My understanding is that they still have to wait on the sheriff to complete his background check before they can proceed, at least that's the way the law reads. Did something change?
The only thing I see the online application doing is allowing OSBI to establish a file pending the results from your sheriff. If the sheriff drags his feet with prints and BC then I'm not really sure that will speed things up too much. Maybe though, we'll see!
When the sheriff's office finishes it's own background check, then it's sent to the local city where the applicant lives. Total time 14 days to complete the process, If the city doesn't respond to the background check, the background check is sent to OSBI and OSBI will contact the local city to finish the background check.