7Managing Electronic Plan Reviews

Electronic Plan Review Process Flow

Some projects require a plan review to evaluate them.

Electronic plan reviews are tracked as part of permitting and planning application workflow, and are performed through an integration with Bluebeam™, a collaborative electronic document review tool.

Note: To enable the Bluebeam™ integration contact Oracle Support.

Electronic plan reviews are created for transactions when the Plan Review Type is set to Electronic for the associated transaction type. For more information see Setting Up Permit Types and Setting Up Planning Application Types.

Note: Manual plan reviews do not include document review or integration with Bluebeam™. For more information on manual plan reviews, see Managing Manual Plan Review Cycles.

The process flow for a electronic plan review includes the following steps:

1. A registered public user submits a permit or planning application with attached documents that require review by agency staff.

2. A permit technician or assigned planner assigns a status to the transaction that requires a plan review. For more information, see Using Workflow.

3. The plan coordinator adds a plan review cycle for the transaction, which creates a Bluebeam Studio™ Session. See Managing Electronic Plan Review Cycles.

4. The plan coordinator adds documents to the plan review cycle and assigns reviewers to the documents. See Managing Electronic Plan Review Cycles.

5. The assigned plan reviewers complete their review. See Performing Electronic Plan Reviews.

6. The plan coordinator finalizes the plan review cycle. See Managing Electronic Plan Review Cycles.

7. Repeat steps 3 through 6 for additional plan review cycles as necessary until the review is complete.

Managing Electronic Plan Review Cycles

The plan coordinator manages the plan review cycle, which is a series of plan reviews completed by multiple reviewers.

Your agency conducts electronic document reviews in Bluebeam Studio™ Sessions.

As a plan coordinator, you perform these review cycle tasks on the Plan Reviews page

• Add plan review cycles.

• Cancel plan review cycles.

• Add and remove electronic documents.

• Add and remove plan reviewers.

• View the different plan review cycles.

• Add comments for a review cycle.

• View all plan review comments.

• Finalize plan review cycles.

To access the Plan Reviews page for a transaction:

1. Select Permits or Planning Applications on the Agency Springboard.

2. Select a transaction record with a status of Plan Review.

3. In the navigation panel, select Permit Information > Plan Reviews or Planning Application > Plan Reviews.

This example shows the Plan Reviews page for an electronic review.

Tip: You can access this page on a mobile device as well as on a laptop or desktop computer. On a mobile device, this page enables you to view plan review status and comments. It does not enable you to add or edit plan review information.

Electronic Plan Review Cycle Workflow

The plan review workflow for the plan coordinator appears on the Task Management page. As a plan coordinator, you sort tasks by Workflow.

An electronic plan review cycle is automatically completed when all reviewers have provided a decision status for all of the documents added to the electronic document review session.

The system also updates the plan review cycle details with the most severe decision status from the individual plan reviewers. The decision statuses are listed here, from most to least severe: Rejected, Revision Required, Approved with Comments, Approved, and Not Required. If plans have one or more rejections, or revisions are required, the plan coordinator may require the applicant to correct the plans and resubmit them for another review cycle.

Workflow is automatically moved forward to the next step when all of the following criteria are met:

• The current plan review cycle status is Complete.

• The plan review decision is Approved, Approved with Comments, or Not Required.

• The review cycle has been finalized.

The workflow process definition needs to identify the plan review task and the action to take when auto-advancing. For more information, see Using Custom Properties

Once a plan review cycle or transaction is closed or canceled, you can no longer edit comments.

Note: Once the plan review cycle is complete, the plan coordinator finalizes the review cycle to download the reviewed electronic documents and close the Bluebeam™ Studio Session.

Electronic Plan Review Communications

The following communication events enable you to generate notifications for plan reviews.

Note: These events are registered with the Business Rules Framework. For more information, see Business Rules Framework Overview and Setting Up Business Rules.

Event Name	Communication Description
Plan Review Completed or Canceled	Generates a notification when an electronic plan review is canceled. This event is also triggered when the permit associated with a plan review expires or is withdrawn. This event is also triggered when the transaction associated with a plan review expires or is withdrawn. Note: This event generates a notification when a manual review is completed or canceled. For more information on manual plan reviews, see Managing Manual Plan Review Cycles.
Plan Review Finalized	Generates a notification when a plan review is finalized.
Plan Review Ready To Finalize	Generates a notification when a plan review is ready to be finalized.

You must configure templates to define the content of the generated notifications and determine who receives them. For more information on configuring communication event templates, see Setting Up Communication Templates.

Adding Electronic Plan Review Cycles

Before assigning electronic documents and reviewers, you add plan review cycles for a transaction on the Plan Review page.

1. Click the Add Review Cycle button.

   This button is available only when:

   • You’re adding the first plan review cycle for a transaction.

   • All other plan review cycles for the transaction are finalized or canceled.

2. For the initial plan review cycle, the default review cycle name is the transaction type value, but you can enter a different cycle name on the Add Review Cycle page.

3. Click the Add button to add a review cycle and create a Bluebeam Studio™ Session for it. You may be prompted to enter your login credentials to give Oracle access to your Bluebeam™ account.

   Note: If an error occurs while creating the Bluebeam Studio™ Session, a Create Session button appears next to the Add Cycle button. Click it to retry creating the Bluebeam Studio™ Session. You can’t add documents or reviewers to a review cycle until you successfully create a Bluebeam Studio™ Session.

   After the Studio Session is created, the View Session link appears on the Plan Review page.

The cycle must be canceled or finalized before you can add another new plan review cycle. That is, you can have only one active plan review cycle at a time. The number of review cycles is shown in the Plan Review page header details, and you can switch between multiple cycles to view reviewer and decision details.

Canceling Electronic Plan Review Cycles

On the Plan Reviews page, click the Cancel Review Cycle button to cancel a plan review cycle that is active. This button is available only when the plan review cycle has a status of In Progress.

Canceling a cycle sets the review cycle status to Canceled. After canceling, the cycle and review details are read-only. All active tasks associated with the plan review are canceled when the plan review cycle is canceled.

Note: An active plan review cycle is canceled when the transaction that it is associated with is withdrawn.

Recording Time for Plan Reviews

Agency staff can use the Record Time section to record the time they spend on their plan reviews. For more information, see Adding Time Entries.

Note: Time recording is currently available only for permit plan reviews. It will be available for planning application plan reviews in a future release.

Adding Documents to Electronic Plan Reviews

After creating a plan review cycle, you add documents on the Plan Review page.

1. Click the Add Documents button in the Documents grid.

2. On the Add Documents modal page, select the check box next to the documents you want to add to the review. Only documents in PDF format that are added as attachments for the transaction are available to select. For more information on attachments, see Working with Attachments.

   Note: Documents that have been added to the plan review do not appear in the Add Documents modal page.

3. Click Save to add the documents to the review cycle and upload them to the Bluebeam Studio™ Session. You may be prompted to enter your login credentials to give Oracle access to your Bluebeam™ account.

   When the Documents grid refreshes, you’ll see the documents to be reviewed with an In Progress status. Documents added to a review for the first time have a state of Initial. New versions of a document that have been reviewed in a previous cycle have a state of Resubmitted.

   Reviewed versions of the documents from the previous cycle also appear in the grid, but they have a status of Completed and a state of Marked up. You can’t add reviewers for these complete, marked up documents.

   Note: If an error occurs while uploading a document to the Bluebeam Studio™ Session, a Retry button appears in the Documents grid. Click it to upload the documents in the grid that failed to upload when they were added.

Removing Documents from Electronic Plan Reviews

As a plan coordinator, you can remove documents from a plan review cycle on the Plan Review page.

1. In the Documents grid, click the Delete button for a document.

   You can delete documents when:

   • The plan review cycle is active.

   • The document’s status is In Progress.

   • No reviewers have been added to the document.

2. Click OK to confirm the deletion and remove the file from the Bluebeam Studio™ Session.

Accessing Conditions of Approval for Planning Applications

Click the Conditions of Approval link on the Plan Review page to access the Conditions of Approval page for the planning application. This link is available only for planning applications. For more information on conditions of approval see Working with Conditions of Approval.

Adding Reviewers to Electronic Plan Reviews

As a plan coordinator, after adding electronic documents to a plan review, you add reviewers for each document on the Reviewers page.

If the permit type associated with the permit includes required plan review departments, those departments are displayed at the top of the Documents grid. Once a reviewer from a required department is added to the plan review cycle, that department no longer appears.

1. Expand a document row to view its reviewer information.

2. Click the Add Reviewers button.

   The Add Reviewers modal page displays a list of available reviewers by plan reviewer department. For more information on plan reviewer departments, see Setting Up Plan Reviewer Departments.

   Note: Reviewers are available in the list only when they have a transaction type job attribute that matches the transaction type of the transaction. For more information on assigning job attributes, see Managing Agency Staff Profiles.

3. Select the check box next to each reviewer that you want to add.

4. Click Save to add the selected reviewers to the document in the Bluebeam Studio™ Session. You may be prompted to enter your login credentials to give Oracle access to your Bluebeam™ account.

   When the Documents grid refreshes, you’ll see the reviewer with an In Progress status.

   Note: If an error occurs while uploading a document to the Bluebeam Studio™ Session, a Retry button appears next to the Add Reviewer button. Click it to add the reviewers in the grid that failed to add.

Note: If you’re resubmitting a document for review, the reviewers assigned to the document during the last review cycle are automatically assigned to the resubmitted document when you add it to the new plan review cycle.

Accessing a Studio Session

You can access created Studio Sessions using from the Plan Review page.

Click the View Session link to access the Studio Session using an external Bluebeam™ application.

Viewing the Different Plan Review Cycles

You can switch between plan review cycles to view the Documents grid for each cycle.

1. Click the Switch Cycle link in the plan review header details.

   This link is available only when there are two or more plan review cycles.

2. On the Switch Cycle page, click the Select button for the cycle you would like to view.

   The refreshed page shows the cycle header details and documents for the selected cycle.

Adding Comments for a Review Cycle

Plan coordinators can add comments at the review cycle level on the Plan Reviews page.

Click Add Comment at the bottom of the Plan Reviews page to enter a comment.

All of the comments entered for the review cycle appear on the Plan Reviews page below the Add Comment button. You can’t edit comments once the plan review cycle or transaction is closed or canceled.

Viewing All Plan Review Comments

Plan coordinators, plan reviewers, and applicants can view all comments entered for all cycles of a plan review on the Plan Reviews page.

Click the Consolidated Plan Comments link.

This example shows the View Plan Comments page.

The View Plan Comments page displays all of the comments entered for a plan review by all participants during every review cycle. The comments listed on this page are searchable and filterable.

Finalizing a Plan Review Cycle

Click the Finalize Review Cycle button to finalize the plan review cycle. This process closes the Studio Session and downloads the marked up documents with CycleX appended to the file name where X is the number of the review cycle. These downloaded files are added to the list of documents for the plan review cycle and the list of attachments for the transactions. Reviewers can compare these marked up documents to new versions of the document in subsequent review cycles. To perform actions on these downloaded files outside of the plan review process, use the Attachments page. See Working with Attachments.

If any of the documents for the review cycle have a Decision of Rejected or Revision Required, the Finalize Review Cycle process automatically adds a new review cycle that includes the marked up documents in the Documents grid.

Note: The Finalize Review Cycle button is available only when the status is Completed for all documents added to the plan review cycle.

The Finalize Review Cycle process includes many different steps. The following table provides resolutions to errors that might occur during these steps.

Finalization Error	Resolution
Document Download	Click Finalize Review Cycle to retry finalizing from the point of error.
Close Session	Click Finalize Review Cycle to retry closing the Bluebeam Studio™ Session.
Create Cycle	Click Add Review Cycle to retry creating the next review cycle and Bluebeam Studio™ Session, and uploading the marked up documents from the previous review cycle.
Create Session	Click Create Sessionto retry creating the Bluebeam Studio™ Session and uploading the marked up documents from the previous review cycle.
Upload Marked Up Documents	Click Retry to retry uploading the marked up documents from the previous review cycle.
Unrecoverable Error	Click Cancel Review Cycle to cancel the review cycle.

Performing Electronic Plan Reviews

Plan reviewers perform reviews of documents.

As a plan reviewer, you view a list of plans assigned to you on the Task Management page and provide your plan review decision on the Plan Reviewer Decision Details page.

This example shows the Plan Reviewer Decision Details page.

An agency’s plan coordinator can also use this page to override a plan reviewer’s decision.

The plan review functionality derives the overall plan review status from the individual plan reviewer decisions, inclusive of plan coordinator overrides, and updates the overall plan review with the most severe decision status.

Viewing Plan Reviews Assigned to You

As a plan reviewer, you can find the plan reviews assigned to you on the Task Management page.

1. Select My Plan Reviews on the Agency Springboard.

2. The My Plan Reviews tab of the Task Management page opens displaying tasks with the Plan Review type.

   Plan reviews are displayed in ascending order by due date. Plan coordinators enter reviewer-specific due dates on the Plan Reviewer Decision Details page.

   You can also use the filter button to filter by additional parameters, including task type, task name, task ID, transaction ID, transaction type, status, assigned to, assigned date, and scheduled date.

3. Plan review assignments appear in the task grid. Click the View More Details button for a transaction to open the Plan Reviews page.

Note: Both manual and electronic plan reviews that are assigned to you appear on this page. For more information on manual plan reviews, see Performing Manual Plan Reviews.

The plan review workflow tasks for plan coordinators also appear on the Task Management page. Plan coordinators sort tasks by Workflow.

For more information on the Task Management page, see Managing Tasks.

Adding an Electronic Plan Review Decision

As a plan reviewer, you can add your plan review decision on the Plan Reviewer Decision Details page in the permit details pages. You can modify your decision until the plan review cycle is completed or canceled, but you cannot modify your decision if the plan coordinator overrides your decision.

The system derives the overall plan review status from the individual plan reviewer decisions, and updates the overall plan review with the most severe decision status. The system-defined decision statuses are listed here from most to least severe: Rejected, Revision Required, Approved with Comments, Approved, and Not Required. If plans have one or more rejections, or revisions are required, the plan coordinator may require the applicant to correct the plans and resubmit them for another review cycle.

1. Select Permits or Planning Applications on the Agency Springboard.

2. Select a transaction record with a status of Plan Review.

3. In the navigation panel, select Permit Information > Plan Reviews or Planning Application > Plan Reviews.

4. In the Documents grid, expand the row for the document you want to review.

5. Click the View More Details button for your row.

6. On the Plan Reviewer Decision Details page, select a value from the Decision list.

   You can select from these system-defined decision statuses:

   • Approved

   • Approved with Comments

   • Revision Required

   • Rejected

   • Not Required

   The decision status names in the Decision list may not match the system status names, because displayed statuses can be modified by the agency. For example, if the agency changes the displayed status of Rejected, you might see Declined or Failed. However, the severity of the decision remains the same. Any displayed status associated with the system status Rejected, for example, is always calculated as the most severe status.

7. Click Add Comments to enter comments for your review.

   You can’t edit comments once the plan review cycle or permit is closed or canceled.

8. Click the Save button.

   The system displays the selected decision in the Decision field and populates the Decision Date field with a timestamp. In addition, once all reviewers have entered a decision for a document, the system updates the State field for the document with the most severe decision status selected by the reviewers.

Note: An agency’s plan coordinator can override a plan reviewer’s existing decision but can't change decisions. When a plan coordinator overrides a decision, the decision status and timestamp appears in the reviewer’s row in the Documents grid.

Overriding Plan Reviewer Decisions

In some cases, the agency’s plan coordinator overrides a plan reviewer’s existing decision.

As a plan coordinator, you can override the individual plan reviewer’s decision on the Plan Reviewer Decision Details page.

1. Select Permits or Planning Applications on the Agency Springboard.

2. Select a transaction record with a status of Plan Review.

3. In the navigation panel, select Permit Information > Plan Reviews or Planning Application > Plan Reviews.

4. In the Documents grid, expand the row for the document you want to review.

5. Click the View More Details button for the row you want to override.

6. On the Plan Reviewer Decision Details page, select a value from the Override Decision list.

   You can select from these decisions:

   • Approved

   • Approved with Comments

   • Revision Required

   • Rejected

   • Not Required

7. Click the Save button.

   The system updates the plan reviewer’s Decision Date timestamp and enters Yes in the Override field.

Note: If the plan coordinator overrides the last review for the last document in the plan review cycle, the override action changes the status of the plan review cycle to Completed.