LINZ News

In brief

• The Southland District, Invercargill City and Gore District Councils are meeting with LINZ this month to plan how the Southland region will implement the introduction of TA e-certification in their region. This will mark the first time that councils have done this on a group basis rather than as individual organisations.



• The Wanganui law community has committed to having all nine of its law firms trained in e-dealing. Following a recent LINZ workshop on e-dealing, every Wanganui law firm booked for onsite training. It was the positive relationship between the firms that encouraged them to reap the full benefits of e-dealing.



• A total of 295 law firms were e-dealing in August – an increase of 40 on the previous month. Thirty-eight of those completed an e-dealing for the first time.



• e-dealing's share of the total e-dealing capable lodgements now sits at 13.9 percent – up 1.9 percentage points from the previous month.



• Quoted in August National Business Review: "E-commerce means lots of things are getting cheaper for businesses. We hear that fees for conveyancing are cheaper than ever thanks to the Land Information New Zealand e-dealing service. Recently, senior associate Sharyn Robertson, of Auckland law firm Carter & Partners, processed 54 titles in one partial discharge of mortgage and it cost the client only $21, saving thousands of dollars. Naturally, hundreds of other solicitors will soon be passing on the benefit to their clients with lower bills as a result."

Landonline maintenance and upgrade cycle to increase

LINZ's twice-yearly Landonline maintenance and upgrade cycle is to become a three-times-a-year programme.

The changed timetable follows a review of the release cycle process by LINZ and IBM, which is contracted to undertake Landonline maintenance and improvements.

Customer Systems Manager Ron Munro says this now enables more changes to be implemented within shorter timeframes. Customers will benefit from a less intrusive process because the behind-the-scenes work is now separated from changes that affect their interaction with Landonline.

LINZ will continue to notify customers of any Landonline changes through the System Updates page on the Landonline website.

United States visit confirms secure future for Landonline users

A recent fact-finding trip to the United States by LINZ senior management confirmed that New Zealand lawyers and surveyors work with one of the most efficient integrated electronic survey and title registers in the world.

LINZ Chief Information Officer Tony Lester, Chief Executive Brendan Boyle and General Manager Sharon Cottrell spent two weeks last month meeting with a range of LINZ's high profile strategic vendors.

"LINZ has always known that the Landonline application was a world first. The organisation can also be confident that its investment in the Landonline infrastructure positions Landonline well for customers in the future," says Tony.

The visit:

• confirmed the future sustainability of the Landonline infrastructure
• provided a clear view of where technology will move in the future enabling LINZ to make sound future investment decisions
• ensured the strategic vendors are aware of LINZ's direction

"We need to have a robust backup, recovery and archiving system and this has always been a key focus for LINZ," says Tony.

"What excites us is that during discussions with our database storage suppliers in Massachusetts, we saw several ways to replicate the Landonline database to protect users in the event of an outage or disaster."

"Replication technology will replace the need to do constant back-ups and with that, the cost of creating such a secure environment has significantly reduced."

Tony says LINZ will now plan how to best use the technology options available to the organisation.

• In next month's Landwrap, Tony will discuss Security opportunities and the future of the core Informix database that underpins Landonline.

Landonline

Upgrade to e-dealing for just $100

Did you know that it only costs $100 to upgrade your Landonline e-search licence to an e-dealing licence?

Your e-dealing licence will provide all the privileges of e-search but with the added benefits of e-dealing. The benefits of e-dealing are outlined on the Landonline website.

LINZ provides free onsite e-dealing training and support services to help you adopt and learn how to use e-dealing. Most of the 20 percent of law firms trained by LINZ in the last 12 months are now successfully using e-dealing for:

• Sixteen types of discharges (full and partial)
• Simple mortgages
• Simple transfer instruments

To experience the time and cost efficiencies of the e-dealing service email e-dealing@linz.govt.nz to register your interest in onsite training. Alternatively, phone our e-dealing Enablement Representative on Phone 0800 ONLINE (0800 665 463) option 1.

LINZ offers more free e-survey training

Two Wellington companies have been awarded contracts to deliver e-survey training to surveyors nationwide.

Cadastre Ltd and Winmill e-survey Solutions are expected to train a substantial number of firms between September 2005 and June next year.

Cadastre Ltd has trained 125 firms during the past year. e-survey Uptake Project Manager Mark Williams is also very pleased to have Winmill e-survey Solutions delivering training.

"In addition to his extensive experience working as a surveyor, Ralph Winmill was involved in developing Landonline," says Mark.

As the benefits of e-survey (lower cycle times and lower costs for firms) become widely known, demand for training is growing. Twenty of the 195 firms still to be trained nationwide are already on a waiting list.

To get your firm started in e-survey contact e-survey@linz.govt.nz

Surveyors Conference to feature strong LINZ presence

LINZ Chief Executive Brendan Boyle is one of the seven keynote speakers invited to address this year's New Zealand Institute of Surveyors Conference in Dunedin.

Titled "Back to the Future", the three-day conference from 12 to 15 October will focus on the trends and developments surveyors can expect to see in the future.

Brendan welcomes the opportunity to discuss Landonline with the surveying community which he says is quickly grasping the benefits. He also looks forward to discussing issues around LINZ's role in survey plan examination.

LINZ Property Rights Analyst Miriam Tinkler will run a workshop on LandXML, the transfer process that allows surveyors to import and export information to and from Landonline.

The workshop will provide a demonstration of a recommended e-survey practise model to people familiar with Landonline. LINZ staff will be on hand to answer questions and hand out the latest computer-based training tool which focuses on LandXML.

LINZ welcomes Landonline usability research findings

An independent review of Landonline has given LINZ comprehensive and valuable feedback from customers on their experiences using both e-dealing and e-survey.

To ensure that Landonline is as easy to use as possible, LINZ commissioned a usability expert to interview a range of Auckland, Christchurch and Hawkes Bay survey and law firms using Landonline.

Customer Systems Manager Ron Munro says a team of LINZ experts is considering carefully the usability opportunities raised through the research results.

Ron says the research results are already helping LINZ to better integrate usability into the Landonline development life cycle.

Product and Service Owner Robyn Nicholl says while LINZ was delighted to learn there are no significant usability issues, a number of points raised did highlight the need for LINZ to clarify the reason for and purpose behind certain processes and documents.

The e-survey pre-validation report and users' ability to identify the most appropriate e-dealing tools and support for their needs, are cases in point. Work is now underway on these areas.

It was also recognised that certain Landonline tasks could be better communicated to users by LINZ. This will be achieved through Landwrap, conference workshops and during training delivery.

Customer software upgrade draws thanks and extended deadline

LINZ thanks Landonline users who have upgraded their Citrix ICA and UniPrint Client software. The level of co-operation was noticeably high and much appreciated.

You will notice that the Citrix ICA and UniPrint Client Server upgrade gives you enhanced performance, stability and reliability when you are logged into Landonline.

If you have not yet upgraded, you may have seen a pop-up prompt when you log on to Landonline. This prompt reminds you to uninstall the previous version of Citrix ICA and UniPrint Client and install the newest version by October 11.

LINZ has extended the final date to upgrade your software to October 11. If you are one of the few who have not completed the upgrade, you have until October 12. After that you will be unable to log on until you have upgraded. The upgrade instructions can be found on the Landonline website.

Should you require assistance during the upgrade process, please call Customer Support on 0800 665 463, choosing option 4.

Hot Topics

e-dealing timesaving Hints and Tips: # Complete Create Dealing screen

This is our monthly spot taking you through the 5 steps of e-dealing. This month:

Step 5 – Prepare Instruments

General

• There are several ways to open an instrument screen:
• Double click on the dealing or instrument in My Work.
• Right click on the instrument in Workspace and select Open from the drop down list.
• Select the instrument on the menu bar at top of the Workspace screen and select edit.
• There are shortcut keys you can use in each screen (look for the underlined letter on buttons or menu items and use the ALT key and the underlined letter).
• Select an instrument in the Type field or Status field to avoid displaying drop down lists.

Discharge Mortgage screen

• Ensure you press the Tab key after entering an instrument number in the Discharge Mortgage screen to display the mortgagee name for that instrument.
• Search the title first (in Create Dealing).
• Pre-validate to find any other titles affected by the mortgage.

Transfer screen

• Ensure you have the right owners.
• Select the correct proprietorship type before entering data. This is particularly important for a Combination proprietorship, as you can only edit the last row in this type of tenancy.
• Make sure that all the individuals in a group share are grouped together but identify the fraction against the group only once. For example, ensure that all the shares add up to one.
• Use the Refresh button if you accidentally delete proprietors.
• Be aware that there are separate fields for given name and family name. These fields display as they will appear on the title, so be careful with using correct capitalisation (and spelling).

Mortgage screen

• Know the quick codes for the banks and/or where to get them (help, website, user guide).
• The TAN recipient field is not used. Remember that TAN functionality has not been made active.
• Most banks are asking for a Priority Amount to be entered. This is information is not mandatory, however if you leave it blank a message will query this choice when you save the mortgage instrument.
• The Group and Group Share fields are only used in those cases where the mortgagees hold the mortgage in different shares or amounts.

Group	Group Share	Given Name	Family Name
A	1/2	Jason	Charles
A		Susan	Charles
B	1/4	Karl	Zeuchs
B		Meena	Zeuchs
B		Paula	Zeuchs
B		Samuel	Dorr
C	1/4	Angus	McLay

Surveyors using LandXML get more from Landonline

LINZ is urging surveyors to make better use of LandXML.

Senior Business Analyst Jo Head says to gain maximum benefit from the LandXML functionality provided by Landonline, surveyors need to extract the underlying survey data surrounding the proposed new survey. This will enable additional elements and attributes to be incorporated into the new XML file imported into Landonline.

The following information in the extracted XML file will be imported into the new XML file:

• Mark and node oIDs (official identifier = Landonline unique identifier) – used for linking marks
• Mark descriptions – good for the next surveyor who uses your data rather than having to go back to the source data
• Parcel oIDs – used for identifying Extinguished, Referenced or Affected parcels
• Comprised in references field for the Extinguished, Referenced or Affected parcels
• Adopted bearing and distance sources can be used directly

Jo says if the underlying data is not extracted, it will take significantly more time and effort to include this information in Landonline.

You can access documents and more information on LandXML and Landonline on the Landonline website.

Don't forget to change your logon password regularly

Every 90 days you will receive a prompt to change your password. You have five grace logons to change your logon password. This is not five days but five times you log on and log off Landonline.

We urge you to change your password the first time you receive the prompt. After changing your password, Certifying and Signing users need to log out, then log on, so signing can proceed. If you do not log out and on again, signing will fail when the system looks for the old password rather than your new one.

Landwrap

Landwrap is the authoritative news and information source for survey and title customers.

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