IMb Services Update

2 Sep 2010 | No Comments | posted by admin | in DMM Advisory

FAST® Release 15.0.0 will deploy on November 7, 2010. Updated FAST 15.0.0 Release Notes are available at http://ribbs.usps.gov/fast/documents/tech_guides/FASTRelease/. The key features of this release are:

  • Users now have the capability to choose to receive emails for stand-alone content association.
  • The FAST Web Services messaging will be updated to account for previous error messages.  

IMb Services Update

31 Aug 2010 | No Comments | posted by admin | in DMM Advisory

New FAST Help Desk (August 30, 2010): As announced in the Facility Access and Shipment Tracking (FAST®) 14.3.0 Release Notes (August 15, 2010), the Postal Service™ will launch the new FAST Help Desk effective Monday, August 30. The FAST Help Desk will be available to assist with application and operation-related issues by:

  • Email at FAST@usps.gov.
  • Telephone at 877-569-6614. The FAST Help Desk telephone number efficiently directs calls through a new IVR network to ensure prompt routing of customer inquiries.    

The FAST Help Desk hours of operation will be Monday through Friday, 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. CT. Telephone support will be available outside of these hours including weekends and holidays.

If the Help Desk is unable to provide an immediate resolution, a Remedy Ticket will be activated and escalated to the appropriate postal functional entity. All FAST Remedy Tickets will follow the established Issue Resolution Process. 

The FAST Welcome pages have been updated to reflect the new FAST Help Desk contact information.

DMM Advisory – Intelligent Mail Update

22 Mar 2010 | No Comments | posted by admin | in DMM Advisory

PostalOne!® and FAST®  Outages: PostalOne! Release 24.0.1 and FAST Release 14.1 will be deployed to production environment on Sunday, March 28, 2010. The PostalOne! and FAST Production systems will not be available from 4:00 a.m. through 8:00 a.m. (CST) Sunday, March 28, 2010.

PostalOne! Release 24.0.1 and FAST Release 14.1 will be deployed to the Test Environment for Mailers (TEM) environment on Monday, March 29, 2010. The PostalOne! and FAST Test Environment for Mailers systems will not be available from 4:00 a.m. through 8:00 a.m. (CST) Monday, March 29, 2010.

Final Release Notes are posted on RIBBS® for PostalOne! Release 24.0, which includes information for Patch Releases 24.0.0.1 and 24.0.0.2.

PostalOne! Release 24.0 Issues:

  • Mail.dat® 08-2 files submitted using the legacy Mail.dat application cannot be updated with the USPS® Mail.dat client. In order to allow mailers to complete these jobs without resubmitting, we are making a one-time exception to temporarily activate the legacy Mail.dat application. Mailers should not submit any new jobs using the legacy Mail.dat application as this support will be permanently discontinued on April 16, 2010.  
  • A change in Release 24.0 to a Mail.dat validation enforcing the Component ID field in the CPT record of the Mail.dat file to be left filled with leading zeros. We are temporarily reverting this validation so that leading zeros are not required until an approach for implementing the validation change is identified and reviewed with the mailing industry.
  • Mailers using the USPS Mail.dat client software in batch mode could not process files once they upgraded to release 24.0. Mailers will need to re-enter their user-name and password credentials before being able to run the Release 24.0 USPS Mail.dat client in batch mode. This is a one-time only configuration activity.

 Additional information on these issues can be found on RIBBS under Latest News.