EasyNOCs · how to use it

A short guide to the portal

Three sections: what everybody needs, what you need if you keep a project's records current, and what you need if you look after people and projects. Each one stands on its own, so start wherever your job starts. If you would rather be shown than told, the tour walks the same ground on the real pages.

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Getting in

Everybody · two minutes

The portal holds live project records, so nothing is visible until you sign in. The first screen you meet is the sign-in box; there is no version of the portal you can browse without an account.

Go to easynocs.com and sign in with your work email.
If you have never used it before, use Request access on the same screen. That creates the account but does not switch it on.
An administrator approves the request and chooses which projects you can see. Until that happens you will be told your account is waiting — that is expected, not a fault.

You will not see every project Access is given per project, not per person. If a colleague can see something you cannot, that is the access list doing its job. Ask an administrator to add you to that project rather than assuming something is broken.

What the tools are for

Everybody · the home page in one screen

The home page splits in two. Active tasks are the tools that hold live project records. Knowledge & references is material about what the authorities require — no project data in it at all, so it is safe to read through before an application is raised.

The Active tasks section of the home page, showing four tool cards — The four tools that hold live records. Which ones you see depends on your access.

Tool	Use it when
NOC Tracker	You need to find, read or update a specific approval. This is the one most people use all day.
Project Dashboard	You want to know how a project is doing overall — what is late, what is coming, what the authorities still owe you.
Project Planner	You are starting a project and need the requirement list and a programme for it.
Portfolio Insights	You need numbers across every project — approval rates, authority turnaround, workload — usually for a report.
Authorities hubs & checklists	You need to know what a particular authority asks for before you submit.

Everyone

Finding an approval

The fastest routes to one record

There are three ways in, and the right one depends on what you already know.

If you know roughly what you are looking for

Use the search box at the top of the NOC Tracker. It looks across every project you can see — not just the one you happen to be in — and it searches references, authorities, NOC names and the remarks.

The portal-wide search box on the NOC Tracker — One box, every project you have access to.

If you know the state it is in

The tiles across the top are filters. Click Expiring / Overdue and the projects below narrow to just those NOCs. Click it again to clear it.

The status tiles across the top of the NOC Tracker — Totals across every project you can see. Each one is a filter.

Two of these are about your programme rather than the approval itself:

Submission due — the planned submission date has arrived or passed and nothing has gone in yet.
Approval due — it was submitted and should have come back by now. “5 late” means five are already past the date.

If you know the project

Open the project card and use the toolbar: search within the project, filter by authority, sort, and narrow with the status chips. The filters stack, so you can ask for “everything from Civil Defence that is expiring”.

The project toolbar with search, authority filter, sort and status chips — Design and site NOCs are kept apart, because they are usually different people's work.

?Show me on the Tracker

Everyone

Reading a record

What the columns are telling you

The NOC table for a project, showing columns and status badges — One row per approval, with the plan and the reality side by side.

The columns come in two pairs, and the gap between them is the whole point:

Column	What it is
Expected submission	Plan. When you intended to submit.
Submission	Reality. When it actually went in. Empty means it has not.
Expected approval	Plan. When you expected it back.
Issuance	Reality. When the authority actually issued it.
Expiry	When the approval stops being valid. Blank means it does not expire.
Reference	The authority's own number for it — what you quote when you chase.

Comparing a planned date against an empty actual date is how the portal knows something is late. That is where every “due” and “overdue” figure in the portal comes from — so a record with no planned dates cannot tell you it is slipping.

Everyone

Seeing a project as a plan

The Project Dashboard

The Tracker answers “what is the state of this approval”. The Project Dashboard answers “how is this project doing”. Same records, different question.

Open a project and the top row gives you the headline numbers. A tile only appears when the project has something to put in it, so an empty tile is never shown just to fill the row.

The KPI tiles on a project dashboard — Progress, approvals in, what is overdue, and what falls due within the month.

Below that, two views worth knowing:

Where the work lands — each authority against each month. A dark cell is a month with a lot falling due on one authority, which is usually a month worth re-planning.
Needs action now and Coming up — overdue targets and lapsed approvals in the first, things about to fall due in the second. Click any line to open that record.

The NOC timeline on the project dashboard — Each bar runs from planned start to target. Green where the approval is in, red where the date has passed.

?Show me on the Dashboard

If you can edit

Updating a NOC

Only on projects you have been given edit access to

If you can edit a project, the rows carry three small buttons on the right and an + Add NOC button sits in the toolbar. If you cannot see them, you have view access to that project — which is a setting, not a fault.

Button	What it does
✎ Edit	Opens the record to change dates, status, reference or remarks.
⎘ Duplicate	Copies the row with its name and authority, leaving the dates blank. The quickest way to raise a renewal.
✕ Delete	Removes the row. Use this for something added in error — not for an approval that has lapsed, which is part of the record.

The edit panel for a single NOC record — Everything about one approval in one place.

Saves are immediate and shared There is no draft state. When you save, everyone looking at that project sees the change straight away — which is the point, but it does mean there is no undo. Check the date before you save, not after.

You can also edit from the Project Dashboard: click any row and a panel opens at the side, with the facts on the left of the change and the fields you can edit below them.

The side panel on the project dashboard, showing facts and editable fields — If a row has been changed since its plan was imported, the panel shows what it said before and offers to put it back.

If you can edit

Which date goes where

The single most common mistake

Four date fields, and putting a value in the wrong one quietly breaks every late-and-overdue figure in the portal. The rule is simple: expected dates are what you intended, the other two are what happened.

When you…	Fill in
Plan the work	Expected submission and expected approval. Do this even if the dates are rough — a record with no planned dates can never report itself late.
Send the application	Submission date. Leave expected submission exactly as it was, even if you were late. Overwriting it erases the slippage.
Get the approval back	Issuance date, the reference number, and the expiry date if it has one. Set the status to Approved.
Get comments back	Set the status to Returned / Comments and note what was asked for in the remarks. Leave the dates alone.

Do not move an expected date to make a tile go green The expected dates are the record of what was planned. If they are rewritten whenever reality disagrees with them, the portal will always show everything on programme and will never again be able to tell you a project is slipping. A date that has passed is information, not an error to tidy away.

If you can edit

Renewals and expiry

An expired approval is not a finished one. The portal treats a lapsed NOC as outstanding work: it stops counting towards progress and appears under “needs action now” beside the overdue items, because both mean somebody has to act.

To raise a renewal:

Find the expiring NOC — the Expiring / Overdue tile collects them.
Use Duplicate on that row. You get the same authority and NOC name with the dates cleared.
Fill in the new expected submission and approval dates and save.
Leave the old row alone. It is the record of the approval you held, and deleting it loses the history.

If you can edit

Getting data out

You want	Where
One project's tracker	Export Tracker in the project toolbar. You get exactly what you are looking at, filters included.
Every project at once	Export all to Excel on the Tracker dashboard.
Numbers for a report	Portfolio Insights — a printable report, or the data as Excel or CSV for Power BI.
The project's own workbook back	Download Excel on the Project Dashboard. This returns the original file with only your changed cells written into it — the same workbook, not a new one that looks similar.

Administrators

People and access

The Admin panel, reached from the Tracker

People are listed in four groups — administrators, active, trial and revoked — collapsed by default, because the list grows and an expanded list of everyone is unreadable. Search, sort, or filter by “access to” a particular project to find somebody.

Approving somebody new

Find them in the list — a new request arrives as a pending account.
Open their row and set their status to approved.
Give them projects. An approved account with no projects can sign in and see nothing at all, which is the most common “it is broken” report there is.
Choose viewer or editor per project. Viewers read; editors change records.

Access is per project, not per person Somebody can be an editor on one project and a viewer on another. There is also a “see all projects” setting for people who genuinely need the whole portfolio — use it sparingly, since it bypasses the per-project list entirely.

Administrators

Projects and pages

Adding a project

The + Add project tile sits at the end of the project grid. You can also copy the authority and NOC list from an existing project: everything else — status, dates, reference, remarks — starts blank and every item begins at Not Started. That is the quickest way to start a new project from a checklist that has already proved itself.

Archiving rather than deleting

A finished project should be archived, not deleted. It drops out of the active list and the headline counts but stays on record and stays searchable. Deleting removes the history for everybody.

Page visibility and appearance

Which pages appear on the home page is set in the admin panel, so a tool can be built and held back until it is ready. Appearance — colours, fonts, spacing — is set once for everybody from the home page, so the portal looks the same to the whole team.

Administrators

Importing a plan

A project's plan — its requirement list, notices, authority data requests, contacts and sources — comes from a tracker workbook page. On the Project Dashboard, open the project and use Import plan.

The file carries everything needed inside it, so nothing is retyped.
The plan's NOCs become that project's NOC Tracker records, so they turn up in the Tracker, in Insights and in the due tiles like any other.
Importing again replaces the plan and clears edits made on the dashboard. Records the Tracker already held that did not come from a plan are left alone.

The workbook is kept The original Excel file is stored with the plan. That is what lets Download Excel hand back the office's own workbook with only the changed cells written into it, rather than a new file in a different shape.

What each status means

Reference · and which tile it lands in

Status	Counts as	Use it when
Approved	Approved / Valid	The approval is in hand and in date.
Approved with Comments	Approved / Valid	Issued, with conditions to carry out.
Valid/Active	Approved / Valid	In force, where there is no single issuance date.
Submitted - Awaiting Approval	In Process	It is with the authority and the clock is running.
In Process	In Process	Being worked on, either side.
Returned / Comments	Needs Attention	Came back with queries. Note them in the remarks.
Not Started	Needs Attention	Known about, not begun.
To Be Confirmed	Needs Attention	You are not yet sure it is required, or by whom.
Not Yet Due	In Process	Deliberately not started — its time has not come.
Expired	Expired	Lapsed and not renewed.
Not Applicable	Counted nowhere	Ruled out for this project. Left out of progress entirely, so it neither helps nor hurts the percentage.

An approval whose expiry date has passed is treated as expired whatever its status still says — the status stays as an honest record of what happened, but a lapsed NOC is not protecting the work today and the portal counts it accordingly.

Common questions

I signed in but there is nothing there

Your account is approved but has no projects on it. Ask an administrator to add you to the projects you work on.

A colleague can see a project and I cannot

Access is given per project. Nothing is wrong — you need adding to it.

I cannot edit, and the Add NOC button is missing

You have viewer access to that project. An administrator can change it to editor.

I changed something and want it back

In the Tracker there is no undo — retype the previous value. On the Project Dashboard, a row imported with a plan keeps its original values and offers Revert to original.

The numbers on the Tracker and the Dashboard look different

They answer different questions. The Tracker counts records by status. The Dashboard weighs how far along each one is and reads every date against today, so a half-finished project shows as part-way rather than as nothing. Both are counting the same records.

Something looks wrong in the data

Fix it if it is your project to fix, and tell the coordinator if it is not. Everything is shared and live, so a correction helps everybody at once.

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