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How Cowlitz County Automated the Property Value Appeal Process

Solution Provided By: Chelsey Hulsey Pedersen, Laserfiche Specialist, Cowlitz County

Cowlitz County, WA has a population of over 102,000 residents and approximately 60,000 parcels of land – both residential and commercial. Each property is either physically inspected or statistically reviewed by an appraiser every year to determine its property value for taxation purposes. Once the value is finalized, the Assessor’s Office sends the taxpayer a Notice of Value which initiates a 30-day appeal period.

If the property owner disagrees with the assessed value, he or she can submit an appeal during this time. Some of these appeals are resolved without a hearing, though sometimes the appellant must plead their case to the county board of equalization. Whatever the outcome, the process has many intermediary steps, which used to be manual and paper driven. All petitions and their associated attachments were submitted on paper. The assessor’s office would make a copy for their paper files. Even though the documents were stored in petition folders in Laserfiche, the assessor’s office still preferred to keep paper versions.

The county transformed this process using Laserfiche Forms and Workflow.

The New Process is Managed Using Laserfiche Forms

The appellant submits the property value petition through an electronic form. This petition form is divided into six sections. Each section asks for a different piece of information.
Before the letting the appellant fill out the petition, the form ensures eligibility.

The appellant can only submit one petition per parcel, per assessment year. There is a lookup configured in the form that checks the parcel number against the database to make sure that it is valid and that there are no other petitions on file for it for the current year.
A database lookup in the form validates the parcel.

The appellant must specify whether to receive all communication regarding this petition electronically or physically. Appellants who elect to receive electronic communications will receive all notices through automatically generated emails. Applicants who elect to receive physical communications will receive a letter that is printed and mailed by either the clerk of the board or the chief appraiser. Over half of applicants opt for electronic communications.
The appellant fills out contact information, including how he or she wants to receive communications throughout the process.

The assessor’s property value is populated from the database based on the parcel number. The appellant must include the property value that he or she thinks is correct.
The appellant provides estimated property values.

The appellant must also specify a valid reason for the appeal. Some valid reasons include problems/damages with the property that weren’t apparent during the assessment, external economic forces such as a change to the neighborhood containing the property, etc.
The appellant must provide specific evidence that the property value needs to be changed.
The petition includes a section for additional property information that is optional to fill out.

Before submitting the petition, the appellant must upload a copy of the notice of valuation, which was already provided by the assessor. The petitioner may also use a custom link to access a copy of the notice if needed.
The final step in the petition is uploading a copy of the notice of valuation.

Sometimes, an appellant prefers to submit a petition in person. The clerk then fills out the Laserfiche form on behalf of the applicant and scans in any supplemental documents.

After submission, this petition is routed to the clerk of the board for review. The clerk reviews the petition to make sure that there is enough evidence provided for the petition to be considered compliant. At this step, the clerk can contact the appellant to clarify or update any information. If the petition is compliant, the clerk assigns a unique petition number.
The clerk of the board reviews the petition to make sure that is compliant.

If the appellant elected to receive information electronically, he or she receives a confirmation email once the clerk has completed her task. If the appellant elected to receive information via physical mail, Workflow generates a letter that the clerk prints and mails.

The email and letter contain the petition number as well as the access key that the appellant can use to look up documentation related to the petition in the future.
Appellants receive a confirmation email or letter once their petition has been accepted.

The petition is then routed to the chief appraiser inside the assessor’s office, who reviews the petition and selects the appraiser most qualified to handle this case.
The chief appraiser assigns an appraiser to handle the petition.

The petition is routed to the assigned appraiser and the appellant is either sent an email or letter letting them know the appraiser’s contact information.

The appraiser has two options:
  • Compromise on a new property value (if there is sufficient evidence to support a change).
  • Take the appeal to a hearing before the board of equalization to argue for maintaining the original value.

If the appraiser selects the first option, then he or she is prompted to fill out the value change fields within their user task which will be used to generate a document called a stipulation. If the appraiser selects the second option, he or she drafts a response document and uploads it within their user task. These documents must be reviewed and approved by the chief appraiser before being sent to the appellant.
The appraiser fills out a form to generate a stipulation.

Stipulations are signed by the chief appraiser and appellant, either electronically or by hand depending on the communications method selected by the appellant earlier in the process.

Below is the full Laserfiche Forms process diagram for the property value appeal process.
Click to view larger in a new window.

Appellants Can Access Documentation through a Custom Dashboard

The county developed an innovative way of sharing documents with appellants throughout the process. Every time a document is generated it is saved in the repository. Laserfiche Workflow creates the entry, generates a Laserfiche WebLink URL and stores this URL in a database table along with all the other information about the petition.
Laserfiche Workflow creates a WebLink URL for the document and stores it into the database alongside other information about the petition.

If the appellant wants to access documents related to a particular petition, he or she opens the petition dashboard. This dashboard is a Laserfiche form with the submit button hidden unless the appellant is performing an action, such as uploading evidence, submitting a withdrawal, etc.

The appellant enters the petition number and access key provided in the initial confirmation letter. Forms performs a lookup into the database and fills specific hidden fields with the document’s URL. The documents are opened in WebLink through an iFrame embedded in the form.
Appellants can access documents related to a petition through a dashboard.

“By storing the URL in the database with the other petition information, we can provide access to one or multiple documents which will always be up to date. If there are revisions to a document, we override the URL in the database,” says Laserfiche specialist, Chelsey Hulsey Pedersen.

Documents are loaded from WebLink displayed in an embedded iFrame.

The Clerk of the Board Schedules Hearings

If the petition is not stipulated or withdrawn, the clerk of the board will schedule a hearing. The clerk opens up a hearing dashboard, which is basically an electronic form that contains a table filled with information from a look up into the database containing all of the petitions. The clerk can quickly see which petitions are active, stipulated or withdrawn, and can then schedule the hearings directly though this dashboard.
The clerk of the board can see information about all petitions that are active, stipulated or withdrawn in a central dashboard.

After the hearing is over, the clerk of the board uses Forms to populate a board order. He or she selects all attendees, types out the board findings and determination, and submits.
An electronic form helps the clerk generate a board order.
The board order is generated with data from the electronic form.

Workflow automatically generates a board order document in Microsoft Word, which the appellant can access through the online portal.

The board can make one of three decisions:
  • Sustain the assessor’s property value.
  • Overrule the assessor’s property value.
  • Approve a new property value provided by the assessor.

All documentation related to every petition is stored in the appropriate folder in the repository.
All petitions and related documents are stored in individual folders in the repository by year.

Benefits of Laserfiche

Automating the property tax assessment appeal process with Laserfiche has resulted in many benefits.
  • It used to take the clerk 15-20 minutes per petition to scan it in, enter the metadata and create a physical file in the cabinet. If there was a problem with the petition, it would take anywhere from 10 minutes to a couple weeks to resolve it. Now, with the online form it takes two minutes to process the petition. If the appellant submits the petition on paper, it takes up to 10 minutes to enter the data into the electronic form and scan in the attachments. Since the form has many required fields, petitions are submitted with fewer errors that need correcting.
  • The clerk used to take from an hour to 90 minutes to schedule one day’s worth of hearings using a separate spreadsheet. There are usually three or four hearing days, based on the number of petitions. It takes 15 minutes to schedule a full day’s worth of hearings now with the new dashboard.
  • Processing a stipulation in person took about 25 minutes and by mail from five days to two weeks. Now, the process is automated and can take as little as 10 minutes from start to finish.

Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures Transitions Corporate Operations to Laserfiche Cloud

Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures (MLCV), created by the tribal government of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, manages the business affairs of the Band. This includes oversight of two casinos, Grand Casino Mille Lacs and Grand Casino Hinckley, which employ nearly 3,000 people and welcome millions of guests each year. The casinos, as well as the rest of the Band’s portfolio, use Laserfiche enterprise content management (ECM) to automate and streamline key business processes.

Over the years, the casinos in particular have achieved great economic success thanks to a strong operations infrastructure powered by Laserfiche. That steady growth, however, has led to a very large and complex business environment that is catered to sustaining the needs of the casinos. The MLCV leadership team knew that they needed to create a separate business environment for corporate operations to maintain performance, so they made the decision to migrate MLCV content and processes to Laserfiche Cloud in order to create a more accessible and agile environment for corporate operations.

Transitioning Key Business Processes to the Cloud

For the last 10 years, Laserfiche has been instrumental in supporting the Band’s mission of building a sound economic future for generations to come by enabling the Band to standardize, automate and optimize core company processes. Having initially deployed Laserfiche on-premises, the MLCV team was confident that they could leverage Laserfiche Cloud to build an accessible corporate business environment quickly, with the added bonus of familiar technology.

“The digital workplace is constantly evolving, and the obvious next step for us was to start transitioning operations to the cloud,” said Angie Litchy, CIO of Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures. “We selected Laserfiche Cloud because we already had a successful on-prem solution, which means we could easily migrate key workflows and ensure business continuity while we made the transition.”

“Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures has always been at the forefront of using technology to create efficiencies,” said Ned Weizenegger, COO at Laserfiche Solution Provider Minokaw Technologies. “Moving operations to the cloud was a natural next step, and aligns well with MLCV’s vision of improving businesses and communities by infusing passion and ideas.”

Among the first workflows that Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures migrated to the cloud was the contract management process.

“Before our initial Laserfiche solution was implemented, contracts were impossible to get a status on because the process varied from person to person, which created bottlenecks and lost information,” said Andrew McElrath, strategic project manager at Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures. “Laserfiche introduced uniformity and a clear line of authority, which ultimately expedited the entire process from weeks to just hours. It was a priority to ensure that this process wasn’t interrupted as we transitioned operations to the cloud.”

The contract process was migrated to the cloud with few alterations. Today, associates can start the contract process by submitting a Laserfiche Form with the contract for review. The information is automatically routed to the submitter’s supervisor, contract coordinator, COO, CFO and legal counsel for review and approval. The document is then sent to the legal coordinator who prepares the document for final signature by the vendor, and then the countersignature of the MLCV CEO. The legal coordinator also stores a final version in the Laserfiche repository.

“In Laserfiche Cloud, it’s easier for us to determine where requests are in the process at a glance,” McElrath said. “And the transition itself was fairly easy. Our Laserfiche Solution Provider mocked up the forms and process for us, then we would review it and suggest changes. The most important part of the process is to communicate clearly and test thoroughly so that your solution fits your needs once it has been launched.”

Reevaluating Business Needs

Another major benefit of transitioning to the cloud was that it created an opportunity for MLCV leadership to reevaluate the organization’s established processes and make adjustments if needed.

“We have been using and building upon our Laserfiche Workflows for a number of years, and the way our business operates has evolved since that initial implementation,” said McElrath. “We wanted to introduce more efficiency into our processes, so we took a hard look at what we were doing and how we could do it better.”

For example, during the transition, the MLCV team realized that the purchasing process was cumbersome and it could be streamlined further. Migrating to the cloud provided the chance to take another look at the process and simplify it.

Today, associates can access Laserfiche Cloud in order to submit a purchase request. After logging into the online system, the employee navigates to the purchase request page, fills out required fields (such as the purchase amount, purchase order number and vendor IDs), attaches required materials, and submits the request. From there, the request is routed to an approver depending on the cost of the purchase. The appropriate reviewers will then approve or reject the purchase order through the system. If approved, the information is submitted to a purchasing agent who can then follow through with the request.

“The entire process is completed in the cloud,” said McElrath. “Every individual that is included in the workflow can complete their portion of the process from the comfort of their home, from a conference or on an airplane. All they need is a mobile device and access to the internet.”

Looking ahead

Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures has migrated many business processes to Laserfiche Cloud including contract management, purchase order requests, annual appraisals, direct deposits, system access requests, tuition reimbursement requests and more. This has been especially helpful since all the company officers now have remote access to one common business platform, enabling the organization to standardize, streamline and expedite major business processes.

“Laserfiche’s compliance tools in the cloud, and knowing that Laserfiche takes security very seriously have been important factors in our decision making.”

—Andrew McElrath, strategic project manager at Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures

Other benefits to transitioning to Laserfiche Cloud include:
  • The organization easily migrated key business processes to Laserfiche Cloud without introducing a learning curve or creating a gap in business continuity.
  • Employees no longer need to be on-site in order to complete work, which has reduced bottlenecks, improved efficiency and bolstered productivity.
  • MLCV simplified operations since Laserfiche Cloud requires no physical hardware and users receive instant updates.

“Once you’re invested in Laserfiche as a platform, you start to unlock a lot of the value,” said Litchy. “Now that we have the system, we are invested in leveraging it to its full potential to reach our business goals.”

Find out more about the benefits of managing content and automating business processes in the cloud. Click here to visit our Laserfiche Cloud page and get a free trial. 

How Westbank First Nation Uses Laserfiche to Improve the Employee Experience

Laserfiche Solution Contributed By: Chad Rota, Supervisor, Records and Information Management, Westbank First Nation

Located in the Okanagan region of British Columbia, Canada, self-governing Westbank First Nation (WFN) is one of seven bands that comprise the Okanagan Nation Alliance. WFN has a membership of approximately 900 people and employs more than 200 staff to serve the nearly 10,000 residents living on Westbank reserve lands.

Before Laserfiche, WFN used paper forms to process employee change notification requests. These forms started out as PDF forms and were printed, signed, and passed around the various departments through inter-office mail. This process was inefficient, time consuming, and prone to lost and/or wasted paper: if any update needed to be made to the request, the process had to start all over.

Laserfiche Forms Built a Lot More Flexibility into the Process

Instead of filling out a PDF form and printing it, an employee now fills out an electronic form. The employee can select the appropriate manager to whom the request should be routed. If the employee reports directly to the director of operations, then the application is routed directly there and skips all the other approval levels in between.

This image shows an electronic form with various options for status changes
The employee can select from multiple status change options

At each level of approval, the approver has the option of sending the request to another manager, directly to human resources, or back to the submitter with required changes.

This image shows an electronic forms with three different options for approval decisions
The approver can make one of three decisions before submitting the form

Each request can be reviewed and approved by one or multiple people. Once all managers have viewed and approved it, the request is vetted by human resources and then sent to the director of operations for final approval. Throughout the process, the request can be sent back to either reviewer or submitter at any time to make changes. Each reviewer can also make some changes to the form while reviewing it.

Finalized requests are stored in Laserfiche, and Forms sends an automatic notification to payroll. A payroll employee checks that all documentation in the folder is compiled properly and makes the appropriate changes to the payroll system. Once finished with their task, the payroll employee launches a Laserfiche Workflow business process which routes the documents to the appropriate places in the repository for storage, names them correctly, and applies the relevant security tags based on the document type.

This workflow also uses the Employee Number field to look up information in the human resources database to populate the rest of each document’s fields.

This image shows a Laserfiche workflow taht routes documents to the right folders.
Laserfiche Workflow moves the documents to the right folders and applies the appropriate security tags. Click to view larger in a new window.

This Workflow business process is used to move, rename, and apply security to all human resources documents, not just change requests. WFN processes over 50 human resources documents every week, and this workflow ensures that the human resources portion of the repository remains organized and secure.

Employees Can Access All Forms and Documents through a Custom Portal

In order to help employees find the appropriate document or form to fill out, the staff at WFN created a custom staff resources portal. This portal is actually a Laserfiche form with the Submit button hidden. The button is hidden by making its color and text blend in with the background.

The staff resources page is created in Laserfiche Forms

This image shows how to format the Submit button so that it blends in with the background color.
The color of the Submit button can be changed in the Themes tab in Laserfiche Forms

Employees specify what they would like to do by checking the appropriate boxes. This opens up other fields which contain links to the appropriate Laserfiche WebLink pages or Laserfiche Forms, including any directions.

This image shows the various options on the employee portal that appear when the user checks the Laserfiche Forms and Tutorials option

This image shows the employee portal when a user checks the Policies and Procedures Library option
Different options appear based on what was checked for the first question

Since launching the staff resources page, the records management and information technology teams have received significantly fewer emails and calls with questions regarding where to access specific forms. Employees are able to find everything they need on their own. Since this portal is created using Laserfiche Forms, it can be easily modified and updated with any new available resources.

“The new portal has eliminated a lot of mystery and curiosity around Laserfiche. Users can now access everything in one place. This has led to a lot more independent Laserfiche users,” says Chad Rota, Supervisor, Records and Information Management.

Moving forward, WFN plans on exploring an integration between its payroll system and Laserfiche using Laserfiche Connector to help automate various human resources processes even further.

How Collin County Automates the Early Identification of Mental Illness Process

Laserfiche Solution Contributed By: Paul Garrison, Records / ERMS Specialist and Tim Nolan, Senior Applications Manager, Collin County, TX

Collin County, TX is one of the fastest growing counties in Texas and the nation. The county’s population is 980,000 and the county is part of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex.

In order to serve an expanding population, the county has been shifting to digitizing and automating many business processes in multiple departments. One recently automated process that has a huge impact is the Early Identification of Mental Illness (EIMI) process in the jail.

Every person who is booked into jail has to go through a mental health screening. Certain inmates who complete the screening end up being placed on a mental health watch list. Each person must go through the entire process in 12 hours for the jail to not incur violations.

The EIMI process used to be entirely paper and email based, resulting in lost documentation and failed audits. The county decided to streamline it with Laserfiche Forms and Workflow.

“The most essential reason for automating and standardizing this process is that we don’t want anyone slipping through the cracks,” says Tim Nolan, Senior Applications Manager. “The new Laserfiche process has become one of the most critical systems in the county.”

Processing has decreased from four hours a day to minutes

Whenever a person is booked into jail, the booking staff fills out an extensive electronic form that contains Yes or No questions about the person’s mental health. Any Yes answer is considered a red flag.
The EIMI screening is performed using a Laserfiche form. Click the image to see the whole form

 Once the form is submitted, it is added into the queue for the medical team to review. If the medical team doesn’t finish review of the form within an hour then the supervisor is notified to sign off on the form instead. In order to simplify medical and supervisor review, any questions with a Yes answer are highlighted in blue.
In order to improve review, all questions with an answer of Yes are highlighted in blue
The workflow that notifies the supervisor if the medical team doesn’t review the EIMI form within an hour

Once the supervisor approves the form, Laserfiche Workflow generates a report from the data and emails it to the magistrate. If no one signs off within eight hours, the magistrate is also notified that the review isn’t finished.
The email that is sent to the magistrate contains a link to the Laserfiche folder where the EIMI form and relevant documents is stored
The report that is sent to the magistrate is generated through Workflow using SQL Server Reporting Services
A section of the workflow that generates the report and emails the magistrate

All forms, whether completed or incomplete, are stored in folders in Laserfiche with appropriate records management properties automatically applied.
All screening forms are stored in the records management section of the repository and kept for one year

Each form has its review and approval history included on the first page, which simplifies audits.
The history of each screening is recorded and timestamped

This is what the entire process looks like in the Laserfiche Forms process model:
The EIMI process is created in Laserfiche Forms

EIMI is one of the most critical processes in the county

The EIMI process is up 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Processing time has decreased from four hours a day to just minutes. Audits are so much more painless since the full history of each screening is recorded and timestamped along with the form. Timers and notifications enable screenings to take no more than 12 hours to complete from start to finish, ensuring that the county is following rules and regulations.

An Effortless New Hire Process

The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office transformed its Human Resources division by shifting from paper-based methods to become a digital agency using Laserfiche software. The digitization initiative increased efficiency, time management and accuracy, revolutionizing the ways in which the Sheriff’s Office stored documents, communicated within its department, and implemented its onboarding process with new employees.

Seamless Recruiting Tools

The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office is a local law enforcement agency based in central Florida. The agency is the largest and chief law enforcement agency in the county, with 850 employees within the department.

Before Laserfiche, the agency grappled with a diminished amount of storage room and needed a more effective solution for managing documents. Interdepartmental communication problems led to delays in the application process and, at times, lost documents when paper forms were mailed.

The agency first turned to Laserfiche to create a pre-employment application that is accessible to the public through the county’s website. The initial results were staggering, with application intake tripling from about 50 applications per month to now as many as 150 per month.

“We’re facing a nationwide shortage of police officers,” said Haylee Glasscock, Human Resources Technician, Osceola County’s Sheriff’s Office. “Making our application easily accessible online has helped with our recruiting efforts and was a good move for our agency. The application is extensive—it used to be 25 paper pages. With Laserfiche, we now can host recruiting fairs since the online application allows people to apply right then and there. Other applicants may apply via a secure link. In 2012, we had 446 paper applications. In the first year we had Laserfiche, we had 1,305.”

There are multiple job application forms the agency utilizes depending on the applicant, including a criminal history version which is longer compared to one created for recent graduates planning to move into the role of a deputy.

“With paper applications, people would leave fields blank; we had to call them to come in and fill out the information,” said Glasscock. “Now we no longer have incompletes and it saves us time. We can also have people upload files, photos of tattoos, and more—all within the application.”

After an applicant applies online, Laserfiche’s business process automation capabilities allow the agency to perform a paperless background check and file sign-off through its chain of command. Laserfiche simultaneously sends automatic email notifications to keep the applicant updated on the review process—a game-changer compared to years past, when updates on the Review Board date were sent through the mail.

Effortless New Hire Process

Once the application process is complete and an applicant receives an offer, the Sheriff’s Office uses Laserfiche to onboard new employees with digital forms. Laserfiche enables chain-of-command administration staff to sign off on specific files using conditions in a workflow. Relevant personnel say whether the file looks acceptable, and if so, it moves on to the next person. The process is smooth, accurate and far less time-consuming than the previous method of filling out a handwritten form as the official offer document with the salary and start date included.

The Sheriff’s Office’s Human Resources division is now a paperless environment thanks to implementing Laserfiche software. All employee personnel and medical files are stored in the repository and are easily accessible to HR staff. Additionally, Laserfiche has been integrated within the agency’s personnel management system. The software automatically pulls an employee’s information from the personnel management system, including his/her ID number, and completely fills out the template information—improving speed and accuracy.

“We like that information is accessible at our fingertips,” said Glasscock. “The training department now has one full-time staff assistant and a part-time student. They’re able to quickly find documents, email them to deputies if needed, and they’re easily viewed. Having those training files not in boxes anymore really helps them.”

The Sheriff’s Office also digitized the employee transfer form. Laserfiche automatically routes the form to the appropriate reviewer within the agency. The form has been further simplified by the use of variables, look-up tables (integrated with the organization’s computer-aided dispatch software and active directory), as well as field rules.

“Our recruiting department uses Laserfiche every day and a couple of agencies have reached out to me to see if we can share our process with them,” added Glasscock.

Since turning to Laserfiche, the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office has become more productive, effective and efficient. The agency digitized and secured more than 2,500 employee personnel files using Laserfiche software. Moreover, all new hire files are created digitally. The agency can process and prepare files for approval much faster, and automated email notifications mean that staff no longer need to call other departments as frequently to follow up on forms.

The agency realized an initial savings of $2,000 by eliminating supplies for new employee files, as well thousands more in departmental time-savings. Beyond cost savings, the Sheriff’s Office opened the door to a more digital, automated agency. By implementing innovative solutions like its Laserfiche digital records management program, the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office fosters a culture of efficiency and agility to better position the agency for success in a competitive hiring market.

City Of Ithaca/Tompkins County

Offering Laserfiche records management as a shared service increased efficiency and enhanced countywide collaboration.

Dirección General De Desarrollo Social Y Asignaciones Familiares (DESAF)

How the City of Ithaca Streamlined the Marriage License Process

Laserfiche Solution Contributed By: Julie Holcomb, City Clerk and Alan Karasin, Senior Network Administrator, City of Ithaca, NY

Located in central New York, the city of Ithaca is the county seat of Tompkins County and home to 30,000 residents. Each fall, nearly 30,000 students make their way to Ithaca’s Cornell University, Ithaca College and Tompkins-Cortland Community College.

The city used to process marriage licenses using a proprietary software system that worked well for them at the time, but there was growing concerns regarding the future of software maintenance. As the system was reaching its end-of-life, the city decided to re-evaluate the process and use Laserfiche to streamline it with development assistance from their solution provider, General Code.

Marriage License Applications Are Submitted Through Laserfiche Forms

The new process starts when the couple applying for a marriage license arrives at the license office with their official documents. The customer service representative fills out a marriage license application form in Laserfiche Forms using the information provided by the couple. Once that form is filled out and submitted, Laserfiche Workflow creates a formatted PDF document with the information. The customer service rep prints out this document onto a paper form provided by the state. The couple reviews the printed form to make sure that all the information in it is correct. If any information is incorrect, the rep updates it in Forms and prints out another form. Once all the information is finalized, the rep approves it and the printed form is signed by everyone.
Information for the marriage license is obtained through a Laserfiche form
An example of a printed marriage license document

The submitted form is placed in a queue awaiting information from the actual marriage ceremony. The couple has 60 days to get married from the date that they pick up the marriage license. Once the couple is married, they bring or mail the form back into the office. The rep enters the marriage information into Laserfiche Forms.
Spreadsheet On Computer Screen. Analyst Employee Working

Once that information is filled out and the form submitted, Workflow generates the marriage certificate which the rep prints out and mails to the couple. The rep then scans the original, signed marriage license form into the couple’s folder in Laserfiche.
The marriage license process in Laserfiche Forms

If 90 days pass and the couple doesn’t return the certificate with the marriage information, the license expires and all documents are moved to the Expired folder in Laserfiche.

Retrieving a Marriage Certificate Copy Is Quick and Easy

Many citizens come to the marriage licensing office to retrieve a certified copy of their marriage records. Since all marriage certification information is stored in Laserfiche, the customer service rep simply performs a field search using some of the person’s information to find the appropriate folder. The folder either contains the original certificate information, and a scanned copy of the original marriage license, or, for all older licenses, an empty document with just the metadata that contains the appropriate information.

Older records may require the rep to enter additional information from historical marriage books into the metadata fields to complete the record but once this is done initially, the task never needs to be repeated. If there is no actual certificate available, the rep launches a workflow that generates the certified transcript of the marriage record. The rep then prints this certificate on the appropriate form. This whole process takes just a few minutes.
Laserfiche Workflow uses the information from Laserfiche Forms to create a formatted PDF document

Benefits of Laserfiche

Streamlining the marriage license process with Laserfiche has resulted in many benefits for the city of Ithaca. Unlike the old process, the new process can be launched from any computer with an internet connection, making it possible for people who are homebound or incarcerated to be able to apply for a marriage license.  Marriage license transcripts are also much easier to retrieve since they are all stored in a central location and can be easily searched for vs. flipping through pages of older handwritten books.

Town and City Clerks in New York State now have an additional product they can consider when evaluating their licensing needs. As with many Laserfiche projects, these benefits are the “gift that keep on giving.” Future generations of municipal workers will become much more efficient and effective as they will no longer need to sort through old records in questionable condition and stored in less than optimal locations.

How the City of Aspen Uses Laserfiche to Streamline Elections

Laserfiche Solution Contributed By: Jeannine Stickle, Records Manager Clerk and Linda Manning, City Clerk, City of Aspen, CO

The City of Aspen, CO has roughly 6,200 registered voters. Regular elections are held every two years, and the voter turnout is usually about 40%, which equates to between 2,200-2,500 voters. The city has up to three vote centers that support six precincts. Voters can submit ballots in five different ways: by mail, drop-off at a vote center, by email, early or in-person.

Before implementing Laserfiche, the city faced many challenges in managing the voting process. For in-person voting, election judges had to search through printed registration lists to determine if a voter was at a correct vote center. New voters who registered at the county clerk’s office had to take a printed certificate to the vote center. Judges needed to call the county clerk to confirm that the voter was actually registered before letting him or her vote.

If a voter moved to a different precinct or changed his or her name, the election judge had to also call the county clerk to confirm these changes. The election judge had to verify the signatures on mail-in or drop-off ballots against a printed list.

According to Colorado state law, a voter can submit up to three ballots. Each successive ballot voids the previous one. Everything was kept track of in a hand-written poll book. In total, there were 12 hand-written logs used for various ballot processes. These logs were then re-entered into the master polling spreadsheet.

The whole process had a high potential for errors because paper was not able to display real-time updates to voter information. Since Aspen is a resort town with high residential turnover (20%+ annually and large number of second homeowners), the city experiences many changes to the voter lists.

All of these challenges led the city of Aspen to try to find an easier way to manage the elections. Laserfiche was the solution.

“There is a lack of software out there that does what we are doing with Laserfiche (for elections.)” – says Linda Manning, City Clerk.

Getting Ready for an Election

Before any election, the county clerk sends images of voter signatures to the city clerk. The city clerk uploads these signatures into the Laserfiche repository and names each one according to the voter ID number, which is the unique identifier for every voter. Each signature image in the repository has a Voter Information template attached to it.

A list of all registered voters and their associated information is stored in an Excel spreadsheet by voter ID number. The city clerk runs a Laserfiche workflow that parses the spreadsheet, finds the associated signature image in the repository and updates its metadata with information from the spreadsheet.

Each signature image has an associated template with the voter’s information stored in the fields

 

If Workflow cannot find the appropriate signature image because the voter is new, it creates a placeholder document to which it adds the appropriate metadata. When the county clerk sends the appropriate signature image, the city clerk overwrites the placeholder image.

Information about new voters who don’t have a signature on file is stored in the metadata of a placeholder image

 

The image below shows the diagram of the workflow which parses the voter spreadsheet, finds the signature image and updates the image’s metadata with information from the spreadsheet.

Processing Mail-in Ballots

In Colorado, a voter has three chances to vote. To keep track of the number of times that each voter has voted, the city added fields into the Voter Information metadata template that correspond to three different ballots. Since every voter initially receives a ballot by mail, the city clerk does a mass update to the Ballot 1 Type and Issue Date fields to reflect the issuance of the ballot to the voters in the database at the time the first ballots are mailed.

Each mailed out ballot is identified by a unique barcode, which contains the voter ID number. The city clerk scans the barcode of any ballot that is returned and enters the ballot return method, date and ballot batch ID into a spreadsheet. A workflow parses this spreadsheet, finds the associated signature image in the repository and updates the appropriate metadata fields with information from the spreadsheet.

Election judges check the signature on the ballot against the stored signature image in the database. If the signatures don’t match up, the election judge moves the image to the For Review folder. The city clerk contacts each person in this folder and asks them to prove their identity in a different way.

Voter information is stored in the Laserfiche repository

Handling New Registered Voters

In Colorado, new voters can register all the way up to and including on election day. New registered voters receive a certificate of registration, which they show to one of the election judges at the vote center. In order to record this voter’s information in Laserfiche, the election judge fills out the electronic Voter Registration form with information from the registration certificate. Some information, such as the city, is pre-populated to simplify filling out the form. Once the election judge submits the form, a copy is saved in a New Registrations folder in the repository.

Election judges fill out a New Voter Registration electronic form to keep track of newly registered voters at the polling place

Manning the Vote Centers

When a person arrives at the vote center to vote, the election judge checks-in him or her by finding the voter’s signature image in Laserfiche.

The judge can quickly see if this person has already voted in this election by looking to see if Ballot 1, Ballot 2 and Ballot 3 fields have values in them.

The judge clicks on the button in the toolbar corresponding to the correct ballot number. If no ballot has been submitted so far, the judge clicks on Ballot 1. If there are values for Ballot 1 in the metadata already, the judge clicks on Ballot 2, etc. Clicking the button launches the corresponding Laserfiche form. For example, if the Ballot 2 button is clicked, the Ballot 2 Submission form is opened.

Custom toolbar buttons allow judges to submit information about a particular banner with one click

 

The judge fills out the voter ID number and all other information regarding this ballot. If the judge selects Polling as the ballot return method, the rest of the form fields are populated with the correct information.

An example of the Ballot 2 Submission electronic form

Once the form is submitted, Laserfiche Workflow finds the voter’s signature image in Laserfiche and updates the metadata with ballot information. If the form submitted is for Ballot 2 or 3, Workflow invalidates the other ballots.

The image below shows the workflow that updates the voter’s signature image in Laserfiche with the appropriate ballot information.

Benefits of Laserfiche

Laserfiche has made the elections process at the city of Aspen much more streamlined and efficient.

“Since we have implemented the new system, we have become very efficient. Election judges take less time to process ballots, since the ballots are ready for processing much earlier,” says Linda.

Since all voter data is available in Laserfiche, the election judges don’t need to enter everything on a paper log, and then re-enter into the computer. Checking in voters at vote centers is much more efficient, since election judges don’t need to read through printed lists and make phone calls to other vote centers.

Auditing has also been streamlined since reconciling the number of ballots with the number of voters is easy and the data is accurate. The city does not have to fear that inconsistencies are discovered in the event of an external audit.

Watch the “Modernizing Vital Election Processes in the Digital Age” to learn how two forward-thinking government organizations are successfully leveraging technology to streamline the voter registration and election judge hiring process