 24, 2019

Kosciusko and Dubois Counties Convert to Odyssey- Your Doxpop Access is Unaffected!

During the weekend of June 22nd, the Courts in Kosciusko & Dubois Counties converted 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 Kosciusko and Dubois 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-six week period when both the old data and the new data are available. This is longer than when this transition typically happens due to the holidays. 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 Kosciusko or Dubois 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 June 30th. 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.

Monday, May 20, 2019

Whitley and Sullivan Counties Convert to Odyssey- Your Doxpop Access is Unaffected.

During the weekend of May 18th, the Courts in Whitley & Sullivan Counties converted 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 Whitley and Sulivan 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-six week period when both the old data and the new data are available. This is longer than when this transition typically happens due to the holidays. 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 Whitley or Sullivan 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 June 23rd. 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.

Friday, May 17, 2019

Welcome Clinton & Pike County to e-filing! Now is the time to get your service contact attached to your cases.


On Friday, May 17th, both Clinton & Pike County joined the list of counties in the Indiana e-file system. 

This is just a reminder that if you have open cases in any of these courts now is the time to use our batch service contact attachment feature to get your preferred service contact attached to all your cases. In addition to finding your Clinton and/or Pike county cases, this will catch any other open cases you may not have your private service contact attached to yet in any e-filing county.

We have a quick video showing you how it works if you click on this link.
Note: Public service contacts are now available in your service contact tools as well!


For more information about how private and public service contacts may affect you, visit our initial and follow up blog posts linked below:

Monday, April 22, 2019

Welcome Howard County to e-filing! Now is the time to get your service contact attached to your cases.


On Monday, April 22nd, Howard County joined the list of counties in the Indiana e-file system. 

This is just a reminder that if you have open cases in any of these courts now is the time to use our batch service contact attachment feature to get your preferred service contact attached to all your cases. In addition to finding your Howard county cases, this will catch any other open cases you may not have your private service contact attached to yet in any e-filing county.

We have a quick video showing you how it works if you click on this link.
Note: Public service contacts are now available in your service contact tools as well!


For more information about how private and public service contacts may affect you, visit our initial and follow up blog posts linked below:

Thursday, April 11, 2019

E-filers: A much more friendly and feature packed 'My Electronic Filings' page is here!


The My Electronic Filings (MEF) page has gotten a new look and new features.

If you haven't used this page before, make sure you take a look next time you're logged in! It's the second option down in the e-filing tab. Here's what we changed:

First, a new layout that we feel is much easier to follow and read. Each envelope can be collapsed and expanded to hide or view details, meaning a much less crowded page. The search criteria have not changed, and the 'filter' field at the top right still allows you to quickly locate a filing by entering any word or phrase displayed in the envelope details.

When you first visit the page you'll notice we default to all the envelopes being 'collapsed'. To see the details and documents for an envelope just use the small triangle icon to the left to expand or collapse document details. If you want all envelopes to be expanded or collapsed, use the icon in the header.

In addition to the new look making the page easier to scan visually, we added a few features that our users have requested. Some new features you will find:

  • For new cases, the location (county) the case was submitted to will show in the case number/name field until the envelope is accepted and a case number assigned. We added this because we have found that a regular mistake people make is selecting an adjoining location from the drop-down list during initial filing.
  • In the details, we now display the document's security setting so you can now double check that you marked that filing as confidential. 
  • Color coding highlights filings that may need attention. 


What do you think of this updated page? Have a suggestion of your own? Let us know by emailing support@doxpop.com. 




Friday, March 15, 2019

Welcome Miami County to e-filing! Now is the time to get your service contact attached to your cases.


On Friday, March 15th, Miami County joined the list of counties in the Indiana e-file system. 

This is just a reminder that if you have open cases in any of these courts now is the time to use our batch service contact attachment feature to get your preferred service contact attached to all your cases. In addition to finding your Miami county cases, this will catch any other open cases you may not have your private service contact attached to yet in any e-filing county.

We have a quick video showing you how it works if you click on this link.
Note: Public service contacts are now available in your service contact tools as well!


For more information about how private and public service contacts may affect you, visit our initial and follow up blog posts linked below:

Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Welcome Putnam County to e-filing! Now is the time to get your service contact attached to your cases.


On Wednesday, March 13th, Putnam County joined the list of counties in the Indiana e-file system. 

This is just a reminder that if you have open cases in any of these courts now is the time to use our batch service contact attachment feature to get your preferred service contact attached to all your cases. In addition to finding your Putnam county cases, this will catch any other open cases you may not have your private service contact attached to yet in any e-filing county.

We have a quick video showing you how it works if you click on this link.
Note: Public service contacts are now available in your service contact tools as well!


For more information about how private and public service contacts may affect you, visit our initial and follow up blog posts linked below:

Wednesday, March 6, 2019

Name That Debtor! Making sure your lien can be found in the e-filing world. Part 1.


This information is particularly important for anyone filing a Collection, Tort, Plenary or Mortgage Foreclosure case that might result in a lien on property.

Getting a judgment is often easier than collecting it, but with some attention to detail at the time you file, you can significantly increase the chance that your lien is quickly found by title searchers so it will be satisfied during any subsequent sales process.

The problem is that filers often name the defendant in a manner that makes it hard for title searchers to find the case. As an attorney, you are careful to be precise about party names from a legal perspective. However, once you have obtained a judgment, the party names become an index for researchers.

Here's the problem that creates: Let's suppose you are filing a mortgage foreclosure against the estate of Elmer Fudd and the heir he is rumored to have. You carefully enter the defendant as "The Unknown Heirs and Estate of Elmer Fudd, Deceased".

However, when the heir decides to sell the house as part of wrapping up the estate, the title searchers are searching on the name "Elmer Fudd", and since that's not the party name, they can't find the case. Now the sale goes through without the defect being noticed. It may be possible to collect from the buyer or the title insurance company, but it's going to be a mess no matter how it plays out.

This mess can be avoided with about 10 seconds of extra work. Simply add a party to the case during filing with the name "Elmer Fudd" and a role of "Decedent". Now a researcher charged with finding any defects on Elmer Fudd's title will be able to find the case with a single name search.

This is useful in any case where the judgment may become a lien. Regardless of the legal terms you use to precisely describe the defendant, make sure you also create a separate party record for the name of every owner of the property you will be creating a lien on, using only their name, so a complete index for finding the judgment is created.

Note: Any careful title researcher will use the Doxpop system to search for judgments, and if they use our "simple search" feature, a search for "Elmer Fudd" will immediately find a case that refers only to "The unknown heirs of Elmer Fudd". We've solved this problem for any researchers that use our system. However, you can't be sure that they will use our system for doing the research, so this little extra step protects your investment in obtaining the judgment.

If you have any questions or feedback give our support team a call at 866-396-7671 or email us at support@doxpop.com

Subscribe today to get notifications in your email each time we post a new blog entry.

Friday, March 1, 2019

Welcome Wayne County to e-filing! Now is the time to get your service contact attached to your cases.


On Friday, March 1st Wayne County joined the list of counties in the Indiana e-file system. 

This is just a reminder that if you have open cases in any of these courts now is the time to use our batch service contact attachment feature to get your preferred service contact attached to all your cases. In addition to finding your Wayne county cases, this will catch any other open cases you may not have your private service contact attached to yet in any e-filing county.

We have a quick video showing you how it works if you click on this link.
Note: Public service contacts are now available in your service contact tools as well!


For more information about how private and public service contacts may affect you, visit our initial and follow up blog posts linked below:

Friday, February 15, 2019

Clinton and Pike Counties Convert to Odyssey- Your Doxpop Access is Unaffected.


During the weekend of February 16th, the Courts in Clinton & Pike Counties 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 Clinton and Pike 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-six week period when both the old data and the new data are available. This is longer than when this transition typically happens due to the holidays. 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 Clinton or Pike 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 March 19th. 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.

Tuesday, February 5, 2019

E-filing: E-service 101- Learn the basics of how e-service in Indiana works.


This week in our e-filing administration series we are going to dive into the murky world of e-service and try to help clear up the waters a little bit. This will be a two-part post with us focusing on the basics this week and then going through all the more complicated areas next week. In each topic section, you will find links to the various help pages that can walk you through technically making these settings.

If you’ve missed our previous articles here are links to them:


Let’s cover the first confusion that arises, the two types of service contacts, Firm or Public?

Firm Service Contact:
  • Contact created within your firm’s e-filing account for anyone wishing to receive e-service in a case.
  • Does not have to be an attorney.
  • Only accessible to e-file users within your firm’s e-file account.  
  • May have administrative copies for assistants or paralegals to receive a copy of any service sent to this service contact. 

Public Service List Contact:
  • Only Indiana attorneys registered in the e-file system.
  • Only Indiana attorneys will appear on the Public Service Contact.
  • Anyone e-filing has access to this list.
  • Contact information is based on settings in the roll of attornys.
  • This contact does NOT have the ability for administrative copies.  
A good way to think of it is that the Firm Service Contact list is like your personal address book and the Public Service List is like the yellow pages (does anyone remember those)?.

One very important note regarding the private list: You are only permitted to add yourself or your firm's attorneys to the firm’s service contact list. You may NOT add an attorney from another firm or a case party as a firm service contact in your e-file account.

Now let’s cover some important things to remember about e-service:
  • You should have yourself attached to all your cases in e-file as soon as make your appearance in a case, active or not. We have tools to help with this! This way you have control over which service contact you use. This includes making sure you use the auto-attach feature for new case filings. 
  • E-service is completed through the e-filing system. It is not handled by Doxpop or the court case management system. Keep in mind when you have questions about e-service that we are not able to see what was sent and neither can the clerk offices but Doxpop will always help you find what you need.   
  • Sending a filing to another party by e-mail outside of the e-service system is not a valid form of e-service. 
  • Only those attached as service contacts are served via e-service. Case parties are not automatically served without being attached as a service contact. 
  • If a party you need to serve is not already attached to a case and their contact can’t be located in the public service list, you will need to serve them conventionally. 
When filing into a case it's very important you review the list of attached service contacts every time! This becomes even more important if your filing should include confidential information.

Here are the things you want to look for when filing into an existing case:
  1. Review the list to ensure the proper service contact for your attorney is attached. To tell a public list contact from a firm contact look to see if the attorney’s bar ID is listed after their name. That would indicate that is the public list contact, which would not include any administrative copies. Doing this each time ensures you will get service in the way you want.  
  2. Now ensure that opposing counsel(s) service contacts are attached. If they are not attached already search the public service list and attach their public service contact. If you can not locate them in the public list you will need to serve them conventionally until they attach themselves to the case. If they are attached already with a firm service contact (no bar ID after the name) do not attach the public service contact for them. They have chosen to be served using their firm service contact and likely will not appreciate getting twice the emails.  
  3.  Lastly, ensure there is no one attached that shouldn't be served. Anyone can create and attach service contacts in the e-file system so when e-filing documents its important that you ensure that copies are only sent to those that should have them. This becomes crucial when filing confidential documents. Anyone e-served a confidential document can still see the contents of the document. Think of that confidential setting as putting the document on green paper (which is no longer required) and still mailing it to an unknown party. Just because it's on green paper doesn’t mean they can’t read the content. If you find someone attached that you do not need to serve you can uncheck them in the contacts to serve section for that specific filing. 

E-notice vs. E-service
  • E-notices are sent from the court to a single email address for each attorney maintained through the court's case management system(CMS). 
  • E-service is a sent from the litigant through an e-filing service provider and is delivered to the service contact attached to the case. 

  • E-notice is sent from the CMS, not through e-file. Changing contact information in one does not affect the other.
  • The CMS is limited to one email address per party and all e-notices go to only that email address. There is no ability for the court to add administrative copies.
  • E-notice from the Appellate Court is a separate procedure from the trial courts. If you practice in both you will need to update your information with both. 

Now let's take a moment and talk about serving government agencies. 

For many of you, it may be necessary to serve specific government agencies rather than a specific person. Departments such as the prosecutor's office, probation, community corrections, and other agencies involved in the legal process may need to be served but may not have an attorney or a public list service contact.

In many of these cases, the basic rule still applies: You must service them conventionally if they are not already attached the case and they are not listed in the public list. 

That said, here are some finer details that are good to know. 
  • The State Court Administration maintains the public service contact list and does attempt to remove those attorneys that are serving in government roles from the public list. Judges and prosecutors for example typically will not be found in the public contact list since it's almost certain their office needs the service rather than them directly.
  • For this reason, it's the responsibility of those offices to ensure they have attached a 'firm service contact' to all the cases they are part of to ensure that e-service is directed to the person that needs to actually act on it. 
  • When you go to file into a case and you don’t find a service contact attached for one of these agencies and you need to serve them you may want to take a moment to contact the agency and see if they can attach a service contact before submitting your filing. If not you must serve them conventionally. 
  • Even if you do find an attorney in the public list for that agency (say the county prosecutor) it may be better to notify the agency and let them attach the contact they want to use. This will help ensure they can process that service quickly and help your case to keep moving along efficiently. 


So this covers the basics of how e-service works. Our next post will focus on tips for larger firms and the complicated situations that can arise such as managing multiple service contacts for the same person and other complicating sceneries.

If you have any questions or feedback give our support team a call at 866-396-7671 or email us at support@doxpop.com

Subscribe today to get notifications in your email each time we post a new blog entry.

Monday, January 28, 2019

E-filing account maintenance: Let's talk payment accounts.


So in our last article, we gave you plenty to read, so this week I’m going to try and keep it simple. This week we’ll talk about payment accounts which is probably the number one subject we get calls about.

If you’ve missed our previous articles here are links to them:
      Have a new employee? Here's what to do.
      Did someone leave your firm? Here's what to do.

The key thing to remember is you two places that payment account information is stored. Remembering that e-file is a separate system that you log in to through Doxpop is an important thing to keep in mind.

Doxpop Payment Information-

Doxpop payment information is accessible to any Doxpop account admin on the ‘my doxpop’ tab. The payment information stored here is just for your Doxpop monthly service and recorded document purchases.

E-file payment information-

E-file payment accounts are managed on the e-file account administration page. This is accessible to any e-file user that has been granted administrative rights on the e-file account. An e-file account admin does not necessarily have to be a doxpop admin.

To access the e-file account administration page follow these steps:

  • Click on the ‘e-filing’ tab
  • Then on the left side of the page, in the links under our welcome message, you should find a link titled “E-filing Account Administration”. If you do not have this link, you are not an e-file account admin. 

With that understood, here is the top tip we suggest:

If you have multiple e-file users, have more than one account administrator. This way, if your normal account administrator is unavailable and a payment account, or other information, needs to be updated in order to make that critical filing, you can do so. Note that since the e-file account is really with the state e-file system, Doxpop support does not have direct access to users e-file accounts. Click here to learn how to grant administrative rights to an e-file user.

Now, lets actually talk about e-file payment accounts:

Once on the e-filing account administration page, you’ll see the payment accounts in the upper right corner. Here you will see the name (or nickname) of the payment account(s) saved on the account. Currently, in Indiana, there are two types of payments accounts- Credit Card and Waiver.

Credit Card:

This is a credit card that is used to pay for your filing fees. Filing fees include the actual filing fee, sheriff service fees, and the state “convenience fee”. These are charged by the state’s credit card processor, not Doxpop.

Its also good to know that the credit card is not actually charged until a filing is accepted by the clerk. When a filing is submitted the e-file credit card processor will do a pre-authorization and place a hold on the amount of the filing. Should the filing be canceled or rejected that hold will be released after a few days. 

When it comes time to update your payment account you’ll need to open the existing “old” information and delete that account, then you can click the ‘new payment account’ button and add the updated card. The e-file system doesn’t permit credit cards to be edited.

When adding a new payment account. The “name” field that comes up first is a free form place for you to assign a “nickname” for that card. This is the name that your e-file users will see when they need to select a payment account.

Waiver:

Just as the name implies, a waiver account is used when you have a situation that filing fees are to be waived. We suggest adding a waiver account when you set-up the e-file account so that if it becomes needed, you already have it set-up and another user doesn’t have to scramble to find someone to add it.

That just about covers it. If you have any questions, always feel free to pick up the phone and give our support team a call at 866-396-7671. A real human will answer the phone and help walk you through the process!

Subscribe today to get notifications in your email each time we post a new blog entry. Next time we’ll start covering service and service contacts for E-file.

Friday, January 25, 2019

Added search capabilities are here!


We’re happy to be able to announce that new search ability for Recorded Documents and Tax Warrants will be released on January 24th towards the end of the day!

We find the vast majority of our users perform their searches from the welcome tab and for some time we only had searching available by name. Last year we released a pilot on the court search that allowed a user from the welcome tab to select which of multiple search fields they wanted to search by and this went over well so we’ve now expanded that feature to recorded documents and tax warrants.

Here is what the previous search options look like:

Now, you’ll find a drop down and you can select the primary field you would like to search by:
You’ll also notice as you navigate around our site that we’ve made this consistent on all these simple search ‘widgets’ as we call them. Remember you can always get the advanced search just by clicking the ‘advance search’ link in that widget.

If you have and questions or feedback give our support team a call at 866-396-7671 or email us at support@doxpop.com

Subscribe today to get notifications in your email each time we post a new blog entry. Next time we’ll cover payment accounts for E-file and Doxpop.







Monday, January 21, 2019

E-filing account maintenance: Did someone leave your firm? Here's what to do.


In the second of our e-file account maintenance series, we’ll cover what steps you will want to take when an employee leaves your firm. Hang in there, this one is a long one but important if you run into this situation. Did you miss part one of the series? If so click here to learn what needs to be done when you have a new user. 

Let's talk about Doxpop changes that will be needed first. 

First, you’ll want to remove any saved alerts so that none of them are being counted against your account limits.
  • Go to the ‘my doxpop’ tab.
  • Then in the blue menu to the left click on the ‘View Users’ link.
  • Locate the user that has left your firm and click the ‘Details’ link.
  • Remove any bar ID alerts by clicking ‘View user ID list’ and disable notifications on any saved bar IDs.
  • Use your browser's back button to navigate back to the user information screen.
  • Remove scheduled searches or search watches by clicking on ‘View user's searches and notifications’ link. 
  • Here you can then delete or modify any of the user’s saved searches. 
With that done, you will now want to inactivate that user by using the browser’s back button to get back to the Doxpop account user list. Then, just click the ‘Inactivate’ link for that user. This will remove them from your firm's list of active Doxpop users and prevent them from accessing your firm’s account.

Note that if the person leaving is an admin, you may want to make sure you grant admin rights to another user that will be replacing their duties. If you need a user reactivated, give us call and our support team has the ability to reactivate a user if needed. 

Now, let's dive into e-file.

This can get complicated depending on the situation, so we’ll cover the basics, but if you have a more complicated situation, give us a call and we can help you through it. What you need to do first depends on the role the person served in your firm so just scroll down to the section that applies to your situation.

Paralegal, assistant or another user that files on behalf of an attorney but is not an attorney-

This is pretty simple, the e-file account administrator needs to take the following steps:
  • Navigate to the ‘e-filing’ tab.
  • Click the ‘E-filing Account Administration’ link.
  • In the Users box click on the name of the user that has left.
  • Click [Delete User] button.
  • Confirm by clicking [Yes, delete it].
That's it! You’ve removed that e-file user from your firm but will still be able to see filings that user made on behalf of the firm in the My Electronic Filings area.

You may want to check if this person was listed to get administrative copies of service in the service contacts. This is done by just clicking on a service contact name, then just remove their email from the Administrative Copy field. Make sure to replace it with someone else if needed.

Okay, that's the easy situation, now let's go over steps if an attorney is leaving your firm. There can be quite a few scenarios here, but we’ll cover the easy ones.

An attorney is leaving and taking all of their cases with them.

Service Contacts- You will want to remove the service contact from your firm from their cases:
  • On the ‘E-filing Account Administration’ page click the [Additional Tools] button in Service Contacts
  • Use the second tool to detach your firm’s service contact from all the cases it is attached to.
  • Choose the firm service contact from the drop down. (The “firm” service contact, is the one without the globe symbol).
  • Click [Detach]
  • This will run a process detaching that service contact from all of the cases it's attached to. 
  • We suggest re-running this process on the public service contact also (the one with the globe)*. 
  • With each of these, you will get an email that lists what actions were taken on what cases. 
  • Click on the [< Account Administration] button above the service contact tools
  • Click on the attorney’s name in the Service Contacts box 
  • Click [Delete]
  • Confirm by clicking [Yes, delete it]
*While the public service contact will update with their new information when they update the roll of attorneys, it can only be detached by the firm that attached it to a case originally. This way the parting attorney can then decided once at their new firm which service contact they wish to use and attach it appropriately to all their cases.

Now, remove the attorney from the firm’s e-file account. Again, on the E-filing Account Administration page follow these steps:
  • In the Attorney's box, click on the attorney’s name
  • Click [Delete]
  • Confirm by clicking [Yes, delete it]
Next, if they have an e-file user, you'll want to go and remove that user from the e-file account following the steps in above in the paralegal/assistant section to remove the e-file user for them. 
You are done! You may want to coordinate this process with the attorney once they are set-up at their new firm. If you detach your firm’s service contact on all the cases before the attorney (or their new firm admin) has the ability to get a new service contact attached to their cases it’s quite possible for them to miss electronic service on an active case. 

An attorney is leaving but ALL of their cases stay with the firm. 

Before making changes on the e-file account you will want to ensure that you have taken care of the legal process to replace the attorney of record on the case. This entails filing an appearance for the attorney that is taking over the case and adding them as an attorney of record during that filing as well as filing the withdrawal for the departing attorney. Once you've completed that on all the cases you can take the following administrative steps in e-file.

Service Contacts- You will want to replace the service contact for that attorney with that of one that is not leaving your firm.
  • On the ‘E-filing Account Administration’ page click the [Additional Tools] button in Service Contacts
  • Use the third tool to replace that attorney’s firm’s service contact on all the cases it is attached to with someone else at your firm. 
  • Choose the firm service contact to be replaced from the drop down. (The “firm” service contact, is the one without the globe symbol).
  • Choose the firm preferred service contact you want that one to be replaced with
  • Click [Replace]
  • This will run a process that detaches the outgoing attorney’s service contact on any cases its attached to and then attaches the specified replacement service contact. 
  • We suggest re-running this process on the outgoing attorney’s public service contact also as this will catch any cases that the public service contact was attached to. 
  • With each of these, you will get an email that lists what actions were taken on what cases. 
  • Click on the [< Account Administration] button above the service contact tools
  • Click on the attorney’s name in the Service Contacts box 
  • Click [Delete]
  • Confirm by clicking [Yes, delete it]
Now, remove the attorney from the firm’s e-file account. Again, on the E-filing Account Administration page follow these steps:
  • In the Attorney's box, click on the attorney’s name
  • Click [Delete]
  • Confirm by clicking [Yes, delete it]
Next, if they have an e-file user, you'll want to go and remove that user from the e-file account following the steps in above in the paralegal/assistant section to remove the e-file user for them. 
And that's it, you’ve replaced and then removed that attorney from the firm’s e-file account. Don’t forget that this will only modify the attorney as it related to the e-file system itself and not the official case record. Your firm will need to act appropriately with each case through the court system to replace the attorney of record on any affected cases.

An attorney is leaving but some cases stay and some cases go with them. 

This gets a bit more complicated and is where we’d advise you to just give us a call.

Essentially, depending on the volume of cases that are staying or leaving, you are going to follow one of the two instructions above for service contacts and then manually correct any cases changed that didn’t need to be. Also, depending on the volume of cases you may find it will be easier to just manually update the service contacts on affected cases one by one. We can help you decide the more efficient route. Once you have worked out service contacts you will still end up removing the attorney from the firm’s listed attorneys.

If you run into any issues during this process always feel free to pick up the phone and give our support team a call at 866-396-7671. A real human will answer the phone and help walk you through the process!

Subscribe today to get notifications in your email each time we post a new blog entry. Next time we’ll cover payment accounts for E-file and Doxpop.