AQS Notes for January 31, 2013

ENSC changes

The Exchange Network Services Center (ENSC) has made several changes in response to requests from the AQS community.

ENSC Changes

a. No need for you to zip a file that is going to AQS.
On the Express Request form, the file you choose when you “Select a Document to Upload” does NOT have to be a “.zip”; AQS would expect a file extension of either “.txt” (for a flat/delimited file) or “.xml” (for an XML file.) The ENSC will then zip any file you send.

b. More activity info.
You can monitor the list of files submitted via “My EPA Activity” to see the transaction status, the date, the transaction ID, and - NEW – in the “Documents” column, the actual file name. (Note that all the file name extensions will be .zip since the ENSC automatically compresses the file for you.) If you click on the Transaction ID, you will be able to look at your original file (will now contain an XML header) and AQS processing reports.

c. More robust handling of file transfers.
If your file transfer to AQS fails, the ENSC will automatically retry and notify you at what time it will retry the transfer. (This is more detail than before. Previously the ENSC would retry every hour for 3 hours and the status would be “PENDING.”) The ENSC will retry three times. After the third attempt, the ENSC will notify you and status will be “FAILED.”