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.

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.

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"

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.

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:

• Effective 1/1/18 the State Court is doing away with the public service contacts that each attorney sets up and maintains for themselves.
• E-file Reminder: Make sure you control your service contact!
• You can now attach your firm service contact to closed, as well as open, cases in our batch attachment tool!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.