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Technical Alerts

February 6, 2013

The AT07 Mail Server is Down

The mail server on AT07 is down at this time with no ETA for restoration. We regret the inconvenience, please use alternate methods for determining status of applications. • Track My Applications • Login and View A notice will be sent once service is restored. All other services are available. 

November 9, 2012

The Grants.gov PMO has discovered an issue with the newest version of Adobe Reader XI

Applicants may encounter the following error that will prevent them from submitting their application:

"At least one required Field was empty. Please fill in the required field (highlighted) before continuing."


While we continue to investigate this issue, we recommend that if applicants encounter this issue, they submit their application using any version below Adobe Reader XI. Please refer to our compatibility table for additional information about supported versions of Adobe Reader.

We will continue to keep you informed of our investigation.

September 10, 2012

System Maintenance Alert

The Grants.gov AT07 Training and Production Environments will be unavailable Saturday, September 15, 2012 at 12:01 AM ET until Sunday, September 16, 2011 at 11:59PM ET for system maintenance.

The Grants.gov PMO suggests that no application submissions or activity take place during this maintenance period.

The AT07 environment will be undergoing acceptance testing on Monday, September 17, 2012 from 12:01 AM ET to 11:59 PM ET, following the Production Build, and will return to normal service, Tuesday, September 18, 2012 at 12:01 AM ET.

Please be aware that while the system may appear to be available to users during this time; however, it will not be fully operational.

August 23, 2012

Attachment Filename Characters are now Validated and Enforced

Beginning August 15, 2012, applicants are now limited to using the following characters in all attachment file names

Valid file names may only include the following UTF-8 characters: A-Z, a-z, 0-9, underscore ( _ ), hyphen (-), space( ) and period (.).

If applicants use any other characters when naming their attachment files, their applications will be rejected.

 

August 2, 2012

Information about how the CCR to SAM migration affects Grants.gov applicants

What is SAM?
The System for Award Management (SAM) is a free web-site which consolidates Federal procurement systems and the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance.

What happened to CCR?
On July 30, 2012, the Central Contractor Registration (CCR), FedReg, ORCA and EPLS were migrated into the System for Award Management (SAM).

Why should I Register with SAM?
Grants.gov will actively reject submissions from organizations without current SAM registration. Per 2 CFR Part 25, all grant applicants must have current SAM status at the time of application and throughout the duration of any Federal award. In addition, registering with SAM will allow you to access the full functionality of the SAM system.

How do I register with SAM?
You can register with SAM at http://www.sam.gov. You only need your personal information to create an account on SAM.

I was registered with CCR, do I need to register with SAM?
If you were already registered with CCR, you don’t need to do anything now. If your record was scheduled to expire between July 16, 2012 and October 15, 2012, CCR/SAM is extending your expiration date by 90 days. You will receive an e-mail notification from CCR when your expiration date is extended. You will then receive standard e-mail reminders to update your record based on this new expiration date. Those future e-mail notifications will come from SAM.

What if my CCR/SAM registration has expired?
Grants.gov will actively reject submissions from organizations with expired CCR registration. If your SAM registration is expired and you attempt to submit an application, you will receive a rejection email indicating that your SAM account is expired. Your organization will be required to go to SAM and renew the registration.

How can I check my CCR/SAM registration status?
Applicants should verify their SAM status and renew registration if needed. You can check your SAM status at SAM.gov.

Who should I contact if Grants.gov rejected my grant application because of problems with my SAM account?
Grants.gov has no control over your CCR or SAM account. You must contact SAM.gov to ensure that your SAM registration is current. You may also contact the grantor if you believe that you were unable to meet the application deadline due to a problem caused by SAM.gov.

Where can I learn more about SAM?
Please visit SAM.gov for more information, including an overview video, quick start guides, future plans, and technical information for System to System users.

July 18, 2012

Information about the pending migration from CCR.gov to SAM.gov

What is SAM?
The System for Award Management (SAM) is combining eight federal procurement systems and the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance into one new system. Beginning July 30, 2012, the Central Contractor Registration (CCR) system will be migrated into SAM.

What is the timeline for the CCR transition to SAM?CCR will transition to SAM at the end of July. CCR must stop accepting new data in order to successfully migrate the existing data into SAM. CCR's last business day is Tuesday, July 24, 2012. It will no longer accept new registrations or updates to current registrations after that time. The CCR Search capability will remain active through the transition to allow you to search for an entity’s current registration status. SAM will be online for use Monday morning, July 30, 2012.

What do I need to do?

  • Already registered with CCR: You don't need to do anything now.
  • My CCR registration is incomplete: Whatever you’ve entered by 11:59pm on Tuesday, July 24, 2012, will be moved to SAM. You will be able to complete your registration in SAM when the system is live.
  • I am not yet registered with CCR: You can either register with CCR before 11:59pm on Tuesday, July 24, 2012 and then create your new SAM account and migrate your CCR information into it when SAM goes live; or you can wait until SAM goes live to create your account there.

When will CCR stop accepting new registrations or updates to current registrations?
CCR will stop accepting data at 11:59 pm on Tuesday, July 24, 2012. No new registrations can be submitted after that time. No updates to existing registrations can be submitted after that time. Any registrations in process will be on hold until SAM goes live the morning of July 30, 2012. If you are in the middle of a registration, the data you have submitted will be migrated to SAM.

What if my registration expires close to the CCR to SAM transition date?
If your record was scheduled to expire between July 16, 2012 and October 15, 2012, CCR/SAM is extending your expiration date by 90 days. You will receive an e-mail notification from CCR when your expiration date is extended. You will then receive standard e-mail reminders to update your record based on this new expiration date. Those future e-mail notifications will come from SAM.

Where can I learn more about SAM?
Please visit SAM.gov for more information, including an overview video, quick start guides, future plans, and technical information for System to System users.

May 25, 2012
S2S Submissions Intermittently Stuck During Processing

Since the April Release, some S2S submissions have been getting stuck during processing requiring manual intervention by the Grants.gov Operations and Maintenance Team to complete the processing. Below is a detailed status update for all of you.

Issue: Some S2S submissions are getting stuck with error "Exception caught during S2SReceiving process:null"

Cause: During the April Release, Grants.gov implemented a new XML parser based on VTD-XML version 2.10. The cause of the parsing issue is due to a bug in the VTD-XML parser, where VALID XML with namespace declarations (used and not used) found only in form elements (not found in the xml root element) caused a problem during parsing of the XML. The bug has been confirmed by developers of the VTD parser.

Frequency: Intermittent.

Short-term fix: We are cognizant of all closings. The Grants.gov O&M staff are monitoring all submissions and manually processing stuck submissions on a regular basis. That said, there may be a delay in receiving validation, rejection, or received by agency emails.

Long-term fix: The parser is patched by the owner of the API and will resolve the issue. A fix is currently in process of being tested.
Notes: This does not effect PDF application package submissions.
May 21, 2012

Conversion from CCR to SAM Moved to End of July

From The General Services Administration:

The General Services Administration (GSA) is moving the implementation date of the System for Award Management (SAM) from May 29, 2012 to the end of July 2012. The additional sixty days will allow federal agencies to continue preparing their staff, give agencies and commercial system providers even more time to test their data transfer connections, and will ensure SAM contains the critical, documented capabilities users need from the system.
This first phase of SAM will include the capabilities of Central Contractor Registration (CCR)/Federal Agency Registration (FedReg), Online Representations and Certifications Application (ORCA), and the Excluded Parties List System (EPLS). In preparation for the launch, GSA conducted extensive testing internally and in coordination with federal agencies using the data from these systems in their own contracting, grants, finance, and other departments. The testing was very valuable and will focus the efforts of the next sixty days.
SAM will reduce the burden on those seeking to do business with the government. Vendors will be able to log into one system to manage their entity information in one record, with one expiration date, through one streamlined business process. Federal agencies will be able to look in one place for entity pre-award information. Everyone will have fewer passwords to remember and see the benefits of data reuse as information is entered into SAM once and reused throughout the system.
Please see http://sam.gov for more information about the system.

The Grants.gov program management office strongly encourages all new grant applicants to register with CCR now to ensure a trouble-free and timely submission process during this transition period. The registration process may take between 3-5 days to complete.

If you are already registered with CCR, please make sure that your organization's account information is up-to-date and that your account is not expired (CCR accounts require annual renewals.) To check your CCR account, please visit http://www.ccr.gov.

May 16, 2012

CCR is going away May 29, 2012. Welcome to SAM.

The Central Contracting Registry (CCR) will be replaced by the System for Award Management (SAM). SAM will be live and active May 29, 2012. (If you go to CCR.gov on May 29 you will be re-directed to SAM.gov.)

SAM is where you will go to register as an institution, organization, or business in order to apply for Federal Assistance (grants) or for contracts as of May 29, 2012.

Active CCR registration is a pre-requisite to the successful submission of grant applications. 

Some key notes to our grants community:

  • If you have a current updated active registration, the process will be seamless to you.
  • You will be unable to do a NEW registration with CCR from May 23 - 28, 2012. Any new registrations done during this period will not be processed by SAM until starting May 29, 2012.
  • If your registration is set to expire anywhere between the period of May 15 - July 15, 2012, you are automatically granted an additional 90-day extension to renew your registration.
  • All existing CCR data will be exported to SAM.

To learn more about the switch from CCR to SAM, you can get more information here. To learn more about SAM, you can go to SAM.gov.

The Grants.gov PMO strongly suggests that you go to CCR prior to May 23, 2012, and check your account. A quick to-do list:

  • When does my account expire?
  • Do I need to do my annual renewal of registration?
  • Who is my eBIZ POC? Is this person still in my organization?
  • Do I need to update anything?

Please feel free to contact the support desks at CCR, SAM, or Grants.gov with further questions.

May 5, 2012S2S Issues Resolved
A fix has been tested and deployed to resolve the remaining S2S issues:

Exception caught during S2SReceiving process:Grant Application XML hash is incorrect.

and

Error:Exception caught during S2SReceiving process:Attachment hash values in the Grant Application XML are out of sync with the attachment(s) sent/received.

Should any of the errors encountered this past week (or new errors) resurface, we ask that you contact the Grants.gov Contact Center and additionally also post to this S2S listserv.

We are cognizant of major closings occurring over the next few days and will continue monitoring the system and this listserv.
We greatly appreciate your patience.
 
February 29, 2012

System Downtime April 28-29, 2012

Please be advised that Grants.gov Production and AT07 Training Environments will be unavailable on Saturday, April 28, 2012 at 12:01 AM ET until Sunday, April 29, 2012 at 11:59 PM ET for system maintenance. The Grants.gov PMO suggests that no application submissions or activity take place during this maintenance period. The system will be back online Monday, April 30.

February 23, 2012

Grants.gov to actively reject submissions from organizations with expired CCR registration.

On August 9th, 2011, Grants.gov implemented a real-time registration confirmation with the Central Contractor Registration (CCR) system. (Per 2 CFR Part 25, all applicants must have current CCR status at the time of application and throughout the duration of any Federal award.)

Central Contractor Registration is validated at the time of every Grants.gov application submission. If your CCR registration is expired and you attempt to submit an application, you will receive a rejection email indicating that your CCR account is expired. Your organization will be required to go to CCR and renew the registration.

Applicants should verify their CCR status and renew registration if needed. You can check your CCR status at http://www.ccr.gov.

January 30, 2012

Maintenance Update

Maintenance work on the Production environment has been completed.

We continue maintenance on our AT07 Training environment until 11:59PM Monday, January 30.

Thank you for your continued patience.
January 28, 2012

Grants.gov Weekend Downtime Jan 28-29

Please be advised that Grants.gov Production and AT07 Training Environments will be unavailable on Saturday, January 28, 2012 at 12:01 AM ET until Sunday, January 29, 2012 at 11:59 PM ET for system maintenance. The Grants.gov PMO suggests that no application submissions or activity take place during this maintenance period. The system will be back online Monday, January 30.

 

January 12, 2012

New Certificate Installation Request Process Implemented at Grants.gov

The below only effects S2S entities that interface with Grants.gov.

The Grants.gov Program Management Office has instituted a new form and process for the installation of certificates to Grants.gov for both applicant entities and the Federal agencies. Requests will go directly to support@grants.gov.

The new guidelines can be found here for applicant entities: http://grants.gov/applicant_s2s/applicants2s_faqs.jsp#q5


The new guidelines can be found here for Federal agencies:

http://grants.gov/agencies/agency_system_to_system.jsp


As always, the Grants.gov operations and support staff will continue to provide direct assistance for S2S issues.


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