Updates on Vitals computer
Issue Documented: 11/10/2008

Just a reminder, when you receive an update disk from us and you are using a Vitals computer, as well as a town computer, you need to contact Chris at Vital Records to update the Vitals computer or to coordinate a time with him before you update your other computer(s). Once you update the program on one computer you need to update each additional computer on which Clerk is installed. The reason for this is the database gets updated on the server when you open the program after running the update and each computer needs to be running the same version of the program.

Releasing Plates
Issue Documented: 11/10/2008

Plate Releases are very common throughout the motor vehicle process. For example, a plate release is used to take an expired plate and put it on a new vehicle saving the customer the new plate fee.

To release a plate, you must call DMV for permission. They will check to make sure the plate is available. Also, while you have them on the phone, ask them to check to make sure the plates are in your location. If the original plate was not given from your location, you will not be able to release it until DMV puts it in your location. Below are a few situations in which you would process a plate release.

Situation 1: A customer is renewing a numeric plate that has been expired for more than 1 year and 1 day. If you tried to process the vehicle as a renewal, MAAP would return an error message stating “registration is out of renewal period.” You must process as a New with a plate release.

To process:

a. Call the Help Desk for permission to release plates.

b. Select New Registrations | Expired Renewal (1 year and 1 day).

c. On the Plate Release screen, select “Available In Inventory, Non Vanity”.

Note: The customer may wish to put new plates on this vehicle to avoid the plate release. If so, process as New.

Situation 2: A customer has purchased a new vehicle and wants to use the vanity plates from a vehicle he owns that has an expired registration.

To process:

a. Call the Help Desk for permission to release plates.

b. Select New Registration | Late Renewal (Expired plate is issued to a new vehicle).

c. On the Plate Release screen, select “Available In Inventory, Vanity”.

Situation 3: A customer wants to renew their vehicle, but they want to give up their moose plate and change to a numeric plate they had on another vehicle, which has been expired for more than 1 year and 1 day.

To process:

a. Call the Help Desk for permission to release plates.

b. Select 12 Month Renewal. Search for and select the vehicle.

c. Under Fee Calculations, click on the New Plate/Re-Issue check box, type in the plate number from the expired vehicle and a new decal number. Click Calc Fees and click Next.

d. The New Plate Dialog box will display. Select the radio button to release plates to “Available In Inventory, Non Vanity” and click Save.

Changing Ownership through Registration View/Maintenance
Issue Documented: 11/10/2008

Registration View/Maintenance can be used to add or delete a second owner. There are no State fees involved as you are not changing the first owner, but you may choose to charge the municipal agent fee. This typically occurs with a person putting their vehicles in a trust (still registering in the owner’s birth month) and they do not want to wait until the renewal month to make the change. It can also occur when the second owner is deceased and the first owner wants to remove the second owner without waiting for the renewal month. If the vehicle requires a title, you must process the title application as Title Only and then process the change through Registration View/Maintenance.

To process an Ownership change through Registration View/Maintenance, the following criteria must be met:

a. The customer is not changing vehicles.

b. They want to delete/add a second owner.

c. A new title must be generated for a vehicle requiring a title.

Please note: Controlled plates (4 digit plates) can only be completed as town only for a titled vehicle and the customer must go to DMV.

Owner IDs not matching
Issue Documented: 11/10/2008

We have heard of instances where a Clerk is processing a renewal and receives a message from MAAP stating that the owners on the title and registration do not match. This usually occurs with vehicles registered to a Trust or a Corporation. For instance, the Clerk registered a new vehicle-PS for a trust where the owner wants to register the vehicle in their birth month. The clerk completes the registration with the customer 1st and the trust 2nd. When Title Bureau receives the title and looks it up in the system, they delete the owner’s name, leaving just the trust name. Note: They do not change the information on the registration. Now title and registration do not match. When the customer goes to renew the vehicle the next year, the Clerk receives a message that owners on title and registration do not match.

To find the error, you need to cancel the process you are in and go to Title View/Maintenance. Search by VIN number but do not select the vehicle. In the search grid, you can arrow over to view the Owner IDs on the title. In the case above, you would only find the ID for the trust and the ID for Owner 2 would be blank. To make the registration and title match, you must process a “dummy” title with both the owner name and the trust name. Go to Title Application Only – Dummy CTA. You will create the title with both owners. Once the title application is complete, you will advance to the Fee Settlement screen. From this point, you can now complete the renewal.

Changing a Permit Number
Issue Documented: 11/10/2008

In the past, if you realized that the permit number in the system was not what was actually printed on the registration, you were able to fix the permit number by changing it through Registration View/Maintenance. The process has not changed, however, you will need to log into the system as an Offline Municipal Agent. This will allow you to process the update without transmitting to DMV or charging a fee. With the new laser registrations, this will only apply to the Town Only registrations.

Helpful Tool
Issue Documented: 11/10/2008

To help with changing an owner’s address, we have a tool that will update the Town, State, and Zip Code. Once you have changed the street address, tab to the Town field and press F10. This will update the information for your municipality. In municipalities that have two locations, pressing F10 will display the primary location and pressing F9 will display the secondary location. For example, the City of Concord has Concord, NH and Penacook, NH. If they are changing the address to Concord, they would press F10 and if they are changing the address to Penacook, they would press F9.

Password Changes on Vital Records Computer
Issue Documented: 09/22/2008

We have received a few calls from users that cannot change their passwords when accessing MAAP from a vital records computer. If you experience this problem, log into a computer that is not owned by the State of New Hampshire and change your password from that workstation. Once you have changed your password you can log off and resume processing on the vital records computer if you so choose. This work around was successful each time the issue was reported.

We have only seen this issue on vital record computers and the symptoms of the problem point in the direction of user permissions on those computers. We will be working to identify the exact point of failure and implement a solution in a future update.

Old and Invalid Motor Vehicle Data
Issue Documented: 09/22/2008

Be aware that there still is some old data that does not meet the strict validation requirements of the relatively new MAAP environment. Furthermore, know that MAAP will issue this invalid data if you request it, but it will not allow you to resubmit the invalid data. This can be very confusing and frustrating at times but the occurrences will become less frequent (and eventually nonexistent) as the old data is corrected.

The first thing to remember when diagnosing these issues is that MAAP doesn't always report back valid data. The vast majority of state data is correct but please remember invalid data can be returned. The second thing is to keep a keen eye on the data elements that are susceptible to this problem. Plate numbers and VINs are the two biggest culprits that have been reported to our office and each case was an invalid letter "O" that should have been a zero (0).

Here are some tips to help you recognize invalid data.

An Initial Plate must have at least 2 letters.

An Initial Plate cannot contain the letter O (as in orange).

Prior to 1980 there was not an accepted VIN standard, so different manufacturers used different formats. Modern day VINs consist of 17 characters that do not include the letters I, O or Q. If you identify an invalid Plate or VIN the only course of action is to call the Help Desk and have them attempt to correct the data. If the data cannot be corrected you may have to process only the Town Portion and send the registrant to a Sub Station.

Missing Motor Vehicle Data
Issue Documented: 09/22/2008

Owners that do not have a valid sex code (M or F) have been detected recently, particularly in towns that are new to the MAAP environment. The MAAP error you will experience if this occurs is a very large message box that displays XML validation logic instead of the plain English message box that normally indicates a problem. If you read "Sex Code" in one of the lines at the end of this message box it's quite possible that the issue is a missing sex code.

If you receive this message click OK. While on the registration screen, click on the Owner Lookup button for Owner 1. Search, but do not select the owner. Highlight the owner and click on the Edit Owner button. On the Owner Maintenance screen update the Sex field to M (Male) or F (Female) and click the save button. If there are 2 owners, you will need to follow the same process, selecting Owner 2 tab.

Invalid Title Weight
Issue Documented: 09/22/2008

A MAAP error reporting an invalid title weight is common enough that many of you have experienced it once or twice. This error occurs when Title Bureau is entering the title info into the system and they enter a title weight, which should be left as zero. Our system defaults to a title weight of zero and because this does not match Title Bureau, an error is generated. As this occurs even when the title information has been retrieved from MAAP it can disrupt even the most seasoned Avitar Clerk user.

This issue can be corrected by taking the following steps. While on the title screen, copy the VIN (i.e. select the VIN , right click and select "copy") then click on the Redbook icon. Paste the VIN into the Redbook Lookup and click Search, but do not select, the vehicle. Once the vehicle displays, arrow to the right until you find the field labeled Title Weight. Write down this amount and click Exit to return to the title screen. Under the Vehicle heading, click in the Title Weight field and type in the title weight you just wrote down. This will allow you to complete the process.

Custom Renewal Notices
Issue Documented: 09/22/2008

In the last update, an option was added to allow you to print your notices by Owner, as opposed to the default by street address. Towns that use this custom renewal notices option may experience a problem when trying to print the Suppressed Registration List. If you do not select this option and continue to print your notices by street address, you should not see any difference. However, for those who experience a problem, you can call our office for a database script, or you can bypass this by changing the sort order to "Sort Printed Notices by Street Address" and then printing the Suppressed Registration List. Then change the sort order back to "Sort Printed Notices by Owner Name" and print the notices.