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Released Feb 12, 2021

Planning Notes

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titleRequirements

Required Software Changes

  • Microsoft SQL Server 2019 is required for Release 2021.01.

  • For this release the database version has been upgraded to SQL Server 2019. Key benefits of this upgrade include: performance improvements; improved optimization; accelerated database recovery; improved cloud support. 
  • Release 2021.1 is taking advantage of some SQL Server 2019 features in this release, specifically for synchronization of the Data Hub data with nCORE and nFORM.
  • When upgrading to SQL Server 2019, the recommend approach is to implement a new database server running 2019, verify server to server access permissions; execute a database backup and restore to the new 2019 database server. Once this has been done the application configuration settings may be updated to point to the new database server.

Required Software

Web Server

  • Windows Server 2016 or later
  • .NET 5.x
  • .NET Framework 4.8
  • .NET Core 3.1

Application Server

  • Windows Server 2016 or later
  • .NET 5.x
  • .NET Framework 4.8
  • .NET Core 3.1
  • Aceoffix Server 5.8.0.1

Database Server

  • Windows Server 2016 or later
  • SQL Server 2019

Web Browser 

  • Aceoffix Plugin 5.8.0.2
  • Modern Web Browsers (Chrome, Edge, FireFox)


Release Overview

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titleOverview


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titlenCORE

Highlighted changes to nCORE include:

  • My Account and Internal Site Menu Options
    • New “Summary” pages provide additional information to external users related to Permits, Evaluations, Compliance Actions, and Projects.
      • Summary pages are accessed by clicking on the corresponding list item. When clicked a pop-up page displays additional information about the selected record, as well as the list of related documents.  The documents are available for download (individual or multiple).
      • Internal users have access to the new summary pages by clicking on the list row. This opens the summary page and from there, the user may click on an option to select the full detail.  A new “…” list menu has been added providing options for the user to navigate directly to either the detail or the summary.
    • Site Plan

The site plan has been significantly enhanced to support new capabilities. In conjunction with these changes, the user interface has been improved to support the new functionality.

  • Support for multiple shapes/locations on a Feature. Features now support the ability for a single feature to be represented as a collection of multiple geometries (points/lines/polygons). Each geometry may be named and managed within the feature.  Measurements are supported at for the individual lines and polygons.  Intersections may be viewed for the full collection of feature geometries, or for individual geometries.
  • Filter for Permitted Features. A new option on the site plan ‘Show Only Active Permitted Features” lets the features to be filtered based on whether they are associated with an active permit. 
  • Filter for Feature Types by Program Area. The feature list may now be filtered based upon the corresponding feature type applicability to a program area (as defined in the configuration of the feature type.)  If a default program area has been defined for the user, the filter will automatically default to that program area.
  • Expanded KML and GeoJSON feature formats.  The Site Plan now supports upload of multiple features locations via a single file. Previously the file could only contain a single location and would fail if multiple locations were included. The upload process is also more robust and supports both KML and GeoJSON.
  • Document Management
    • Document Viewer – A new document viewer is being introduced in this release. The viewer provides the ability to quickly view documents that are in the document list using a forward/backward ‘carousel’ approach.  The viewer displays the first page of a document, photograph, or other file type.  Draft documents which could still be edited will not be available in the viewer until they have been set to Final status and the related PDF has been created.  However, non-Word/editable files will be displayed upon conversion to PDF.
    • Document thumbnail images – Document thumbnails have been added to the document list. They are available under the same conditions as files in the Document viewer (once they have been converted to PDF).
  • Public Access
    • Public Alert Subscriptions. The public may now subscribe to certain types of alerts based upon the functional area and location.  To subscribe, the user is required to provide an email, but is not required to register an external account.  If the user already has an external account, the subscription capability is also available to them via the user profile pages.
  • Public Notice
    • Public Notice Location Type. A new option has been added to Public Notice Events that affects whether a public notice appears in county related searches on the public site. The new field "Coverage" is added and may be based to one of three values: Facility Location, Multi-County (specified list) or State-wide.
  • Contacts
    • Added the ability to allow selection of Persons in an nFORM control (via their alternate name) and to have them added as submission contacts.
    • The Contacts List now contains a concatenated list of Functional Areas that the contact relates to.
  • Permits
    • Filter the list of Permit Change forms by the Permit Type – To improve user experience, permit change formswill now be narrowed down/filtered based on applicable permit types (as specified in Form configuration).
    • Automatically Copy or Add New Component to a Permit. Default Program Component lists now exist on both the Permit Category and Permit Type configuration pages.  The options in these tables ("Add New Component" or "Copy Existing Component"), provide the ability for a program components to be added to or copied across linked permit versions.  If the same component type is specified at both the permit's Permit Category and Permit Type configuration, the configuration on the Permit Type will take precedence.
    • Create a Site Inspection Event from a Permit. Site inspection events may now be created for Permits.
    • Combine Permit Number and Alternate Permit Number in search. Permit Number and Alternate Permit Number search fields have been combined for simplified searching of permits. 
  • Submissions
    • Submission Details: Allow removing a Site Feature. "Delete" capability has been added on the "Features" tab of the submission detail page to allow the user to remove a feature that was created in error.
    • nFORM Submission Version information incorporated into submission history. nFORM submission version history (Creation, Status Change, and Signing History) has been incorporated into the submission history slide panel.
    • Application Due Date enhancements. Application due dates are now also carried forward to new permit versions.  Application due dates may now be calculated based on Permit Category configuration of “Days from expiration date”. 
    • Application Form inheritance from Site Components. Application forms may now be configured to inherit data from a Site Component form.
  • Evaluations
    • Select sites for an Evaluation Plan based on an nVISAGE Report. The evaluation plan has been enhanced to allow selection of sites based on an nVISAGE report.  Authorized users may save nVISAGE reports to a special “Evaluation Plan Reports” folder, making them available to Evaluation Plans as one of the evaluation criteria.  Additional criteria are applied in conjunction with the sites specified in the report.
    • Allow evaluation to be 'Uncompleted'. Authorized users may now "Uncomplete" an evaluation that was processed in nSPECT, transitioning it from "Processed" back to "In nSPECT" status.
    • Evaluation Plan to nSPECT Scheduler Search Criteria. Evaluation Plan Name has been added as search criteria in the nSPECT Scheduler. This allows users to find all planned/scheduled evaluations related to a particular evaluation plan.
  • Financials
    • New Financial list page. A financial list page has been added to the Home menu.  This page allows users to search for financial records across sites and navigate to their detail pages.
    • Print and download large document sets. Users may now download or print large document sets.  Downloads were previously limited to about 200 documents.  Printing of document sets is supported by creation of a combined PDF containing all the documents. These functions now execute asynchronously, allowing users to continue other work (vs. waiting for the download to complete).
  • Schedules
    • Schedules: Prevent Users from Adding Custom Schedule Override Names
    • Add ability to delete schedule groups from active permits/compliance actions/projects
  • System Actions / Notifications
    • Configuration: System Action Recipient types enhanced and streamlined. Several changes were made in this area:
      • The System Action Recipient names have been streamlined to make them more consistent and clear.
      • New recipients "External - Site Administrators" and "External - Active Site Users" were added to key functional areas.
      • The ability specify Contact Affiliation Types as Notification Recipients was added.
    • Configuration: Permit types added to System Action Entity Type. Users may now configure system actions related to permit categories and/or permit types as the System Action Entity Types.
  • Document Templates
    • Data Source Updates
      • Event data fields are now available as in all standard functional area data sources that have events.
      • A new standard document template data source has been created for Receivables
      • Linked documents are now included in standard Submission and Evaluation data sources. An is linked indicator identifies documents that are links vs owned by the document template
    • DMRs
      • Support benchmark limits. Limits may now be specified as ‘benchmark’ limits that do not create violations for reported exceedances, by deselecting an "Enforceable" checkbox on the permit limit entry page.
      • Internal User Navigation. Internal users may navigate from the DMR list page to the DMR Details page for submitted DMRs.
      • Revised limit edit page. The limit page layout has been adjusted with a more user friendly / compact display.
      • Revised DMR list actions layout. The Revise/Delete Draft DMRs actions have been consolidated under the "more actions (…)" button.
      • DMR Set History. DMR Set history is updated when DMR Set status changes.
    • nFORM /nFORM Integration / Program Components
      • Expanded form / program component inheritance. Inheritance between forms has been expanded to include:
        • From a site component form to an application form.
        • From a project component form to a project schedule form.
      • User Experience / General
        • Clickable rows to open. Windsor has added “clickable row” actions to certain list pages. This capability will be incorporated into additional lists in future releases.  Lists with clickable rows in this release include:
          • External lists that have new summary pages
          • All Administration Lookup maintenance lists
        • Reformat User drop downs as Last Name, First Name. Internal user name selection controls now display names in the format of "Last Name, First Name", rather than using the Display Name field. 
        • Record validation messages sorted. Validation messages are now sorted by type in order of Errors, Warnings, and Passed validations.
        • Replace Late labels with Overdue. To better reflect the status of items that are due but have not been received, column filter text and labels were changed from "Late" to "Overdue".
      • Security
        • Internal user viewing of external user account records. A new security role has been added that allows internal users to view details for external user account records.  This allows internal users to see external users information (to provide better customer assistance) but without granting them security update access.
      • Administration
        • Account claim request creation/approval history.The ability to see when a claim request was submitted, by whom, and when it was approved or rejected has been added to the User History slide panel.
        • Form configuration – new inheritance indicator. An indicator has been added to the form Tags tab that displays on controls that inherit from another form.
        • New lookup maintenance pages. New list and detail maintenance pages have been added for: Project Categories, Project Types, Manual Alert Types.  Also, Project Categories and Types may now be activate and inactivated from their corresponding detail page.


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nFORM (Release 4.11) changes were primarily focused on new integrations related to standalone nFORM implementations. Some minor changes have bene made as noted below

Highlighted changes to nFORM include:

  • Payment Prior to Submission. Added the ability to require a payment prior to the form being considered submitted.
  • New Message Control. Added the ability to present custom messages (as a form control) to the user in a submission based on attributes in the submission. The types of messages can be presented, 1) Informational; 2) Warning; 3) Error. Errors prevent the user from proceeding with submitting the form, while warnings and informational messages do not. A formula is used to determine whether the message control will be displayed
  • Location Coordinate Validation. Added the ability to limit allowable coordinates to the State’s boundaries.
  • Hard Copy Signature Status Tracking. Added the capability to track when a hard copy signature is outstanding for a submission. When a Hard Copy Signature is requested, the submission will be set to a status of "Awaiting Hard Copy Signature", following submission.
  • Submission Review Print Upgrade. Converted the Submission Print option on the Submission Review step of the Submission Wizard to use the richer Submission Print function which is utilized on the Submission Overview page.
  • Instruction Control URL Expansion. Added the ability to inject submission control values/attributes into Instruction control URL. This is useful for situations such as adding a specific latitude/longitude or permit ID into a URL when navigating to another agency system.
  • Version Number Footer Display. Added the product version number (e.g., 4.11) to the application footer to aid in troubleshooting/versioning.

Please see the nFORM v4.11 Release Notes – nVIRO Version for more information.


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No enhancements have been made to nSITE Explorer in the 2021.1 release. 


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titlenVIRO Data Hub and nVISAGE

Updates to the Data Hub and nVISAGE Release 2021.1 have been integrated into nVIRO and are summarized below:

Highlighted changes include:

  • Live update of nCORE Previously, updates of nCORE data changes were reflected in the data hub after completion of a nightly batch process.  Now, when data is added or updated in nCORE, the data hub is updated and available in nVISAGE within seconds of the update being made. 
  • Save of Global Filter with Reports. Whendeveloping a new nVISAGE report, the global search filter may be saved to the report. This is accomplished simply by entering a value in the global search filter and saving the report.
  • Improved multi-value field filtering. For certain records that support multiple values assignment (e.g., SIC, NAICS codes), the report column is displayed as comma delimited values.  Previously, the only filtering available was a string value match on the column.  Now, the filters provide the list of unique values, and allow one or more specific values to be selected. When selected, records that contain any of the selected values are included.
  • Additional Expansion of Security Roles. nVISAGE was refined to support more granular permissions in release 2020.03.  These have been expanded upon for release 2021.1.  There are now three security groups provided by default, and administrators may mix/match roles as needed to create new groups or modify as needed. The default groups include:
    • nVISAGE Reports Administrator – This is intended for users who are managing map layers, or API views.
    • nVISAGE Reports Developer – This is intended for users who are creating and managing shared reports.
    • nVISAGE Reports Viewer – This is intended for users who are running shared reports or creating custom versions of shared reports (as My Reports).

The security roles/permissions that comprise the security groups listed above have been made more granular:

  • Reports - nVISAGE - View Shared Folder. Userswiththis Role may view Shared Reports folder contents.
  • Reports - nVISAGE - Create New Report. Userswiththis Role may add new reports (using the New Report button).
  • Reports - nVISAGE - Manage Data Source. Userswiththis Role may add/update/remove data sources in reports.
  • Reports - nVISAGE - Manage Filters. Userswiththis Role may add/update/remove filters in reports.
  • Reports - nVISAGE - Manage Shared Reports. Userswiththis Role may add/update/remove shared reports.
  • Reports - nVISAGE - Manage My Reports. Userswiththis Role may add/update/remove my own reports.
  • Reports - nVISAGE - Manage Map Layers. Userswiththis Role may add/update/remove map layers.
  • API Administrator. Userswiththis Role may add/modify API services.


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nSPECT changes for Release 2021.1 were limited to enhancements to the downloadable app, and bug fixes.

Highlighted changes include:

  • File storage moved from DB to the file system. Tohelp manage database size, files will now be stored in the file system.  This helps to facilitate sharing of photo file attachments with nCORE (as evaluation attachments). It should also result in faster backup and restore of the database independent of the file storage.

Please see the nSPECT v2021.1 Release Notes for more information.

  • Note that nSPECT has begun be using a similar release versioning numbering scheme as nVIRO/nCORE.


Release Demo Recording

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titleRelease Demo Video

Demonstration topics have been broken out into the following videos


Release Notes

nVIRO Release Notes 2021.01.docx

nVIRO Release 2021.01 Combined Ticket List (spreadsheet).xlsx

Related Release Notes

nFORM Release 4.11

nSPECT Release 2021.1

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