We'd like to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year as well as offering a big thank you to all our subscribers old and new! We hope 2017 was a great year for you and wish you all the best for 2018. We had a fantastic year here with many new releases to DSLive all aimed at making life easier for local authority building control departments and improving the overall efficiency of the application approval process. 

Below we briefly introduce the most recent of our additions to DSLive released in just the past few weeks before 2017 draws to close. 

The 'Live Overview' - application summaries at a glance!

The 'Live Overview' is an online, live and much more efficient electronic version of the application cover sheet summary found within a traditional application file. The 'Live Overview' is part maintained by DSLive itself, automatically pulling key details from the online application, and part defined by the authority who can add and then edit any further application information they wish to be visible in the application summary. Information displayed in the Live Overview can range from basic applicant, agent and work location details right through to the statuses and payment details about inspections or plan-checking etc.

Application Comments

Ever thought it would be handy to add important comments or notes to an application? Well now you can using the new ‘Comment’ button now added to most application tabs with DSLive. Whether related to a phone conversation with a client, discussion with a consultee or a detail about a plan-check or inspection, you can now add your comment to the application which will be visible under the application ‘Details’ tab for all your team to review. 

Edit Application Details Button

Next time you visit the ‘Details’ tab within an application be sure to take a look at the ‘Edit Details’ button. The existing ‘Edit’ button has been redeveloped to allow you to edit a wider range of application details from the applicant and agent’s name, address and communication details to the work location and description. Further still, for those authorities using DSLive as their Back Office System a Back Office Reference ID can now be generated for each application automatically here in the ‘Edit Details’ section. The authority can initially setup how they would like these references to be configured in the ‘User Admin Tool’ and each reference can be overridden and edited if required. 

Document Search

For those applications with a large number of documents we have now released our ‘Document Search’ tool, making it quick and easy to locate a specific document in an application’s document list. You can search by word or if you happen to know it, a document number. We have also now configured an application’s documents list to load in sets of 25 documents at a time with forward and back buttons to move through each page of 25 items. This should make loading the application documents list even quicker.

Plan-Checking Reports

Up until now our ‘Reports’ facility has enabled authorities to run reports on application and inspection information defined by a range of different DSLive fields and criteria. Such reports help authorities keep track of the progress, results, payments and outstanding conditions of its applications as well the overall performance of its department or partnership. Now where authorities are beginning to use our new ‘Plan-Check’ tool for carrying out its application plan-checking tasks online, we’ve also extended the ‘Reports’ facility to be able to report on Plan-Checking activity and statuses across all applications in DSLive. 

Client Folder

You may or may not have already tried out the ‘Client’ folder we recently released to the application ‘Documents’ tab. The ‘Client’ folder enables you to quickly and easily share information with the applicant or agent who submitted the application. Simply drag and drop a document whether approved documents, reports or an approval certificate from the documents list into the folder and a copy will instantly be shared with the applicant or agent to their Submit-a-Plan account while a notification of the shared document is sent to them by email.

Other releases during 2017: 

• PlanCheck

• Reports

• Site Contact App

• Standard Documents

• User Admin Tool

To find out more about our recent releases and view some preview screenshots visit our DSLive Development Pages here>