Overview of SP14 Emergency Service Packs 

The following Emergency Service Packs (ESP) were developed to address issues resulting from the 
deployment of SP14. This document provides information on each ESP in reverse chronological order. 
Additional user guidance is also included at the end of this document. 

The following Emergency Service Packs (ESP) were developed to address issues resulting from the deployment of SP14.  This document provides information on each ESP in reverse chronological order.  

ESP 14d– Deployed January 25, 2008

1. Issue:  LOMC case tracking report displays projects that have 'Removed' status. The report should filter out the removed projects.  

Solution: The report will now have a filter and will not display projects with the "Removed" status.  Projects with duplicate case numbers will no longer show up on this report.
 
2. Issue:  The Post-Preliminary task end date is not being populated in the MIP during the pre-processing.  When all activities for a post-prelim in a study are complete, the Actual End Date for Post-Prelim is supposed to be populated by the system.  Under certain circumstances the end date does not get set.

Solution: The system will now populate Post-Prelim tasks with the correct end date.

3. Issue:  Users receive an error when uploading a large file in the Independent QA task.

Solution: A fix was applied to the system that allows large files to be uploaded for Independent QA.

4. Issue: Users are unable to update certain projects in Process Admin (PA) when the project was restarted from the Flood Mapping/Prelim task.

Solution: A fix was applied to allow users the ability to update cost and schedule information through the PA tool.

5. Issue: End date validation for Post-Prelim does not properly take into account Activity State and Distribute Revalidation Letter.  Distribute Revalidation Letter is currently optional, the user doesn’t have to go through it.  The validation should not take this into account.  

Solution:  End Date validation will take into consideration that Distribute Revalidation Letter is optional (not mandatory).

6. Issue: Users are unable to complete the Review LFD task even when they elect to bypass DFIRM QA (bypass on applicable in small number of projects).

Solution: Fix will be applied to allow users to complete the Review LFD Docket task even when they indicate a DFIRM QA bypass.  Users will still need to submit to the national DFIRM QA/QC, when they have reached the appropriate step in the MIP.

7. Issue: For Revisions projects, during the Process Request and Review Draft Determination tasks the window to upload files does not appear.

Solution:  Upload capability will be available to the users in Process Request and Review Draft Determination tasks.

8. Issue: Discovered during the Revise Draft Determination task, if the browser is closed during the upload process, but prior to completion, a portion of the submission is uploaded.  Users cannot tell what portion of the submission has been uploaded.  

Solution:  For any MIP task, when an upload is interrupted (i.e., user closes the browser), the submission(s) will not be considered uploaded and the user should start the upload process again.  

9. Issue: The Study QA report displays incorrect information. As a result of SP14 process migration, certain projects appear on the Study QA report to indicate that rework is required. 

Solution: A fix was applied so the report does not indicate that rework is required for these projects.

10. Issue: Duplicate counties are in the MIP database which results in erroneous Studies Dashboard rollups.  In Create Studies Projects and/or Finalize Project Scope tasks, when communities are associated with a project, the counties sometimes are duplicated in the MIP database.  Because there are duplicate records, this data is used by the calculation service resulting in incorrect county rollup CPI and SPI values.

Solution: A fix will be applied to determine whether duplicate information exists.  If it does, then the system will not add it again.  SPI and CPI information will now be correct.

11. Issue: FEMA is looking to capture user feedback.  

Solution: An online survey (ForeSee) was implemented to better understand user issues.  Users will be asked at random to complete the survey.

12. Issue: Users cannot tell when (date and time) an activity has been completed in the Workflow History.

Solution: A date/time stamp will be added to the Workflow History

13.Issue: Studies workflow is having intermittent problems with the QA process and in certain instances the QA process fails to start and the next task does not show up.

Solution: A fix was applied to address this issue so that the QA process works correctly.

14.Issue: When a user clicks Save and Close in the Authorize Planned Data Development task for projects that have Independent QA selected, one or more planned tasks are duplicated.  

Solution: A fix was implemented so duplicate tasks will no longer be created.

15. Issue: Exception in logs, no visible symptoms to the end user.

Solution: This was a technical fix and there is no impact to the end user.

16. Issue: Request from the internal MIP team for 12 additional elements from metadata files when tasks are completed.  

Solution: This was an internal MIP team request and there is no impact to the end user.  


ESP 14c– Deployed December 14, 2007 

1. Issue: Activities in Workflow History completed by ‘bpeadmin’ is confusing to users 

Solution: In workflow history, users now see Workflow Administrator, to indicate an activity 
completed by the MIP Help Desk, instead of bpeadmin. 

2. Issue: Due to the data storage procedure changes, users will experience a short delay and see a 
new icon when accessing files that were moved from the K or J drive to external storage. 

Solution: Guidance added to the screens to inform users that files with a small black clock on the 
icon indicate items stored in external storage and may take longer to access. 

3. Issue: Multiple folders may be present when exploring the J drive in Citrix. 

Solution: An automatic check will be run to determine if a folder already exists for that community. If 
a folder already exists, a new folder will not be created; if a folder does not exist a new folder will be 
created as per the normal process. 

4. Issue: The Estimated SPI that is displayed on the Manager screens within the Studies Workflow may 
not be correct. However, the SPI displayed on the dashboard, in reports and in Rational Query Tool 
(RQT) is correct. 

Solution: Calculations fixed so Estimated SPI displays correctly on the Manager screens. 

5. Issue: Users submitting data to the National DFIRM quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) 
through Tools & Links are not receiving emailed results. 

Solution: Email notification will now be sent to notify user of results - whether uploaded through the 
MIP Workflow or Tools & Links. 

6. Issue: Studies Workflow users are unable to skip the Revalidation of a “Prepare Revalidation Letter” 
when it is not required. 

Solution: The first activity in revalidation (Prepare Revalidation Letter) will contain an option to allow 
the user the ability to indicate that revalidation is not required. With that indication the workflow will 
bypass other revalidation activities. 

7. Issue: Process Admin users are unable to modify cost/schedule updates in Process Admin for a Data 
Development task that has not started, but the Mapping Partners can modify that data in the 
Management tasks. 

Solution: Process Admin users now able to update actual cost/schedule information entered by the 
mapping partner. 

8. Issue: Process Admin is unable to handle a large number of updates in one transaction. When the 
user updates a large number of tasks for a project in one transaction, the update fails. 

Solution: No longer a limitation on the number of tasks to be rebaselined or updated in Process 
Admin. 

9. Issue: Ortho Imagery metadata file fails Metaman validation for the Acquire Base Map DD task. 

Solution: For Acquire Basemap task, the MIP will now accept Ortho Imagery and Basemap metadata 
files. 

10. Issue: Files have not been deleted from K before the J to K transfer. 

Solution: Files in K will be correctly deleted prior to files being moved over from J. 

11. Issue: QA activities for Prelim incorrectly associated with Post Prelim tasks. 

Solution: Functionality fixed to prevent this issue. Data clean up conducted to fix existing issues. 

12. Issue: Organizations were not correctly assigned the Manage Prelim and Manage Post Prelim 
activities. 

Solution: Workflow code corrected so organizations will be assigned correctly. 

13. Issue: Managers of QA tasks are unable to update the task as complete until the parent task is 100% 
complete. 

Solution: The DD Manager screen will be modified to allow the managers of QA tasks to enter actual 
end date and 100% complete before the parent task is marked as complete. 


ESP 14ac - Deployed November 27, 2007 

1. Issue: Users unable to complete Producer tasks when submitting very large files. System would time 
out or not allow a user to move forward with the task until the file was finished copying from J to K 
drive. 

Solution: Fix implemented to separate user action (completing the task) from the upload allowing the 
user to move forward without waiting for the upload to complete. Users should continue to be 
encouraged to mail in any file over 300 MB. 

2. Issue: In some cases, for a limited number of projects, QA activities for Prelim tasks were incorrectly 
associated with Post Prelim. This impacts how these activities appear on the work item list, and how 
Post Prelim status is reported in the Manage Post Prelim activity. 

Solution: A workflow fix was identified, existing data in the MIP was corrected, and 11 workflow 
processes were terminated and restarted. 

3. Issue: DFIRM Metadata file names generated and validated incorrectly (outside of conventions) due 
to the way the date was generated with dashes. Filenames that do follow the convention fail 
validation. 

Solution: The file name issue was fixed. Users should continue to use the normal file naming 
conventions. 

4. Issue: Following the successful upload of a large .zip file, it may take a significant period of time to 
unzip the file. If the user clicks on Refresh Status for Metadata File Validation, it will indicate that 
validation failed if the file has not been completely unzipped. 

Solution: A new message now appears that the file is still in the process of being unzipped. Users 
should periodically check back to see that validation passed or failed. 

5. Issue: The DD task name is not included for Independent QA tasks on the Manage DD screen, so 
the user does not know which data development task the QA task is associated with. In addition, a 
user cannot differentiate between tasks of the same type (i.e., Field Survey) when performing 
independent QA because there is no task description to tell the user which task he/she is working on. 

Solution: Information was added to the screen to indicate which data DD task the independent QA is 
referencing. In addition, a task description was added to differentiate between multiple tasks of the 
same type (i.e., multiple Field Survey tasks) when performing independent QA. 

6. 
Issue: The View Metadata Profile link only shows a template metadata template, not the user’s actual 
metadata file. 
Solution: Text was added to the screen to indicate to users this is only a sample metadata template, 
and not their actual metadata file. 

7. Issue: Error message for missing metadata file implemented in ESP 14ab led to user confusion. The 
fix for SP14b indicated to users that the file could not be found in the root directory. The file can be 
placed in either the root directory or general directory, so this message led users to think that the fix 
was incomplete or incorrect. 

Solution: The error message was updated to indicate that the file cannot be found at all – not just 
that it is not in the root file. 

8. Issue: Submissions to National DFIRM QA should only let files with certain file extensions go through 
to FAFS (for all folders that make up the submissions). However, other files were getting through from 
the RFIRM folder, causing submissions to fail 

Solution: A fix was applied to allow only the following file extensions go through from the RFIRM 
folder: .png, .pgw, .tif, .tiff, .tfw 

ESP 14ab - Deployed November 9, 2007 

1. Issue: The eLOMA Audit Notification fax number listed in the MIP was incorrect and needed to be 
updated. 

Solution: Updated the Audit Notification email as well as the Audit Notification web page on the MIP 
eLOMA portal with the new fax number. 

2. Issue: Users adhering to the DCS guidelines for Field Survey, Hydrology, Hydraulic and Topographic 
submissions (DCS tasks) received an error when they submitted with metadata in the “general” folder 
as opposed to the “root” folder. 

Solution: A fix was applied to ensure that metadata files for DCS tasks would be accepted (verified) 
if they were either in the “general” folder or the “root” folder 

3. Issue: Users received an immediate error when submitting for FAFS’s DFIRM QA review due to an 
extra file separator character in the zip entry name. This caused submissions to fail with FAFS every 
time because FAFS was unable to automatically unpack the DFIRM archives sent for DFIRM QA. 

Solution: The file separator issue was fixed so that zip files would be successfully unpacked and 
moved into FAFS’s DFIRM verification tools/process. 

ESP 14aa – Deployed November 6, 2007 

1. Issue: During SP14 deployment an issue arose with the permissions of the Create Directory Service 
(CDS) to the folders the Service is supposed to create on behalf of the MIP. 

Solution: The permanent solution was implemented for the folder permissions issue. There was no 
impact to the end user from this issue. 

2. Issue: When uploading files through several workflow tasks as well as through Tools & Links, the files 
were being loaded to the J: drive instead of the K: drive. 

Solution: Fix was applied to the following tasks to ensure that going forward files were appropriately 
uploaded to the K: drive (fix also retroactively fixed any previous data issues created by this defect): 

- Prepare for Scoping 
- Finalize Project Scope 
- Conduct Scoping Meeting 
- Tools and Links Amendments 
- Tools and Links Revisions 
- Tools and Links Studies 

3.  Issue: Users received a false validation error for DFIRM Database tasks. This issue was caused by 
a Metaman schema defect. 

Solution: The fix included adding “FEMA-CID <cid number>” to the schema. This resolved the issue. 
Users should no longer receive the false verification error.