LOGIS sits on two stakeholder groups at TriTech. The Records and CAD stakeholder groups generally meet on a monthly basis to discuss development of the applications and give input on changes. TriTech product management demonstrates to attendees their current work product and seek input on how to improve on their development. By doing this, TriTech is able to get advice from those doing the work in the field prior to putting improvements in production environments. LOGIS has seen firsthand the benefits of being a part of these groups. Several LOGIS support analysts will be attending the TriTech users conference the week of September 28th and look forward to gaining additional knowledge on the entire Public Safety Suite.
Discussions about how to make LBAE (Local Board of Appeal and Equalization) and Contact Tracking modules more useful tools is about to bring on some major changes.
A group of City PDS staff met at LOGIS to discuss what changes were needed. They decided it would be best to combine the two into one module with two parts, sharing information between the two parts. The design and recommendations were handed over to LOGIS staff for programming changes and testing.
The new and improved module will be included with many other enhancements in the next PDS release.
A single credit card transaction actually consists of two phases: authorization and settlement. In the authorization phase, the credit card processor validates that the customer has entered a valid credit card number and expiration date. During this phase, the processor also determines if the customer is exceeding their credit limit, and if they are not, the processor “reserves” those funds for the payment. The authorization process is done in “real time.” That is, all the processing is done as soon as the transaction is submitted. However, at the end of the authorization process, the funds are not actually transferred from the customer’s account to the city’s bank account. That happens during the settlement process.
The settlement process does NOT occur immediately upon submitting credit card information for payment. Settlement is a “batch” process that occurs once a day (usually overnight) where the funds of all the day’s transactions are moved from the customers’ accounts to the city’s bank account.
Knowing about the difference between authorization and settlement is useful because it has an effect on what you can do when you want to change or delete a credit card transaction that has already been submitted. If you want to cancel or delete a credit card transaction that has already been submitted, you can void the credit card transaction if the settlement process has not been completed for that transaction. Voiding means that the transaction will not appear on the customer’s credit card bill. It is as if the transaction never occurred in the first place.
If the settlement process HAS occurred for the transaction, however, there is no going back. Your only option at that point is to refund the credit card account. Both the original transaction and the refund will appear on the customer’s credit card bill.
If you want to try voiding a credit card transaction that has not been settled, contact the Parks and Rec Support Line at 763-543-2601, Option 4.
LOGIS has been planning a cutover from our current PIMS database servers to a new server environment running Windows 2012 and SQL 2012. Our goal is to perform this exchange early in the morning to avoid any significant downtime for the users during regular core hours.
During this migration, PIMS and ePermits will be offline while the changeover takes place. We will make every attempt to bring both applications back online as soon as testing is complete and all maintenance conditions have been met.
LOGIS will be contacting each city to notify staff when this update will take place.
We sincerely appreciate your patience during this process.
Advanced Utility Systems, a subsidiary of Harris Corporation, is the software developer of our utility billing Customer Information and Billing software applications: CIS Infinity, Infinity.Link, Infinity.BI and Infinity.Mobile. In addition to providing technical support to LOGIS utility billing support analysts, Advanced also provides annual training to our staff by sharing their expertise in SQL queries and commands, particularly in those areas where there have been repetitious and/or common requests for support, i.e., Cash Batch Reversals, Mass Deletion of Form Letters, etc.
One or two LOGIS utility billing support analysts make the trip to Advanced headquarters in Toronto, Canada to meet those support staff that are responsible to resolve our requests, work on updates for outstanding issues that need resolution, problem solve, and learn new SQL techniques/processes to resolve common user issues. The added value of these face-to-face encounters is a deeper understanding and appreciation on both sides for the daily challenges of staying on top of these ever-evolving applications and a common commitment to customer service.
You’ve heard the terms: SaaS (Software as a Service) and “Cloud” service vendors.
LOGIS does provide a private “Cloud” offering SaaS (Utility Billing, Financial, Public Safety and many more software applications) to our members. However, by joining LOGIS for one of our core applications members are not just limited to SaaS; we’re a XaaS offering the industry standard Cloud services of:
PaaS – Platform as a Service
IaaS -Infrastructure as a Service
NaaS -Network as a Service
Along with a series of other services such as:
BaaS – Backups as a Service
EaaS –Email as a Service
MaaS – Monitoring as a Service
RaaS – Recovery as a Service
TaaS – Telephony as a Service
VaaS – Virtualization as a Service
The list goes on, however what sets us apart from Cloud and software vendors which provide phone numbers for support; LOGIS provides people to:
Provide on-site administration, management and trouble shooting for the member’s computers, network servers and infrastructure
Install servers and network infrastructure equipment
Provide purchasing of equipment along with managing licensing and maintenance contracts
Provide hot swap equipment for our members
Sit at the member’s elbow to help process a payroll (as one example) among many other on-site application assistance services
Locally support and train member staff; one on one or in groups
Provide alternate workspaces in case of a city or agency building disaster
Create custom reports and applications working locally with members
LOGIS is, in other words, a far different “business model” than what any private sector cloud or software vendor offers. Our Cloud is a local government only data and IT services network meeting federal and PCI security standards.
Overall, LOGIS is a member owned and directed collaborative where members share in the costs of the local staff and many different IT services and facilities which, in many cases, would not be affordable by individual cities and agencies.
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LOGIS sits on two stakeholder groups at TriTech. The Records and CAD stakeholder groups generally meet on a monthly basis to discuss development of the applications and give input on changes. TriTech product management demonstrates to attendees their current work product and seek input on how to improve on their development. By doing this, TriTech is able to get advice from those doing the work in the field prior to putting improvements in production environments. LOGIS has seen firsthand the benefits of being a part of these groups. Several LOGIS support analysts will be attending the TriTech users conference the week of September 28th and look forward to gaining additional knowledge on the entire Public Safety Suite.
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