Muncie City Court Moves to Odyssey. Court record access through Doxpop continues without interruption.

Over the weekend of March 4th/5th, the Muncie City Court converted to the Odyssey case tracking system, thus moving their data storage and administration to Indianapolis. 

This move does not significantly affect Doxpop users because Doxpop buys access from the State Court Administration to a real-time feed of court data from the Odyssey system. Our customers' access to Muncie Court information 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 short 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 each 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 "Delaware County Details Page", you will find two entries for the Muncie Court 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 twice each day, 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 the first week of April, after that, we'll be back to normal.

For some time, Doxpop has been maintaining a separate record of Yorktown court cases because there was an incomplete conversion on the court side when the Yorktown cases were moved to Muncie. If this latest conversion addressed that issue, we will remove the Yorktown records soon in order to avoid duplication. (That will be announced in this blog when it occurs.)

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 the Court Administration 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 they not make that information available to us. If this information is important to you, please encourage the clerks you work with to tell the State Court Administration of your needs 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.

A couple of notes on Sheriff Service Fees: Vanderburgh and Criminal

We recently checked in with the Vanderburgh County Clerk's office and learned that although they had planned to have payments for civil process of service go directly to the Sheriff starting on March 1, that has been delayed.

Apologies to folks who saw our earlier post about this or attended training where I told you the cut-over date was March 1! I just updated the list in our earlier blog post about this to say "Any day now" because that's the best we can do at the moment. Until this change occurs, you must still pay the clerk, but by using a separate check, not by paying via the e-filing system.

Also, Attorney Richard Mann  alerted us on Friday that he was seeing the option to add Sheriff's service on some subsequent filings in criminal cases. Obviously, that's an error. We can't think of any situations where such service would be used in a criminal case.

Unfortunately, that particular error comes to us through a configuration file controlled by the court, so we've alerted the proper folks on the court end,  but until they investigate the problem and fix it up, all we can do is give you the heads-up and tell you not to choose that option. Consider yourself alerted. <grin>

Super Search. (It's like normal searching, but with a cape.)

There is a new checkbox next to the search button that says "Super Search". This is a powerful search option that we are making available for name searching.

Before we get into how Super Search works, a word of assurance for the folks who don't want to learn something new today: You don't have to use Super Search. When the box isn't checked, our search will behave the way it always has in the past. As a logged-in user, simply check or uncheck the box to switch between Super Search and traditional search.*

Here's what Super Search will do for you:

Have you ever had trouble locating records with an unusual party name? 
For example:

• "The unknown heirs of Jimmy Hoffa, assumed deceased"
• "Dr. Charles Baker-Fielding the Third, Esquire"
• "DBA John Smith"

Super Search makes it easy to find these records with three new features:

• Names occurring anywhere in the party field are easily found. Just enter a list of names or words, and we'll search for party names that include all of the names or words you've typed in any position. No need to enter last name first, or put in a comma.
• Nicknames are checked also. Because this search is primarily based on names, we have enhanced it to include variations on names. For instance, searching for Betty, Liza, or Beth will also return cases involving Elizabeth. If you don't want to check for nicknames, just put the name in "quotes" to look for an exact match.
• You can search for words too. Looking for an a probate court case? You can include words like heirs, decedent, or estate and if those words appear in the party information, we'll use it to narrow down your search.

Note: Because wildcards don't play well with these nickname groups, we don't allow wildcards in the Super Search. But don't worry, you can uncheck the Super Search box and then wildcards will work using the traditional search.

Here are a few examples of how this works:

To find The unknown heirs of Jimmy Hoffa, assumed deceased, you could type James Hoffa, click on the "Super Search" check box, and hit the search button. Doxpop will then look for cases where both James and Hoffa occur anywhere within the party name field, and as an added bonus, we'll also look for Jim, Jimmy, Jamie and any other common nickname or variant spelling for James. You can see exactly which similar words are included in your search by expanding the arrow in the search criteria area at the top of your search results.

Example of the search result details for "james hoffa"

If you want to narrow the search down because you're looking specifically for the deceased Jimmy Hoffa, you can also include the word deceased. 

The order doesn't matter, so you could start with a wide search and then keep appending names or words in any order to narrow down results. For instance,  you might search for hoffa and get too many results. Narrowing to hoffa james will reduce the number of results, but if that's still too much, you could go with hoffa james deceased to focus very narrowly. 

To find Dr. Charles Baker-Fielding the Third, Esquire, you can turn on Super Search and use any of the following word combinations in the search box:

• charles baker fielding
• charlie baker the third
• chuck  fielding esquire

There are hundreds of different name/word combinations you could use to find this person, but the basic concept is to include all of the words or names you think will be in the party name in any order. The more words/names you add, the more it will narrow the result.

To find DBA john smith, you could just search for john smith. It no longer matters if there are extra words in in front of the name you are searching for, or if the official record is in First Name Last Name format instead of Last Name, First Name. Of course, there are quite a few john smiths out there, so it's now easy to just tack DBA onto your search to narrow the focus.

*This post was edited to clarify that users must be logged in to uncheck the super search option and turn it off. 

Name Searching in Tax Warrants

By default, our new tax warrant search is using a new name search system that behaves a little differently that you may expect. This change has many advantages, mainly that it now locates parties entered as part of an estate or other unusual situations.

What this means for you:

• You no longer need to enter last name first, though it is still fine to do this. The new search will locate matching names no matter where they are in the party string. For example, "Pickett, Julie" and "Julie Pickett" will return the same results.
• This also means that "Julie Pickett" will return results such as "The Heirs and Interested Parties in the Estate of Julie Pickett" or "Prisoner number 9876543 Julie Pickett" or even "AKA Julie Pickett" without additional searches on your part.
• If you are used to entering partial names and a wildcard, this will be a change for you. Because the system is currently looking for alternate spellings and nicknames for your search, you'll need to go ahead and enter all the information you have about the name. For example, "Julie Pickett" and "Pickett, Ju%" are not the same.

Because of this change to the system, we have added some detail to allow you to see exactly what additional names and words were included in the search. If you are accustomed to seeing the search parameters at the top of the results page, you can expand this to see more detailed information:

In this example, we have looked for alternatives, nicknames, and various spellings of the derivations of "Julie"

Please contact us with any questions or concerns about name searching!

NEW: Indiana Statewide Tax Warrants now available on Doxpop

We're excited to announce a new search that covers Tax Warrant data for the entire state of Indiana!

Over the last several months, we've been working to combine InCite data with other Tax Warrants available around the state, along with a number of search improvements that will make filtering through results much simpler and faster.

This addition to our services is already included in your subscription, as we believe strongly in continually adding value for our subscribers. As always, our support is free and ready to assist should you have questions or comments about the new service.

Regardless of your subscription level, searches may be used in any area of our system whether that be Court Cases, Recorded Documents, or Tax Warrants. This new service adds significant value for anyone preparing to issue credit, provide insurance, or verify a lien status.

Tax Warrants in the State of Indiana may be issued for individual income, sales tax, withholding or corporation liability. These liens are filed in the County Clerk's Office and also forwarded to the County Sheriff. For more information on how Tax Warrants are issued, the state website provides some guidance: Indiana Department of Revenue Stages of Collection. Additionally, they provide information on How to Resolve a Tax Warrant once it has been issued.

Note that the Tax Warrant information currently available through the court search will still be available for two weeks as we transition users to the more complete, state-wide Tax Warrant search. Look for a more detailed announcement about this coming up.


And now for a sneak peak at the service! You'll notice a new area of the site for searching Tax Warrants, along with a new data tab.

There are several advanced search options to allow searching by tax type, date, status, amount, name, address, county and more, in any combination. As always, once you have built a search that fits your needs, you can save that search and be alerted to updates on the results.

Our search results look a little different, with several new features.

Each column in your search results can be sorted, as well as moved. You can click on a column header and drag it to the left or right to group together the columns you find most important. Other new features include an additional filter that allows you to quickly locate items in the result set. As usual, you can save or set email alerts on any warrant. To do this, click on the star or bell icons for the row for that warrant. Clicking on the Warrant Number will take you to the complete set of details for that warrant.

At the top of the details page, you'll notice a back arrow that will return you to the results page, as well as arrows to the left and right. These will walk you through each warrant in your result set, in case you don't want to click back and forth between the results and each warrant detail page.

Also at the top is an option to view the information in the AR-WAR format that you may be more used to.

Please explore these features and let us know what you think! If you have any questions about the service or need help, please contact our support team at 866-369-7671 or support@doxpop.com.

Why can't I e-file on juvenile cases in every county?

There has been some confusion among folks who are trying to e-file on juvenile cases in Allen, Marion, Madison and Johnson counties.

These counties track their juvenile cases on the Quest case management system. Although Quest is in the process of getting e-filing working on their system, they have not yet completed the certification process with the state.

For these four counties e-filing on juvenile cases (JC, JD, JM, JP, JS, JT) is not always available and, of course if the cases are not available, e-filing is not mandatory.

To make things a bit more interesting, it appears that in Marion some JP cases are not on the Quest system, So there, your best bet is to try to locate the case through the e-filing system and if you can't find it, contact the court for advice.

Presumably Quest will complete their certification process soon. When that occurs, we'll post a second article here to let you know.

It took a  while to find a resource for this on the State's web site, but here's where we found the information...



<  Look for the counties marked with the brown information graphic in this document:

 http://www.in.gov/judiciary/files/efiling-implementation-schedule.pdf

Marshall County Courts Move to Odyssey. Court record access through Doxpop continues without interruption.

Over the weekend of January 21st/22nd, the Marshall County Courts converted to the Odyssey case tracking system, thus moving their data storage and administration to Indianapolis. 

This move does not significantly affect Doxpop users because Doxpop buys access from the State Court Administration to a real-time feed of court data from the Odyssey system. Our customers' access to court information 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 short 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 each 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 twice each day, 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 the first week of February, after that, we'll be back to normal.

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 the Court Administration 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 they not make that information available to us. If this information is important to you, please encourage the clerks you work with to tell the State Court Administration of your needs so we can get the information back online.

Additionally, Tax Warrants have been moved out of the court case management system as a part of this transition. Doxpop intends to release a new service next month that allows complete statewide searching of tax warrants for all counties. In the interim, you can obtain this information at the clerk's office.

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.

Washington County joins e-filing

Voluntary e-filing begins today in Washington County. In a couple of months, it will become mandatory for subsequent filings.

In preparation, Doxpop visited Salem last week to present a CLE training session for the Washington County Bar Association. Special thanks to Doug Leatherbury for arranging the training session, and Mama Rosa's for hosting us and providing a great buffet!

After the training session, we went over to the courthouse to visit Sarah Milligan, the newly elected Washington County Clerk. Sarah took office on January 1 with completely new office staff, who are all doing a great job at quickly coming up to speed on how to run the Clerk's office. Her willingness to take on the implementation of e-filing during her third week in office is impressive! Please join us in thanking her and the staff for their hard work and efforts to improve the office.

Proposed changes to Marion County rules related to e-filing. (Probate & Fax Filing)

Marion County has posted two proposed local rule changes, one of which may take effect today. The complete list of local rules and proposed changes may be found here.


The most urgent change eliminates fax filing in Marion Superior and Circuit Courts. This may result in eliminating fax as an alternative to e-filing. You can download that rule proposal here. The proposal specifies that the change takes effect today, 1/6/17.


The second change aligns the local rules for probate with the e-filing environment. In particular, the change:

• Eliminates the requirement to file the original will, instead specifying electronic filing of the will along with an affidavit attesting that the electronic document is a scan of the original. The form for this is appended to the amendment proposal (linked below).

• Removes the requirement that most personal representative and guardians must appear in court.

This proposed change is to take effect a week from today, 1/13/17. Download the proposed order changing probate rules here.

Court & E-Filing changes for 2017

A few changes to court rules and information that everyone should be aware of as we enter 2017:

1) E-Filing is now required for case initiation in Hamilton County.

Here's a refresher on how to do this in Doxpop:

Remember that when initiating a case via e-filing, you are responsible for registered mail and delivering documents to the sheriff for service. In Hamilton County, you pay the sheriff directly for service. Most Sheriff's offices require three copies.

2) Subsequent filing on civil cases only is now mandatory in Wells County.

E-filing on criminal cases is still available but optional for Wells while they work out a few kinks in the system.

3) Four new case types have been added and one has been retired.

• DR has been retired. Cases filed prior to 2017 will retain this designation, but it won't be used going forward.
• DN is the new designation for Domestic Relation (Divorce) cases not involving children.
• DC is the new designation for Domestic Relation (Divorce) cases involving children.
• TS is the new designation for an application for judgment in a tax sale.
• TP is the new designation for a verified petition to issue a tax deed.

The domestic relations types are fairly self-explanatory. The new tax sale designations are particularly helpful for abstractors and folks dealing in real estate. These used to be buried in miscellaneous civil, making them hard to search for. The new types will make life much easier for researchers looking for liens or tax deeds on real property.

4) There are no big changes to the e-filing rules. 

This isn't really a change, but it is notable that nothing in Trial Rule 86 changed. That was unexpected after the many changes we saw in 2015. This is a great sign that Indiana's system is past many of its growing pains!

5) Next up for e-filing: Washington County on 1/16, and Allen & Posey Counties on 2/16.

Give us a call if you need help preparing to e-file in these counties!

Click here to see the entire list of rule changes that took effect during 2016 or on 1/1/2017 on the State Court's web site.