Features

Everything a permit needs, from application to audit.

Milo is one platform with three faces: a resident portal, a staff workspace and an administration layer where your team configures the rules. Here is what each one does.

Resident portal

Apply, pay and renew without a phone call.

Residents, businesses, consultants and agencies each get an account scoped to what they are allowed to see. No anonymous access by design — every action is tied to a person.

  • Sign-in options — email and password, Google, Microsoft, or your identity provider (OIDC); one-time-code MFA.
  • Guided forms — mandatory fields, drop-downs, format rules, conditional questions, document checklists with accepted formats.
  • Save and resume — drafts kept until the applicant is ready; eligibility checked against your GIS address data at intake.
  • Status in plain language — dated history, return-for-information loop, withdraw before approval, invoices always available.
  • Renewals and waitlists — pre-filled renewals, reminders at 30 and 7 days, waitlist position shown, optional auto-renewal.
  • Accessible and multilingual — WCAG 2.1 AA, accessibility widget, English, French and Spanish, works on any phone.
Milo resident dashboard: active permits, applications in progress, household limit, an unfinished application with Continue, and quick actions

Resident dashboard — active permits, an unfinished application to resume, and quick actions. Demo City sample data.

Workflow builder

Compose a permit from stages, not from code.

Super admins compose each permit arc visually from four stage types. Workflows are validated before publishing and can be walked end-to-end in a sandbox with no live emails, texts or payments.

Applicant input

Forms, documents and declarations required from the requester, with per-stage document checklists.

Staff review

Assigned to a role, user or department; circulation to external agencies with responded/outstanding tracking.

Decision

Approve, approve with conditions, refuse or return — with structured outcomes and clearance of conditions per party.

Payment

Anywhere in the arc: application fee up front, permit fee on approval, deposits, ad hoc charges.

  • Unlimited stages and workflows; duplicate a workflow to start the next permit
  • Conditional routing from intake answers; branches and resubmissions as linked files
  • Role permissions enforced on every transition; separation of duties
  • Stage timers with threshold alerts and follow-up dates (set up at onboarding)
  • "Accepting applications" switch with availability dates per program
  • Separate test environment with TEST ribbon and resettable sample data

Staff workspace

One queue across every program.

Clerks, planners, finance and enforcement work the same files from a single review queue, each seeing only what their role allows.

  • Find anything — live search as you type; filter by applicant, type, stage, address, dates, file number; saved filters.
  • Bulk actions — notify, approve, reject, assign or reassign many files at once.
  • One-screen review — applicant, property, documents, payments, eligibility results and map on a single page.
  • Comments on the file — identified, timestamped, with statuses; admins can edit, reassign or compile them into a letter.
  • Third-party seats — animal control, conservation authorities, utilities and consultants get scoped accounts, tasks and deadlines.
  • Staff SSO — Microsoft Entra ID or Google Workspace; groups mapped to Milo roles; optional IP allowlist.
Milo staff application queue with saved filters, live search, filters by status, staff member, zone and program, and export buttonsMilo staff review screen showing applicant, permit requested, payment, household check, eligibility checks, zone map and the Approve, Deny, Request information, Return to resident and Reassign actions

The review queue with saved filters and bulk export, and the one-screen review with every check and action in one place.

Documents and correspondence

Every version kept. Every letter from a template.

Uploads are stamped with uploader and date and versioned additively — earlier versions are never lost. Documents show per stage while a file is active and as one dossier once it is complete.

Storage, your way

Built-in document management by default; extend to S3-compatible storage for high volumes, or store and mirror in Google Drive.

Three ways to write a letter

Automated notices on workflow triggers; your templates with editable sections; or OfferioAI drafting a compiled comment letter for staff review.

Output formats

PDF, editable Word or Google Docs; permits as PDF with QR code; full-file export of records, documents and audit trail in one action.

Payments and finance

Payment is a stage, not a separate system.

Residents pay inside Milo through QuickBlu, Blü's own payment service — never redirected to a third-party page. Invoices attach to both the file and the payer's account.

  • Fee schedule your staff maintain — conditional and variable fees (per lot, per unit), proration, permit and renewal and replacement fees.
  • Pay-on-approval or authorize-then-capture — choose per program.
  • Counter payments — terminal, cheque or cash recorded against the same invoice with the terminal reference.
  • Refunds and waivers — full or partial to the original method; waivers by code or authorization with the approver recorded.
  • Reconciliation — financial dashboard reconciles to processor settlements; arrears exportable to the tax roll.

QuickBlu

Blü's in-app payment service — credit card, Interac and EFT in Canada; credit card in the US

Worldline

Card processing on your own merchant account (Canada)

Moneris

Moneris Checkout with 3-D Secure and Vault tokens (Canada)

Stripe

Card processing on your own account (Canada and US)

PCI out of scope

Tokens, brand and last four digits only — never card data

Notices and communication

Reach residents the way they asked to be reached.

Standard notices follow each registered user's preferences — email, SMS or both. Emergency notices override those preferences and go to everyone, by every channel, at once.

Milo notification preferences: send to email or text message, and which messages the resident receives — renewal reminders, status updates, street sweeping alerts, payment receipts

Workflow messages

Configurable text at every transition: received, paid, approved, expiring, revoked.

Reminder rules

Per-rule timing, channel and template — 30 and 7 days before expiry, follow-up dates with alerts.

Banners and community notices

Severity, audience and schedule; also sent by email or SMS — park closures, vaccine season, lost pets.

Letter mail

Blü prints and mails invoices and renewal notices (up to three sheets) for residents who are not online. Mail-out service →

Reporting and audit

Numbers council can trust, exports Finance can use.

Operational and financial dashboards out of the box; every list and report exports to Excel, CSV, PDF or TXT, restricted by role, with Power BI-ready keys.

Operational

Volumes, approval rate, median and 90th-percentile processing time, active permits — by program, zone, status and period; filter by drawing on the map.

Financial

Revenue, refunds, outstanding, authorized-not-captured — by month, method and program; full transaction list with receipts.

Audit

Immutable server-side trail — user, role, time, IP, before and after values — with retention you set, legal hold and SIEM export.

OfferioAI inside Milo

Closed-loop AI that drafts, never decides.

OfferioAI is enabled at onboarding as a standard option. It runs closed-loop and data-sovereign — your files never train a public model — and every output goes to a staff member for review before it leaves the building.

  • Letter drafting — compile agency and staff comments into a notice from your approved templates.
  • Completeness review — flag missing documents and inconsistent answers at submission.
  • Public-comment summary — group uploaded comments by theme for a report.
  • Staff assistant — answers over your policies, by-laws and past files, with citations.
Draft · Notice of decision

Re: Minor variance A-2026-14, 14 Elm Street. The Committee reviewed comments from the Conservation Authority (no objection, setback condition) and Public Works (grading plan required). Having regard to the four tests…

Template: Decision-NOD-v32 comments compiledAwaiting staff review

Illustrative draft

Administration and support

Run it yourselves. Call us when you want to.

Milo zones and addresses administration: each permit zone with eligible addresses and capacity, the ArcGIS zone map, the GIS connection settings and the map zones linked to each permit zone

Zones and addresses — each permit zone with its eligible addresses and capacity, linked to the City's ArcGIS layer.

Programs and zones

Terms, limits per address, required documents, eligibility rules; zones imported from ArcGIS, shapefile or GeoJSON.

Users and roles

Assigned by a super admin — yours or Blü's; groups synced from Entra ID hourly; session limits and failed-login blocking.

Help where staff are

User guide and video tutorials inside Milo; role-based training sessions in English, French or Spanish; train-the-trainer.

Support and SLA

Weekdays 8–6 ET, 24/7 for emergencies; emergency response within 1 hour; quarterly service reviews; zero-downtime releases.

See these features on your own permits.

A configured walkthrough takes 45 minutes.

Book a Demo