HMRC have asked us to share the latest update.

“Agent Forum (AF)

As at end of April 2019 the Forum has over 1158 Agent subscribers, up 17 since the last progress report. And 153 HMRC staff. We continue to both build our Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) capability, recruiting from across HMRC to improve issue resolution responses and on the introduction of an Agent Forum platform upgrade. We are now at SPRINT 3 of the new upgrade MS Dynamics platform, having undertaken User Research of a Minimum Viable Products (MVP) with a number of volunteer agents. Other performance metrics include over 105k views (up 7k), 5402 posted messages (up 1075) on 924 current topics (Up 25), all since July 2017; which are moderated daily with appropriate responses given, as determined by subject matter, related traffic generated and referrals provided by line of business.

Our priority after delivering issue resolutions to agent enquiries, continues to be enlisting formal internal HMRC SME engagements and focusing on upgrading the existing platform, which is being developed as an Agile project. The approved platform is Microsoft Dynamics. We are now entering the Test & Design stages of associated installation, training and data migration activities.

We are still publishing our weekly digest email to all registered Agent forum members. It summarises traffic posted on the forum during the previous 7 days, with dedicated links to specific issues raised. System metrics show it continues to significantly increased agent engagement and forum views.

We continue to work closely with the Issues Overview Group (IOG) on widespread queries. We note they have had a recent conversation and are in the process of identifying and communicating their collective views to HMRC. A key responsibility of the IoG group is to jointly determine what the ‘widespread’ issues priority classification should be, for earliest resolution.

The Digital Customer Support Services (DCSS) Agent Team is staffed by a Service Manager and 2.5 FTE Issues Resolution Managers (IRMs), who moderate and run the forum.”

END OF HMRC UPDATE