Citizenserve's Common Comments provide easy access for reviewers and inspectors to add frequently used comments to a plan review or inspection. Check out this video to see how common comments work, and how you can apply standing condition statuses to your comments.
Sometimes comments are referred to as a comment library, the Book of Common Comments, common corrections, or just common comments.
They all refer to a central repository, a frequently cited comments users can access during their review or inspection activities.
Let's review this special event permit and see how each department has a separate set of comments. The city manager's office has one comment group for special events. This department uses comment statuses to show whether a condition must be met and when that condition has been satisfied. The police department has a separate group of special event comments and they don't use comment status. The planning department has a few different comment groups to choose from. Statuses can be configured to be a standing condition.
Reviewers can set this status on their comment, and a red hand icon is added to the activity, the application, and the property record. The icon is visible across departments and is an indicator that staff should pay attention. Click the icon to view the condition.
Next, I'll show you how to set up common comments and then we'll see how to set up comment statuses To set up or modify common comments for your department, click the administration menu, select your department and select the Review Common Corrections lookup.
If you have any comments to find, you'll see them listed here. To add a brand new comment, click the add button, the page icon in the top right corner and a blank page loads. The group field sets the group type or category of your comment. This group name will display in the filter dropdown of your common comments book. The order number field determines the display order of your comments.
It's not required. Tap to the correction field and type in the new comment. For this library, the status defaults to active and the scope allows this comment to be shared with sub-departments. I'll leave it as it is. To add another comment, hit the save button.
The group name will carry forward the order number advances, and you can just type or paste in the new comment. When you're finished entering comments, use the finish arrow to take you back to the common corrections listing. Now let's look at how to set up review, comment statuses, including conditions. We'll stay in the administration window and we'll select the lookup type for Review Comment/Correction Status.
The city manager has three comment statuses defined. You can add a new status by clicking the ad button at the top, but I'll show you how this first comment status is set up. The lookup value field is the name that the status will display with your comment on your review activity. The type can be, comment, or condition. Only Types set to condition will trigger the red hand icon. The status field indicates whether this value is active or inactive. Only active values will appear in your activities and the scope determines who else can see this status.
Here's an example of the building department - They have five comment statuses and two of them are set as conditions. Inspectors can access common comments through their inspection activities. Add or update inspector common comments using the inspection comments, lookup table, set, the comment type or group to the same name as the inspection type. This will default the correct inspection comments for that inspection type. Inspector comments can include statuses and allow for adding conditions. You can access these in the inspection comment status lookup, and you can manage the inspection statuses just like we manage the review comment correction statuses.
And that's how you use the Common Comments book in citizenserve. If you'd like help with your comments or statuses, please submit a support request. We're happy to help.