Contacts, licensed professionals, and public users

Contacts

Contacts are individuals or organizations associated with a record, such as permit applications, inspections, or service requests.

Civic Platform divides contacts into two categories:

Reference contacts that serve as the reference database
Daily contacts that users add to records

Tip: Best practice is to manage contact types by defining only generic reference contact types, such as "Individual" and "Organization." Record each individual or organization as one reference contact. Then link reference contacts to records in various roles, such as "Applicant," "License Holder," etc. This enables you to easily track all the transactional and reference information about every individual and organization.

Licensed professionals

Licensed Professionals are verified individuals or organizations (such as, contractors, architects, engineers, or developers) who are authorized to perform regulated work and are associated with specific records like permits, licenses, or inspections.

After you implement Civic Platform, you might need to add new licensed professionals for your agency. After you add a licensed professional, users can search for the licensed professional when creating or editing an application.

Public users

Anyone who uses the public-facing portion of Citizen Access, the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system, or other Accela products are called public users. Public users include Anonymous Users and Registered Users who either use the agency’s Citizen Access website or who use IVR when calling that agency. System administrators can control which functions are available for both types of public users.