ECMPS Support

The ECMPS Technical Support Help Desk will be closed on New Year's Day, Friday, January 1st. Technical support will be available again on Monday, January 4th. Please note that due to many of the technical support staff being out of the office until January 4, 2010, responses to your questions might take longer than normal. To receive the fastest reply to your questions, we recommend sending your questions via email rather than using the telephone.

The ECMPS Technical Support Help Desk will also be closed on the following upcoming holidays:

• Presidents' Day - Monday, February 15, 2010
• Memorial Day - Monday, May 31, 2010
• Independence Day (Observed) - Monday, July 5, 2010
• Labor Day - Monday, September 6, 2010

You can view the full technical support holiday schedule here.

Labels: Technical Support

The ECMPS Technical Support Help Desk will be closed on Christmas Day, Friday, December 25th. Technical support will be available again on Monday, December 28th. Please note that due to many of the technical support staff being out of the office until January 4, 2010, responses to your questions might take longer than normal. To receive the fastest reply to your questions, we recommend sending your questions via email rather than using the telephone.

The ECMPS Technical Support Help Desk will also be closed on the following upcoming holidays:

• New Year's Day - Friday, January 1, 2010
• Presidents' Day - Monday, February 15, 2010
• Memorial Day - Monday, May 31, 2010
• Independence Day (Observed) - Monday, July 5, 2010

You can view the full technical support holiday schedule here.

Labels: Technical Support

The holiday season is here, and that means that technical support staff will be taking days off to be home for the holidays.

Technical support will continue to be provided over the next several weeks, but as some of our staff take well deserved time off, it might take a little longer than usual to respond to and resolve your technical support requests.

Also, note that there will be no technical support available on December 25, 2009 and January 1, 2010. However, beginning January 4, 2010, the technical support team will all be back in the office.

From everyone at ECMPS technical support, we hope your family and you have a wonderful holiday season and a happy new year.

Labels: Technical Support

According to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, today, Monday, December 21, 2009, all Federal agencies in the Washington, DC area are closed.

This means that the U.S. EPA Clean Air Markets Division (CAMD) office will be closed, and personnel you are used to contacting will be out of the office.

The 2009 Quarter 4 Release of the Client Tool is now available.

For details about what was included in this release, consult the Release Notes.

In order to use the Client Tool, you must be a Designated Representative, Alternate Designated Representative, or an ECMPS agent for a Representative. In addition, you must have a CAMD Business System (CBS) user name, current CBS password, and have completed a CROMERR Subscriber Agreement Form.

All current users of the Client Tool will be prompted to upgrade to this latest version the next time that each user logs in to the EPA Host System. For more information about the Update Service which updates the Client Tool, watch the Update Service tutorial.

All new users of the Client Tool must download and install the 2009 Q4 version of the Client Tool. Users are urged to follow all instructions on the Web site and to consult the Installation Guide for step-by-step instructions on how to install the Client Tool.

In order to insure that all technical support questions are tracked and answered, EPA has requested that all technical support questions, including installation questions, should be submitted to ECMPS Technical Support.

The CAMD Business System (CBS) is currently unavailable in order to complete a scheduled upgrade. CBS is scheduled to be available again on Thursday, December 17th.

Labels: CAMD Business System

CAMD is looking for Feedback from Data and Maps Users

The data which are submitted through ECMPS end up in two locations. The first place is the EPA Host System which is the production database for all CAMD Business System and ECMPS data. A copy of some of these data are also copied to another database. That database is a read-only database which is used by the Web-based application Data and Maps.

Data and Maps is a publicly-accessible Internet application that provides access to emissions, allowance, compliance, and other program data which have been submitted to the EPA Host System.

CAMD would like to get feedback from users regarding their use of Data and Maps. If you, or someone you know, uses Data and Maps and would be available to be contacted by CAMD in order to provide feedback on Data and Maps, please send an email to the Data and Maps technical support.

Labels: Data and Maps

New Features Suggested By Users

The 2009 Q4 version of the Client Tool is scheduled to be released on Wednesday, December 16th. Along with bug fixes, the new version will have some new features. This is the third in a series of posts on some of the new features that will be available in the 2009 Q4 version.

The last post mentioned new features that had been suggested by users in the Shared Database Users' Forum (SDUF). Of course, suggestions come from users who are not shared database users. This post includes new features in the 2009 Q4 Client Tool that were suggested by users who are not part of the SDUF.

1. Allow monitoring plans to be entered for locations that are not going to be operational for more than a year into the future.


2. Add the serial number as a column to the upper data grid on the Components tab.


3. Add retired monitoring plans to Feedback Report.


4. Show submissions for all agents in Submission Log. (Shared Database only.)


5. Add option to view release notes when updating.

Suggestions for enhancements are always welcome, and any suggested enhancements should be sent to technical support. Before submitting a suggested enhancement, you should first first check the Requested Enhancements page.

If you have a suggested enhancement, send it along to technical support. However, you also might want to first check the Requested Enhancements page. On that page, there is a long list of suggestions which have been received along with the statuses of the requests. In some cases, your suggestion may already be on the list. If not, send an email to technical support with your suggested enhancement.

Recently Added FAQ explains How to Resubmit Data

With the January submission period, year-round reporting sources will complete their 2009 emissions submissions. However, as might be expected, the fourth quarter reporting often leads to the resubmission of data for previous quarters in the reporting year.

At ECMPS Technical Support, we are anticipating that the January reporting month will not be any different than in previous years, and we are fully expecting that that there will be an increase in requests to resubmit data.

In order to prepare for that, there is a new FAQ which answers the question of how to resubmit data.

The FAQ is organized by the three different data types--monitoring plan, QA, and emissions. It describes what sources need to do in order to resubmit these different data types.

If you need to resubmit data, please consult this FAQ for information on what steps you need to take.

Labels: FAQ, Technical Support Tip

Enhancements Suggested by the Shared Database Users' Forum

The 2009 Q4 version of the Client Tool is scheduled to be released on Wednesday, December 16th. Along with bug fixes, the new version will have some new features. This is the second in a series of posts on some of the new features that will be available in the 2009 Q4 version.

In this post, the focus is on features that were first suggested by the Shared Database Users' Forum. The Shared Database Users' Forum is made up of volunteers who have agreed to provide feedback on their use of the Client Tool in the context of using it in a shared network database setup.

All of the following new features for the 2009 Q4 version were suggested by forum participants.

1. The Evaluation Results screen now includes the ability to save all of the results to a Microsoft Excel file.


2. The File Import Validation Report now includes the User ID associated with each import.


3. Date filters were added to the QA report selection criteria screens.
   


4. A User Locks Report was added to show what resources are locked by which users.


5. All report selection screens were made to be re-sizable.

If you are a shared network database user and would like to participate in the forum, send an email to technical support indicating your interest in participating in the Shared Database Users' Forum.

This week some members of the team who have helped design, develop, test, maintain, and support several CAMD applications, including ECMPS, went on a business trip to the National Computer Center (NCC). Early Tuesday morning found six of us in a rented minivan headed to Research Triangle Park, North Carolina where NCC is located. In support of CAMD, we spent the day in meetings with CAMD and NCC personnel.

NCC hosts the EPA data center for many of the applications with which ECMPS users are familar: CAMD Business System (CBS), Data & Maps, and, of course, ECMPS.

During the meetings, we had the opportunity to meet a number of the people who help maintain the actual servers which are part of CAMD's technical architecture. Unfortunately, because one of the presentations ran long, we were not able to get a data center tour. Of course, it was good to be able to put faces to names, and we appreciated the opportunity to discuss ways to continue to improve our collaboration in supporting CAMD's applications.

Here is a picture of five of us outside the main building.


Jennifer Johnson, David Ward, Mark Hayward, Peter Robie, Bill Myers, Ingrid Thomson (photographer)

(By the way, if you ever wonder where your data go after you submit it to EPA. The data end up in the building behind us.)

Generate a Non-Operating Emissions File

The 2009 Q4 version of the Client Tool is scheduled to be released on Wednesday, December 16th. Along with bug fixes, the new version will have some new features. Some of these new features will be described in this post and in several upcoming posts.

The first new feature to be highlighted is the ability to generate a non-operating emissions file in the Client Tool.

If you need to report for a unit which did not operate during a quarter, you can use this functionality to generate an emissions file with zeros for every hour. The feature is found in the Emissions module. To use, simply select the facility and quarter and then generate the file. After the file has been generated, it will automatically be evaluated. Once the data have been evaluated without any critical 1 errors, the emissions data are ready to be submitted to the EPA.

As part of the preparation for the release of the next version of the ECMPS Client Tool, the EPA Host System will be unavailable from December 9th through December 16th. On December 16th, the next version is scheduled to be released. At that time users who have already installed the Client Tool will be required to update to the new version, and users who have not installed the Client Tool will be able to download and install the new version.

Users who have outstanding data which need to be submitted or resubmitted should complete any submissions or resubmissions before December 9th. Otherwise, these users will need to wait until December 16th in order to submit or resubmit data.

During the planned outage time, users will only be able to use the Client Tool in the "Work Offline" mode. The following functionality will not be available:

• Log in to the EPA Host System from the Client Tool.


• Perform the initial synchronization which is the last step in installing the Client Tool.


• Synchronize data from the EPA Host System.


• Retrieve data from the EPA Host System.


• Submit data to the EPA Host System.

Labels: Release Schedule Information

As in previous months prior to submission periods, there will be a release of a new version (2009 Q4) of the Client Tool. The new version of the Client Tool is scheduled to be released on Wednesday, December 16th.

Once the new version is released, the next time that users attempt to log in to the EPA Host System, they will be required to update to the new version of the software.

Prior to the release, the EPA Host System will be unavailable for about a week. Users will be unable to log in to the EPA Host System from Wednesday, December 9th until the release on December 16th. The inability to log in to the EPA Host System will prevent users from using the Client Tool to synchronize data, to retrieve data, and to submit data.

Shared database users should plan for the shared database to be updated with the release of the new version. On the day that the new version is released, the script to update the database will be made available. In addition, the two files that are used for performing the update using the Update utility will also be available in order to support users who need to upgrade but do not log in to the EPA Host System.

Labels: Release Schedule Information