This article provides information about the Settings/Configuration/Distributions page. Use the Distributions page to configure assignment distributions to create plan review assignments efficiently. 

Automated distributions are recommended when EPR is running as a stand alone product or when an integrated partner will not import plan review assignments using our ConnectAPI.

Configure Project Types for Permitting and Design Review Lists.

Prerequisites:

1. Configure Review Types for Permitting and Design Review Lists.
2. Configure Groups for Permitting and Design Review Lists.
3. Create user accounts for plan reviewers.
   1. Assign plan review users to Permitting and Design Review groups .
4. For each project type, you will need:
   1. A list of plan review documents that will typically be required, by discipline (review type).
   2. A list of group members who will typically be assigned to these projects.

Automated Distribution records require:

1. A Purpose and Project Type
2. One or more Review Types
3. One or more Groups
   1. Optionally, a 'named user', who is a member of the group.

In this article:

Understanding Automated Distributions

Automated distributions significantly improve the document intake process by triggering which groups and users should receive plan review assignments whenever new plan review documents are uploaded. 

At a high level, from the Project Intake page, a plan review document can generate one or many plan review assignments and each assignment is associated to a Group.

Automated distributions can also be configured to check the document filename to see if it matches an expected pattern, or to ignore the document filename altogether.

During the intake process the intake user can choose to confirm the automated distribution suggestions, or make modifications if needed, before actually creating the plan review assignments and notifying those users.

About Review Types

The Review Type lists serve two uses:

1. To match the first four letters of the filename to a Review Type abbreviation.
2. To provide additional information on plan review assignments when a multiple assignments are created for a document for the same Group. For example, a document assigned to the Building department (group) for a structural review type and to the Building department (group) for a civil review type.

Groups

Groups serve two uses:

1. Automated distributions and plan review assignments must be associated to a Group.
2. Plan Reviewers must belong to a group in order to update the group assignment status.

Best Practices for Accepting Plan Sets for plan review distribution

Documents will be approved/rejected by each Group as a whole, with whatever disciplines consist in the file. For this reason, communication to your project owners/architects/contractors, etc. who provide plan review documents should include instructions on how PDF's for plan review should be assembled, based on how you distribute plans to your plan reviewers and the disciplines they can stamp (approve). 

For example, some reviewers may approve mechanical, electrical and plumbing plans, so one document that contains of all three disciplines is acceptable. 

In this case:

• Create a Review Type called: Mechanical/Electrical/Plumbing and set its abbreviation to: MEP. 
• Incoming files for these users/project types should be prefixed as: MEP_helpfuldescriptionhere.pdf

Create other Review Type list records for each single discipline or combination of disciplines as needed.

File Naming Requirements for plan review documents

Configuring Distributions based on a file name prefix:

Incoming PDF's that follow file naming requirements provide the ability to create plan review assignments for the appropriate reviewers/groups by matching the leftmost 4 characters in the filename that precede the underscore ( _ ).

Using the three documents below as an example, the Mixed Use workflow record (below) would create two group assignments for the CIVL_Notes.pdf file and two group assignments for the MEP_Landscape.pdf file. 

No assignments would be auto-created for the document named Sprinkler Diagram.pdf, because a matching Review Type prefix has not been configured and the filename is missing the underscore character.

Configuring Automated Distributions for any plan review document

To create an automated distribution record that ignores the filename prefix, select the 'Any' checkbox. During intake, assuming the filenames include the required underscore character, the selected group assignments will be triggered.

Distribution Settings

Below are the default settings for automated distributions:

Reset Approved Resubmittals

Best practices dictate that plan reviews should be performed when new versions are provided, even when the prior submittal was approved. However, this rule can be overridden if desired.

Toggle this setting off if previously completed assignments whose status is Approved should not create new assignments when a new submittal/version is received.

Leave this setting on to reset Approved plan review assignments when new versions are uploaded. 

Enabling Automated Distributions

Toggle this setting on to enable automated distributions to trigger during document intake. 

Turn this setting off if an integrated back office product will be responsible for creating plan review assignments via our Connect API toolkit.

Permitting Reassignments by Reviewer

Toggle this setting on to allow Reviewer’s privileges to hand off a personal (named user) assignment to another Reviewer in the same group.

This privilege may not be acceptable to some clients. 

Creating Automated Distributions

From the Navigation panel, select Configuration/Distributions.

1. Click the + button on the bottom of the page to open the Add/Edit Distribution form.
2. Select a Purpose and Project Type from the dropdown lists.
3. Choose the Review Type abbreviation(s) if the files will be distributed by discipline or choose ‘Select All’ if the files do not need to be distributed by discipline.
4. Optionally, choose the 'Any' checkbox to ignore matching the filename prefix to a Review Type abbreviation.
5. Select the Groups who should receive assignments and if desired,
   1. Select an Assignee as a named user or
   2. Choose ‘Select All’  when if all Groups should receive assignments.
6. Verify that the selections are correct, including the Purpose and Project Type.
   1. Changing the Purpose/Project Type will not be allowed after the record is saved.
7. Click the ‘Confirm’ button to save.

Editing an existing Distribution Record

From the Navigation panel, select Configuration/Distributions.

1. Click the pencil icon of the distribution record to open the Add/Edit Distribution form.
2. Check on or off the review types or groups.
   1. Removing a review type or group from the distribution record will prompt a Confirm Delete message box, choose Confirm to save your changes.

Recapping the Rules that Trigger Automated Distributions during Intake

During Intake, automated assignment distributions will trigger if the following conditions are met:

1. Automated Distributions must be toggled ‘on.’
2. The Distribution record must be 'Active'.
3. The Project record's project type value must match to an Automated Distribution record's project type.
4. Incoming filename(s) must contain an underscore character to delineate the file as a plan review document.
5. Incoming filename(s) must be prefixed with a Review Type abbreviation, unless the 'Any' checkbox is enabled.