Andrew: Okay, my name is Andrew Zeff.
I am with FRB.
I'll be providing these office hours today
on behalf of the Treasury Department.
Today's meeting will be on G-Invoicing
In Flight Orders and order uploads.
We are having a large group of people joining today.
Just so you know, we ask that you stay on mute
unless you have a question.
You can come off mute to ask questions.
We have instructions in the chat of hitting star-six
and perhaps hitting your mic
at the top of the menu, perhaps.
We will be providing some demonstration here today.
So if you just dialed in, you may want to join
to see the video as well as the audio.
I will be muting everybody
and I just want to mention one more time,
this meeting will be recorded for future edification
and welcome.
Just checking the time here.
We have a good number of people already joined,
so I'm gonna go ahead and get started.
We do have a large number of folks
on the call and continue to join.
So again, we welcome you.
First note we want to take is that if you have questions
about policy-related concerns
other than the functionality of what we're about to present,
please put them into chat or you can forward your questions
via email to the treasury department.
Again, I have that email address at the top of the chat.
That would be just scrolling up there
so you can make sure you know it's there.
Treasuryigt@fiscal.treasury.gov.
You can also email myself.
My email address is there as well.
Andrew.zeff@stls.frb.org.
I have a number of people on the call from my team,
the AIT team.
Also, we have folks from the development team
in production support in case you have any questions
that maybe I can't answer them,
we'll make sure to get you the answers.
All right?
That said, I'm going to go ahead and jump into this.
First, we're gonna go through here
the requirements for In Flight Orders and order uploads.
We'll touch on feature management system requirements,
user requirements, that kind of thing,
to make sure folks know what the roles are
for being able to perform what we're gonna show today,
and then we'll go through and talk about In Flight orders
as a standard user interface within G-Invoicing
and creating an order and performance.
And then we'll go step by step through
creating and updating the template that's required
for performing bulk uploads.
And I'm just gonna do a quick audio check here.
Maybe someone from my team can validate
that we're doing good here and you can hear me just fine.
Team Member: You're loud and clear, Andrew.
Andrew: Ah, appreciate that. All right.
So let's start with what we're the subject matter is today
Order Upload/IFO Bulk Uploads.
It is a progression of G-Invoicing
to meet the In flight Order mandate
that begins October 1st, 2023
set by the Treasury Department.
The bulk-order capability does allow for order upload
via IFO bulk upload,
or we could use this for In Flight orders,
which was the original intent.
Just noting at the bottom there,
order-upload template that is used
and we'll be showing this
towards the end of the conversation,
actually meets the same validation requirements
as if you were populating a order and performance
within G-Invoicing using the UI.
And I'll bring that back up again to you coming up.
These are the roles required for performing order uploads
and IFO bulk uploads,
mainly for bulk uploads by the way,
for example, the performance supervising manager role
is required for PPQs and we'll talk about what that is.
Prepaid quantities as a performance transaction type.
The supervisor approval role is required.
You're actually able via the bulk uploads
to create an approved order of both partners
providing their approvals in the files that are uploaded.
And the result is an open order.
Just taking note that the roles are required separately
for requesting and for servicing.
Additional requirements.
Feature management must be enabled
requesting and/or servicing.
Also, and I'll point this out
when we're going into the demonstration,
when you're creating a GT&C,
the agencies both agree and approve the GT&C
and part of that is to identify
who the order-originating partner is.
And that is to partner, in this case,
that must begin the bulk upload process.
This slide is just to point out
that the notifications being used
for order uploads, bulk uploads are the same
as for what you're seeing now with orders.
And we're just summarizing
each of the notification capabilities there for you.
Okay, so feature management.
Feature management is coming along.
It will become available with 5.0.
You need a master administrator
to enable or disable any of the features.
There are a few features that are essentially managed
by production support,
but for bulk upload capability needs,
a master administrator would need to enable an order
to allow for this capability to appear in the menuing.
We're just showing an example here of the requesting.
I'd have to make sure to save the feature
after you click yes to it.
And again, I'll download this in just a minute.
So if you wanted to see what the process was for doing this
before I do the demonstration,
you would select the Administration tab,
go down to Manage Features Flag, and you have to do this
for both requesting and servicing separately.
Here we're showing the bulk order uploads,
which is what our topic is, right?
IFO bulk uploads, and then we select yes to it.
Hi Angela, yep.
I see your question there.
"Is master administrator the only one
who can perform this operation
of enabling/disabling feature management.
The answer is yes.
Okay.
Angela: Hi there, Andrew.
So not enabling and disabling, but actually doing the loads.
-: Well, right,
so I'll just go back for you a little bit, Angela.
These are roles that are required
for being able to do bulk upload.
Angela: Okay, so the person performing the load can...
So I understand...
So if I have the order supervising manager role,
I can actually load the role
or load the file into the system
after the master administrator turns on the feature?
Or...
That's where I'm confused.
Andrew: Okay, so let me summarize it
a little better for you.
It's a great question.
So the master administrator first has to enable the feature
and there's like five, you know...
76% are easy, another example of that
that the feature management will allow you to enable.
In order for somebody to be able to bulk-upload a file,
then they would have to have
the order supervisor manager role.
If in that file is approver information
and you're expecting the approvals to be provided
within the upload, then the order-supervisor-approver role
would be needed.
If you then also want to provide information
on advanced PPQs within the same file,
then the performance supervisor manager role
would be required.
All of these for the same person, right,
that is uploading the file into the system
either on the requesting or servicing side.
Angela: Oh, Andrew, thank you so much
for clarifying that difference.
Andrew: (chuckles) Happiness.
Now I'm sure if you're asking it,
there must be tons of people asking
and wondering the same thing, Angela, so always good.
All right?
So yeah.
So this is where we were, you know,
these are the steps to enable feature management
and let's see what's next.
Oh, okay.
So for feature management, we now have a reporting mechanism
that all users will be able to download and see.
It pivots on either the agency or on the feature
so that you can see if your trading partners
have that capability enabled.
And I'll show you that as well.
Looks like I'm gonna show it to you now.
So I'm gonna go ahead and log in.
You know, by the way, 5.0,
while I'm waiting for this to load,
I'll mention this to you,
5.0 is coming out for production in February 16th,
and then for QAC February 24th.
I am actually in what we call a QAF
or the future state if you will, of G-Invoicing.
And let's see.
So I'm gonna go with Administration,
here's the Feature Flag Management,
I'll go to Requesting.
Notice I have 'em all enabled.
If I wanted to disable, I would say No here and then Save.
And that's not needed for my demonstration.
I could actually close down the batch-order uploads.
Very happy that it's already enabled.
And note that the centrally-managed options
are managed remotely by production support,
like I mentioned there.
I'm just looking at the questions here.
"Why can't a preparer upload and view and submit,
Deborah, maybe you wanna come off mute
so I can make sure I can understand the question there.
-: Sure. -: Sure, go ahead.
Deborah: Yeah, I was just wondering, so I'm a preparer,
why couldn't I upload the template
and then have the supervising approver
go in and view and submit, so that way it is approved
instead of having the supervisor approver upload?
Andrew: So the thing about how the bulk uploads works,
it's kind of an all or nothing,
it's not a step by step like you would see in the UI,
otherwise I would definitely agree with you.
You could separate out the roles,
but with bulk order upload, again, it's all or nothing,
it's all one line per entry, if you will.
And that one line includes everything from the ALC
to the TAS information to also the approver information.
So if you didn't supply it all, it would error out on you.
That's my understanding.
And from my testing, that's what I've seen.
Deborah: Okay, thanks.
Andrew: Sure.
So I set this to No.
I'm gonna go ahead and put it back to Yes,
just so you can see me do that one more time
and notice this is gonna affect lots more
than just the capability for order upload.
Okay.
All right.
So once feature management's enabled,
then we could start talking about, in the user interface,
there's order upload for In Flight Orders.
I'm sorry, In Flight Orders is available
as well as the advanced PPQ.
So here we see we create a new order,
we now have this indicator with a dropdown selection
of Yes or No for In Flight Orders.
What this does is enable the next screen,
which is Advanced PPQ or Prepaid Performance Quantity.
This is a new performance transaction
and with the In Flight Order indicator set to Yes,
you can now, as servicing,
create an advanced performance transaction,
select this Do Not Settle, and this allows for agencies
to begin to denote what fiscal responsibility
has already been met
with an order that was outside of G-Invoicing
prior to (indistinct).
That is its sole purpose.
And you check this box...
Action will not result in any transfer of funds.
So I'll just pause there
in case there's any questions about that.
All right?
And then very quickly- -: I have a question.
I'm sorry. -: Sure, go ahead.
Attendee: So that advanced indicator,
is that just for agreements that are set up for advances
or is that basically the indicator
that we would have to use
so G-Invoicing does not settle that amount.
Andrew: So I can definitely say
the second part is absolutely true.
If you had, again, a fiscal amount
that was already settled with IPAC,
outside of G-Invoicing with the order previously
before you created a new order inside G-Invoicing.
So prior to.
We have a an agreement already.
Like for example, let me just bring up an order.
Op. That didn't work,
I have to type this out right.
So this order was based on this GT&C that was created.
The two agencies understood when they created this GT&C,
and you know folks, there's gotta be a lot of communication
between agencies, but when this GT&C was created,
the agencies knew that they were going to be
trying to get coverage for an order
that was already in process.
You've already had some performance transactions
into IPAC already.
And so this order, for example,
I've already pre-created this so I can show you this.
The order, we set the In Flight,
and I can do this for you in a moment,
but we made the indicator set to yes
and then here's Schedule 1 for example.
It does have to be an advanced order
just to allow for in flight and in advance
to allow for the performance transaction to be created.
And so if I show performance here, I am acting as servicing.
I can go to Schedule 1 here where we did this.
It was an advanced performance transaction.
I can go to the performance transaction here
to take a look at this.
And notice it says Previously Settled.
So they had checked the box
when they created that performance transaction
and because it's previously settled,
the amount is shown as pre-allocated,
withdrawn from the agreement amount, total amount,
and it will not be affected by IPAC.
And reaching here, I'm trying to make sure
I'm answering your question, so if I didn't,
maybe you could help me out there a little bit.
Attendee: Sure, no, I appreciate it.
So essentially then, like for this one,
I just wanna kind of put it into
kind of a real-life scenario.
So let's say it's an In Flight Order
and based on what you have here,
we've currently already settled $40,000 against this order.
So we would need to establish Schedule 1
as the total amount that we've already settled
in order to be able to set this as an advance?
Andrew: Correct, so like here. Here's Schedule 2,
I haven't done it against Schedule 2,
just so I can show you, okay? -: Okay.
Andrew: Everything you said, I would agree with,
by the way.
I'm gonna select advance, right?
It's against an In Flight Order, okay?
Of course we have to stay within the right dates,
performance dates and of course the counting period.
Now see this one is set to zero.
That's the one that we just looked at
that we already did the advanced performance
PPQ transaction against.
This one we have not, so I'm gonna say 1,000,
select create.
Did not...
I don't think I did that right.
This went into just being a regular. Let's see what it did.
Yeah, so this one actually is going through,
so it looks like I didn't do that one correctly, honestly.
I'm being straight with you.
This one is going straight in and it will.
Because I did not check that box,
it will do an IPAC settlement.
Attendee: Okay.
Andrew: I was hoping that I could have shown you that.
Where did I go wrong?
So I have to test that out
and find out why I didn't do it right
but we could go back- -: Okay.
Andrew: Go ahead.
Was somebody gonna say something?
Glory: Yeah, I think you missed the box
at the top right.
There was an empty box that you didn't do the drop down on.
-: There you go, yeah. -: Top right.
Andrew: Yep. I knew it.
Me and all my fog here, Glory, I missed that.
So what I could do, I think I have the time.
Yeah, I can go ahead and very quickly...
...copy this order and get it processed again.
If y'all don't mind, I'm gonna go ahead.
Notice this is either yes or no.
Say yes.
All the dating, everything you would normally do
is the same.
Of course it is based on this agreement.
You're gonna have to watch me for just a second,
do an approval here.
So we have to wait for requesting to approve now.
Yes.
Okay, so I'm gonna approve for...
Go. Requesting.
And then I'm gonna have to go back into servicing.
So I'm gonna approve, and then we have an open order here
as soon as it's done, right? There we go, it's open.
I'm gonna go back to servicing
to do the performance transaction for you
to make sure you see it done properly, folks.
Okay, so I'm in servicing, right?
Servicing always starts the performance.
Did I like not grab the right one?
Let's see. Oh, sorry.
There we go.
Okay, show performance.
So yeah. So let's see.
It is an In Flight Order.
Here's Schedule 1 and now y'all catch me up here.
I do advance, select the date,
there's the do not settle that I did not select last time,
which is my fault, okay?
I'm gonna do 'em both since y'all have been patient with me.
I'm gonna let you see 'em both done at once.
So I'm gonna do 'em both here.
Neither of these will create an IPAC order transaction
and so there you go.
And you can do adjustments against those.
We sometimes get that kind of question.
And we can go into each of these performance
and see what's previously settled.
That's our indicator.
Did that help you? -: It does.
It definitely helps. Thank you very much.
My last question, and then I'll be quiet, I promise.
-: No I don't mind. -: (chuckles) The GT&C,
does that have to be set to allow advances
in order for the In Flight Orders
to have that advanced feature on the schedule?
Andrew: You're absolutely correct.
If you go and take a look at the, you know...
Partner information, I believe it's under,
we have to say yes to advance.
Let's see if I can find a way. Sorry.
This is the advance information, delivery.
-: If you mean detect a GT&C- -: Yeah.
-: Yeah, y'all are right. (Attendee chuckling)
Thank you. I can just do that there.
And I'm sorry, I must have drank too much coffee here.
The advanced indicator must be set to yes
or you're not gonna be able
to create an order with advanced period, right?
So the answer's definitely yes.
Attendee: Okay, thank you very much.
Andrew: Sure. (chuckles)
Appreciate y'all's patience by the way.
So, so far we've talked about system requirements, right?
What user information, user roles need to be added,
master administrator for creating feature management,
enabling feature management
and then we get into the bulk upload
and utilizing the template.
You know, we wanna make sure you realize
that you can use the user interface,
but I have to say that if you start
going down a bulk-upload trail,
you can still look at the orders that are created,
but if you start updating them,
then there's gonna be problems if only one
of your partners have performed the upload to date
and I'll come back and make sure you know that
towards the end.
But I wanted to point that out.
But you can create, as we've just shown, right,
an advanced PPQ performance transaction
with an In Flight Order using the UI,
which is what we just did.
Again, you know, so we're gonna move forward
and start using the bulk upload,
which is an alternate approach that allows you
to do a large number of orders at once
into G-Invoicing at one time,
also working with your trading partner.
These orders can be approved and set to open
as soon as both agencies perform their side
of the bulk upload process.
That said, we have already noted
that OP, the order originating partner indicator,
has to be recognized.
Who will start the process?
Who will be partner one in performing the upload?
That is determined
by this order originating partner indicator
set in the GT&C.
And just as the question was just asked, yes,
the GT&C must allow for advances
in order to allow for advanced PPQ as well.
These are all- -: So, one note though.
In this bulk upload,
users still have to manually, themselves,
create the GT&C, correct?
So that part is still completely manually done
by both agencies first,
otherwise I guess the bulk upload would reject?
I guess two... (audio cuts out)
Team Member: Manually create it no matter what.
Andrew: Yes, the answer is yes,
you have to go into the user interface to create a GT&C,
get it approved by both agencies before you can begin
to create an order against any GT&C.
That's absolute fact.
Attendee 2: And I have another question.
So the bulk upload, let's say agency A and agency B
have a bulk upload, they work together,
and let's say there's 20 orders
that the agency wants to bulk upload.
What would happen if that there's two GT&Cs
that are just wrong, the reference GT&C hasn't been entered?
Would the bulk completely fail
or would there be an error indicator identifying,
"Okay, you tried to upload 20,
two rejected, 18 are fully uploaded?"
I know this is technical,
but I just wanna go through some system concerns
or ramifications as we work on our analysis.
Andrew: Mmm-hm. Yep.
I believe it's in a later slide, but the answer is yes,
it's either all or nothing.
You know, you said, "Well if only two to 20 fail,"
you can have 300 rows, right,
representing possibly 300 orders.
We really recommend that you get the formatting right
with doing one or two rows, get familiar with it,
and then adding on to those with that file
with a larger amount of order data
so that you don't run into that
and you don't run into frustrations.
To me, you know, having 300 of problems,
300 rows of possible problems,
is far more difficult than one or two
just to get the formatting right
and then flow the formatting down within the Excel document
is probably the better suggestion.
The other thing is, you asked something I want to touch on,
which is that you can have multiple GT&Cs in there
denoted against multiple different order creations
at the same time in the single file.
It probably is best if you isolate your files
to partner by partner and not mixing them
so that if you're running into problems
or different partners have different concerns
and you have to work with them on updating the file,
then it just would be mind numbing
if you had multiple partners in the same files in my mind.
That's just a suggestion. -: If one rejects
the whole file rejects? -: Yeah.
Attendee 2: Okay, I think that's really important
for the agencies to know.
That's not frankly optimal, but thank you for the feedback.
Andrew: Understood.
Yep. And we do touch on it,
we do wanna make sure you're familiar with that.
So all good here.
What else?
The order upload file must adhere to defined format
so that the information
has to be exactly what is in the GT&C
with your partner information, your ALC information,
that kind of thing.
The format, and we're gonna go into the formatting,
has to be acceptable by G-Invoicing
and those validation requirements
are actually the same as in the UI,
but here you're manually doing it.
So you know, you have to be definitely aware of that.
This note here in the process that we're about to go over,
servicing or requesting whoever is the OOPI,
after they successfully upload their part
of the order upload, must send an output file
to their trading partner.
Treasury is highly concerned that these files
only be sent via secure channels and you know,
we could advise how treasury or FRB
encrypts their files, but each agency seems to have
their own capability and preference.
So within your agency, you should work
with your G-Invoicing point of contact to identify
how best to transfer files
if you're gonna be using this via secure channels.
Deborah, you're exactly right.
You have to create a GT&C,
both agencies must have approved the the GT&C,
and then we could go into creating
the user-interface-based or FLI-ed order or bulk uploads.
In fact, you know, I created this slide
because I wanted to be able to talk about the process
at a very high level.
Both agencies identify independently
with your trading partner.
What In Flight Orders need to be addressed?
We are recommending, have been recommending
for over a year to my understanding
that agencies should be looking to minimize
as much as possible to In Flight Orders if it's possible.
But whatever's remaining,
both agencies really need to have a communication.
I made this box really big so that everyone can see
that yes, I have to talk to my trading partner
about what we're going to do.
So the initiating partner,
the trading partner that has the OOPI,
then begins to create an Excel file,
has to be saved as a csv file,
and we're gonna talk about this, I'll show examples of this.
The originating partner then uploads the csv file
using the interface,
and then after they get a success,
and the order's initially created
on the originating partner side,
they then have a button that they select
that provides an output file for partner two.
Some things on this file can be changed, some can't.
For example, this file contains the actual new order number
and that should not be messed with by partner two.
So then, via secure channel,
partner two receives this output file.
They then validate, look at it,
make updates where it needs to be updated,
should be communicating with your trading partner.
We have a button that if partner two
absolutely hates the entire file
and wants to start over completely,
partner one can do that.
We have a button to delete the order
that was created by partner one.
If partner two is happy,
they may like the corrections they've made,
they then save the file as a csv,
upload the csv file into the bulk-order interface,
and then the partners review where they're at,
what the order looks like,
anything else that needs to be done.
And in servicing, whichever there,
partner one or partner two,
servicing can then do performance transactions
such as advanced PPQ if needed.
Alright.
So moving it forward, we have to talk about the template,
and like I've already said,
I say it multiple times on purpose, right?
I wanna make sure you know that the information in the GT&C
needs to be adhered to or you're just gonna get errors
every single time.
The ALC information, the organizational group information
for both servicing and requesting are denoted.
The start and end dates must be adhered to.
As the question was, the advanced indicator
must be set to affirmative or yes to allow for advanced PPQ.
And of course both agencies have to recognize
who the originating partner is
that is allowed in the GT&C to create the order.
The person that just last asked her question, you know,
we agree, this is something you have to know
that everything in the order must be valid
and it will be validated or you'll get errors.
We do have error logging there.
We can see per upload attempt what the errors were.
You can download that file, an output file,
to see that offline if you need to.
We know that currently, the max size is 25 meg,
it is flat text file.
So we're not really setting a large-capacity sizing
of how many orders could be in the Excel csv file to date.
We may get to that.
This warning is, if partner one does the upload,
partner two can see the order
even though they have not performed their upload.
Again, if partner one starts messing in the UI
with the order, each of those orders,
they will not be able to use upload file successfully
for that order.
Attendee 3: What happens if trading partner one
wants to use the order upload
but trading partner two will not?
Andrew: Right?
So partner one creates the order,
they could use the output file to notify partner two
of the order numbers and they could still forward
that output file that they receive
after successfully creating the order to partner two
and partner two can then use those order numbers
that are in the file to go into the UI
and look at each of the orders and approve or make changes,
that kind of thing, as needed.
As always, I should say. with any other order.
-: Thanks. -: Okay, cool.
Good question by the way.
Angela: Angela again. I have a quick question.
Do we know who will be using this
as a way to look at our files
and somewhat plan or prepare?
Maybe there could be in March's implementation plans,
a question or maybe a survey that could be shared
like GSA, yes, GSA is going to use it for ABC,
or OPM's going to use it for credit monitoring,
or FBI's gonna use it for fingerprinting.
Like certain agencies
because they have regular, consistent-type billings
or things like that
that they're gonna look to utilize this functionality for
so that when we're doing our individual agency analysis,
we kind of have an idea of which way to go, right?
Because again, NRC, we're small fish in big pond, right?
So we're thinking,
possibly it's easier just to do the one-offs,
but if we find the majority of the larger agencies
are using the In Flight Order uploads,
we might wanna tailor our approach.
Don't know.
Andrew: It's a fair question and you know,
we're gonna take note of that.
I believe we could pursue that.
I think it's a great question.
I will say that the In Flight
probably will affect everybody.
We've had folks,
and I can't tell you which agencies
that I've heard in the past,
have denoted that they would prefer to be able
to bulk upload high numbers of orders at once
instead of doing the manual approach.
On the other hand, both agencies have that option, right?
You could still go into the UI
even if your trading partner is or is not.
It could be a one-off thing, you know,
one sided if you will,
still allowing the other trading partner to,
and so we are taking note.
Do appreciate it by the way.
Angela: That's a good-to-know.
Thank you for sharing that option with us
that we could go into the UI
even if our partner one chooses IFL upload. Thank you.
Andrew: Sure, exactly. Yep.
Okay. So- -: I have a question.
Andrew: Okay.
Attendee 4: Just a clarification.
So as far as like what is in the approval field,
so when you upload the file,
the approval fields are filled in
with the original approvers and dates,
and then if Partner two uploads the file,
assuming they have the same approval dates and approvers,
then that would stay as is, but if they approve in the UI,
does it then change to whoever's approving
and then the current date?
Does that make sense? -: Right.
Yeah, yep.
I think your question is if somebody put information
into the file, in this case approvers,
and then that was on partner one's side,
and then partner two comes in,
the order has not been approved yet,
anyone that has approval role to can see the order
could do the approval in the UI.
Attendee 4: And then that will overwrite the approvals
that were uploaded through the file process-
Andrew: Okay. Okay.
So wait. No.
If both agencies provided approvals in the file,
the order would appear and become status of open
with the approvals already provided.
You'd have to do a modify
if you wanted to change the approvers
and dates after that. -: Right.
No. Okay.
That was half of what I was asking.
So if both agencies use the order upload
with the same approval information, then it stays as that,
but if trading partner one uploads
with approval information, but trading partner two
goes into the UI to do it, then it gets...
Then the approval is whatever is done at that time
versus what was in the file.
-: I would agree with that. -: Okay.
Andrew: Just yeah.
And you know, you can stipulate
in working with your trading partner
not to ever put information in on your behalf,
your partner two's behalf for example, you know,
that kind of thing.
Communication between the partners.
I would even go as far as saying the trading partners
should work together to create the initial file
just to make things simpler and quicker for you to work,
that kind of thing.
So that would be best.
We always fall back to, you know,
communicating with each other and make sure
that this works for you well.
Attendee 4: So then based...
Okay, so as far as like the...
So then as far as what the status is,
when you do the order upload, it would just be based
on whatever approvals were provided?
Andrew: Well, yeah, if you did not provide approvals,
it would still be shared with requesting for example,
and you know, development,
if there's anything you want to add to that, feel free.
Attendee 4: Okay, thank you.
Andrew: All right? All right?
Let me just back up here a second and make sure. Yep.
So this is what, you know...
We try to identify because there's so much here
to be considerate of.
Here's partner one's considerations.
Somewhere in big letters it should be,
"Communicate with your partner everywhere," right?
Partner two, they receive the file.
Again, if they disagree with the data,
they could ask partner one to reject, you know,
to reverse the order,
to remove the order basically in a rejection.
They could, in the UI, reject the order as well,
if they haven't already approved, right?
If they have already approved,
then they have to work together to do a modify
is what it comes down to.
So over and over, I come back to,
you gotta be able to, each step,
communicate with your partner to make this work.
And again, every order in the upload must be valid,
pass the validations or you'll just have failures.
Jurgen: Hi, this is Jurgen Brenner
from NIST Department of Commerce.
I have a quick question on that.
Let's say you do an order upload for your in flight
and maybe an IPAC comes in and so the dollar amount changes
by the time your original file was created
and by the time you do an upload,
and let's say you have 20 transactions
or 30 transactions on the file.
Would you recommend, or is it possible,
to just reverse the entire file, correct the amount
and then re-upload it?
Or is it possible to update the amount
if they're posted as unapproved
on the order in G-Invoicing?
What's your take on that?
Andrew: So it sounds as though,
and you can correct me there,
partner one did an upload,
partner two's looking at the order itself in the UI
and would they be able to change
the schedule information, for example?
Is that kind of your question?
Jurgen: Yeah, yep.
Let's say like an IPAC came in
and it lowered the unliquidated balance
and you aren't posting history or anything like that,
you're just posting the unliquidated balance
on the in flight.
Andrew: I'm trying to think how best to answer that
because there's so many, so much info.
I have questions, right?
You know, did partner two also do the upload,
bulk upload as well?
If the status is in open, then we can do a modify.
I think what you're trying to get at,
is that, and this is a good point I think you're making,
which is you're in the process of doing bulk upload
in In Flight Orders and while you're doing that negotiation
and trying to create the orders,
somebody in the background outside of G-Invoicing
did an IPAC settlement.
Is that right? -: Exactly. Exactly right.
Andrew: And you know, the first part is,
that is, I think, treasury and everyone's big worry
with In Flight Orders that it's possible
that that can happen.
I try to tell my agencies, "You gotta be very careful.
You gotta talk to your people that may be involved
or may be in that big net
that this file is going to address."
And what could you do about it?
It's possible to do a modify-create
as long as you're allowed advance to do a another schedule
and then do an advanced PPQ for that amount
that you noted the IPAC settled against.
And I really wanna pause here
in case anyone on my team or Treasury
has another response to that.
Okay. Alright.
I think my team gives me a silent thumbs up on that.
Do you have any follow up questions on that?
Jurgen: No, I think you've addressed them.
It's just basically we've gotta be careful with timing,
the timing of this whole process, so.
Andrew: Right.
At this point currently, you know,
you can still do IGT via IPAC.
You know, again, you gotta work within your agency
and with your trading partners
in good communication while you're doing this.
Angela: Well, and I think also, Jurgen,
you bring up a good point,
is internally make sure everything's cleared out
of any suspense account you might be holding.
Jurgen: Yep. Yeah.
We definitely have to have the reconciliation complete
before the the upload is approved.
Yep. -: Yep.
So thank you for bringing that up
because I hadn't even taken that into consideration,
so thanks. -: Yep. Thanks.
Andrew: Yep. Appreciate that.
All right, I'm gonna go ahead and move forward though.
This is what the interface looks like.
We wanted to make sure we outline it very clearly.
You browse through the file to upload,
you can give it a nickname if you want.
You can actually select normal orders.
So this isn't just for In Flight orders going forward
as people get used to using it, that's their preference.
We're going to select In Flight orders, right?
And then this will pop up.
And it is not something to be ignored.
Are you the order originating partner?
So partner one will always say yes
and partner two will always say no.
If partner two says yes, they're going to get errors
and then they may not realize
that they caused the error just by saying yes instead of no
that they are not the order-originating partner.
Once we select that, we then select upload.
We wait, right?
The system will parse the file, and again,
it has to be successful with no errors for the most part.
So maybe system erroneous errors
are coming up on my side right now in QAF
and we're working on that,
but that's not what you normally would see.
And then after it parses, this button does not appear
until the parsing comes up without errors.
We then select Create Shared Order
and that's when the actual orders are created
based on the file that we uploaded
for your trading partner to be able to see.
And we outline it here as well.
Make sure you see that.
Partner two is very similar.
The only difference again is that trading partner two
must say no, they are not the order-originating partner
to allow this to come through.
Get any errors in that kind of thing.
So Rachel, your question is valid.
"Would it be clearer to ask who's the buyer and the seller?"
No, because either the buyer or the seller
could be the order-originating partner
depending upon how the GT&C was created.
It's a good question though.
I don't know if you noticed, but right here,
if you go to the file upload area,
you can download a template.
We have another spot for you to download it as well.
You do have to use the template
in order to be able to upload these files.
These are the two locations.
Again, one is in the product itself, in the UI,
the other is in our FIDS location.
And we are uploading, you know,
making updates as needed to the template itself.
This is kind of a semblance of what the file looks like.
There's actually a lot of information
and instruction per column,
but I'm gonna go through with you the most important things
that we need to address.
Spencer: This slide is being provided
as an at-a-glance review of the cells
in a required formatting
for a successful parsing and uploading
into G-Invoicing uploads UI.
At the bottom of the slide
is the source of the TAS information requirements
for your future review.
The following slides will discuss how to actually format
as per what we're showing here.
This slide...
The next cell is the A cell.
This cell requires capitalized X, F, or A
as appropriate for the specific TAS-A column.
We're showing here an example in Excel for that cell
as a capital X.
Andrew: Here, you're not seeing
what's in the cell, right?
So somebody put an ALC information in there
and you right click on it and say Format Cell,
select Custom, highlight the General
and then put eight zeros there, okay?
Now you could tell me that,
"Well I have eight characters in the ALC
already identified in the cell,"
and actually it would be okay,
but I need to make sure you know how to do it.
These are the TAS cells that are most affected by TAS.
And we're gonna go through these here separately.
So like the AID, it may say 14,
but I need to have a zero in front of it.
So I'm gonna right click on a cell, select Custom,
and again, put three zeros there and hit Okay.
For the main numerics,
sometimes there are only three characters
and so you need to have...
Oh, it's okay right there.
So, you need to have four characters,
or placeholders as I heard Spencer say, which is right.
So, if there is 146 instead of 1046,
then we'd get a zero in the front.
That's what that's gonna do for us.
Same thing with SUB.
I see a lot of just one numeric there
and you want to have three.
What else? Object class.
So object class is very specific.
You need to look for this to go find the object class cells.
It may be blank.
And development, correct me if I'm wrong,
we will not accept blank,
you have to put some kind of identified numeric there
for your object class.
This file, to be accepted, must be in a .csv format.
When you're working with the file in Excel
or if you open a csv after you save it,
you need to re-save as a .csv
after you're finished formatting.
We have heard from members of DOD,
their recommendation is to separately save the file
as an Excel, xlsx for example.
And then, as needed, as you're making updates
to save the file out as a .csv,
to save the headache of having to reformat over again.
I did note that you can open this in Notepad.
Notepad does not add additional character sets
or remove formatting.
A lot of people will find that arduous
because it's ugly.
It is.
You really have to know what you're doing.
And if you have 300 orders or 300 orders with 200 schedules,
it's gonna be a lot of...
Almost need a microscope to understand
what you're seeing sometimes, so.
But it is an option.
Julianne, "Is the object class required only for the buyer?"
My understanding is yes. It's a good point.
But when partner one does the upload,
they can include that information.
Okay, well this has been a lot of fun.
We are gonna do a demonstration of the upload
here in a minute.
We just left this slide up because we want folks
to, one last time, talk to each other,
make sure that you're doing best practices, if you will,
of negotiating, talking about it.
The point about IFOs and potentially hitting IPAC
on the outside is possible at this time.
So negotiating and good communication is important.
As I said, start with a minimum number in the csv
and the minimum number of rows.
You know, you gotta...
If you go with large number
or if you're not familiar with the formatting,
you may have to do this a few times to get it right.
Contacting the AIT to get that formatted down
if you're having problems and concerns.
We don't want you floundering
as you're getting used to using this product.
There is another way of doing this that I will show you
towards the end here.
It works and I'll show you that too.
What else?
Keeping track of your files by partner is recommended.
The last thing we want
is the same orders being created twice.
Again, that could be a problem, right?
There's no throttle on this,
there's no governor throttle to stop that from happening.
So we're asking partners to be mindful
of what files have been already used
and what orders have already been created.
Okay?
I'm just reading through just
to make sure we're covering everything.
Users should not change orders in G-Invoicing and their ERP
including IFO generated orders
until both partners have finished, is the recommendation.
More than one time about the OOPI, who is first.
File must contain the proper number of columns.
The last row must have a hash in it and you'll see this.
Okay.
Each partner must appropriately select yes or no,
and I've told you, you know,
who is the order originating partners
is what this is referencing.
Okay.
I probably am gonna have to log back in.
Let's see if that's true.
No, I'm still there. Okay.
So if I go down here,
this is where the order uploads option is.
Okay.
This is where you would browse for the file.
I can go ahead and do that.
There you go.
Give it a nickname.
Selecting whether it's normal or In Flight.
Notice I am partner one, we'll say yes,
and then I would select upload.
Okay, so while we're waiting,
it will take, I believe it's every 30 seconds,
the job process and background will capture
and I can hit refresh here in a moment.
This is what the button looks like
to actually create a successfully-uploaded file.
You can click into each of these areas.
See, we have errors here, for example.
We can actually view the errors.
This is the errors.
If we go back up here, we could say,
"You know what? Partner two gave me an earful."
Let's just delete it and start over.
Let's remove the orders that I actually created.
This button is the export of the file that would be sent
to your trading partner via secure channels.
Okay?
And so it's saying In Progress,
let's click refresh and see what I got here.
Okay, so we have success here.
I'm noting the batch number.
You know, when we create an output file,
it creates an output file for us.
We will see that.
So we're gonna let it do that
and actually create the orders.
That's what it's doing.
I'm gonna go ahead and bring up the file that I used.
I designated, when partner one begins,
we don't know what the order number is.
You can put pretty much anything in here.
These two rows are referencing the same order.
So I created a Schedule 1 and a Schedule 2
for each of these.
You'll see that hash has to be there,
and you know, there's other information
like, the first row must be on line four for example.
And I'm just gonna go across,
this has to be a valid GT&C that we're referencing.
We can tell you what each of these mean.
Like, this would be S for servicing or R for requesting.
Here's a date cell, right?
So I'm gonna right click on it and say Format Cells.
Bring this up so you can see it better.
This just says Custom.
Yeah, I mean I'd already formatted it, right?
But if it wasn't, then it would say General here
and then I would start typing double Ms, double Ds
and four Ys there.
Good news is, it does remember it per file.
I could even use the format painter
to do all of these at once.
I'm gonna just go across, okay?
There's a lot of columns
so I hope you have some patience for me and I apologize
but I want you to see this.
Here's my requesting ALC,
this requesting group has to be accurate.
And then we're just walking through
everything you probably are familiar with already
from creating an order.
Each of these fields, you're already being provided for
in the UI.
There's servicings ALC.
I'm using the same agency obviously, you know,
for my demonstration.
Advanced information cuz we are doing advance
in the schedule.
I want contact information,
funding information for requesting.
Again, dates.
Someone asked about date signing.
Approver dates has to be accurate.
Again, anytime I see dates,
I wanna make sure they're formatted right.
I'm trying to do this as fast as possible
so I don't make you fall asleep. I apologize.
Line numbers.
So here we have Schedule 1 and Schedule 2
for each of the lines.
If I wanted to have a second line,
we could do that there, right?
We can just change that to a two.
So like, cost...
And I don't know, when we go in to see the examples,
I purposely did a climbing scale so we can denote that.
Here's the AID.
Again, I would right click,
say Format Cells, select Custom.
Yep, I already have three zeros but if I didn't,
I would just type it in there.
It would say General perhaps.
Let's see if I can just show you an example
of what it would look like.
So if it was custom, see, it says General
and then I would just put in my zeros
or my placeholders and say Okay.
This is the infamous capitalized X.
The main, it is four characters.
Let's see if I actually formatted it.
Again, it's not required cuz I was successful.
Yep, we did do that.
SUB. Again, three characters for the SUB.
And here's your object class code.
I'll go ahead and select Format Cells, Custom
and what we would wanna put here
is like that.
Just to make sure we have the proper placeholders.
Bona Fide Need is provided for requesting, and yeah,
requesting could have provided that on their own
when they do their upload.
Okay.
All right.
And then I would do file.
Sorry, File, Save As,
I wanna make sure it's a csv file
or the system won't accept it.
So let's see how we did.
So I click in here, right?
I want you to see that.
So watch how things, on this side, change
as I click into the selection of the file.
Again, I can delete this or I can send this file
to my trading partner.
My trading partner, requesting in this case,
will need to format this.
And these are the actual orders that the system created for,
so we don't want partner two changing these.
I am gonna have to format this so I hope you have patience.
It won't take me a minute,
but you get to see me to do it firsthand.
See here's the Ms.
Ds.
Say Okay.
And I'm gonna go really quickly.
This is information that would enable requesting
to find the order if they didn't look
for the order numbers to the left.
This is put in for the tracking number.
This is the batch number that servicing used
that was created.
Let's see if we can show you that.
Yep, Batch 298.
Okay, I got a little more work to do here.
I have to update the TAS information
and so I'm just gonna go across here.
Because I've done it before in this file,
I know it's at the bottom so I'm just saving myself a step.
Denise: And I would underscore for you, Andrew,
that yes, once you've exported this file, the SB2 orders,
you don't want to mess with that order number.
That's the new SB2 order number that was created,
that is the number that we'll use
to connect the partner two file with the partner one file.
So yes, leave those, those are good.
That's supposed to assist partner two
making it easier for them to upload.
And then also, that batch number that you mentioned, Andrew,
it's good for both partner one and partner two to use
to find those files in their order list,
to find those SB2s because by then,
partner two will have access to see those files
in their order list as well.
So that batch number was pretty helpful.
Andrew: Thank you.
Okay, so I'm doing your requesting AID
and now I'm gonna just make sure
it's got three placeholders there.
Capital X, I'm happy with.
Don't have to really do the main
because it is four characters.
I knew that already,
but let's just make the demos solid for you,
Okay? And I'm gonna have to make a placeholder here
for three characters for the SUB.
This is already provided for me, but you know, again,
I'm just trying to make sure you get the full demo here.
Yeah.
Okay, I believe we're done.
I'm not gonna enter the PPQ here today.
I'm gonna do that manually.
So then I File, Save As.
Ugh, yep.
Pardon me while I do a little homework here.
Save this file.
Okay, so I saved the file, it's a csv.
Now I'm gonna go over to Requesting,
Order Upload.
Again, I'll browse for the file.
I'll move it out here
to make sure I can find it for you very quickly.
Nickname and you could put the batch in there, right?
But I just wanna mention,
some folks actually like to use as an alternative...
Lemme just go to tracking.
We've had discussions internally
about how some agencies want to utilize this
for other purposes.
Perhaps their ERP notations or something like that.
You can do that.
For my demonstration, at a minimum,
wanna make sure that I can find the file.
We can go and look at the order number
that the file gives to us from partnering one.
And I think...
Yep, I did.
It's very easy to hit yes here
for requesting for the partner two.
You gotta make sure to say no
or you're gonna get an error.
And that's why I went back and redid it. Okay?
I'm gonna do In Flight, no on partner two.
Hit Upload.
Okay? And now we're gonna wait here for a moment.
For 30 seconds.
Jurgen: While you wait, can I ask you a quick question?
Andrew: Feel free.
Jurgen: Back to the file
where the system generated the order numbers.
What again was it that told the system that,
"Hey, these two lines are supposed to be
the same order number?"
Andrew: When I created the original file...
Lemme see if I can bring up the original file for you.
When I created the original file,
I actually indicate unique information per row.
See I did it that way.
You could do it As and Bs, my understanding,
but this makes the most sense for me.
Right? -: Okay. Okay.
So it's not the line or the schedule
and it's not anything like that.
It's what you're entering in column A.
-: Correct. Agreed. -: Okay.
Thank you. -: Yeah. Now...
And what Denise mentioned
is partner two should never mess with this
or you're gonna have a mess, right?
You'll get errors and it just won't work.
Jurgen: What would be the effect
if we locked those cells?
I don't even know if you can do that in csv files actually.
Can you lock those cells?
Probably not. -: Not sure.
I'm not sure your thought process would be honestly.
You're saying, oh, it's just so partner two
never can mess with the
order numbers themselves. -: Yeah.
Andrew: I've never tried it for csv files.
It's a good point. Something worth trying.
No guarantees that'll work though, right? (laughing)
Let's just say that. I will say that.
So I am requesting, I am partner two.
I went through and received the file via secure channel.
I did the upload and now
it looks like it completed successfully
and now it's actually updating the information
from the partner two side.
Please stand by.
Shouldn't take but a minute.
And of course if you have larger orders, you know,
large number of orders, it's gonna take longer.
Two orders with two Schedule 2s is pretty quick usually.
Okay. Yeah, I'm getting a couple...
These are errors you probably will never see.
We haven't even received them.
These are internal to the system errors.
It did say the order completed successfully,
which I am not surprised about.
We've been very successful.
Batch 289 is the nickname I added just for my edification
so I can go find that file.
Let me show you something here.
I could find it by the order number.
I'm sure you're thinking that and I would agree.
But you can also, if you left that information there,
you can also go to order-requesting tracking information
and there's 298, 2 different orders.
I'm gonna look at each one of them for you.
There's two schedules as I had pointed out, right?
This is 30 and the next one is 20.
So when I open the other one, it'll be 40 and 50 there.
We did allow for advanced pay,
so I will be able to do a advanced PPQ
on one of these here in a moment.
I'm gonna go back to the order, go find the other one.
Lemme see. Did I do that wrong?
Let's see. Oh, yep.
This is 40 and I'm looking at the quantities.
That's 50 and that's 40. I did 50, 40, 30, 20.
And the order is open
so both agencies approved in the file successfully.
You can actually look at...
Yeah, that doesn't really help you much cuz it's all me,
but still, you can see it's there.
I'm gonna now go over to servicing,
I'm gonna grab this order number.
Just gonna finish it off for you.
Go find the order.
Show performance as servicing.
There's the two schedules that were created via a file.
It is in flight.
Again, I know I did this for you once,
but let's just do it for this file.
And let's not forget, right, training helps.
Gonna have to train your folks, right?
It's not gonna be blaring at your users to check the box.
And if it was only a partial, we could just do 2,000.
Don't know if you noticed that.
And then I'll say create.
So the key to me is looking there
and seeing previously settled as the status.
I know successfully doing a removal
of fiscal available for this order and not creating an IPAC.
Okay, I'll just ask if there's any questions
or anything at all that we can provide to you here.
You know, we went through the requirements,
the feature management, using the UI for In Flight Order,
dropdown and creating an advanced PPQ,
and then using the bulk uploads.
We wanna make sure you know that 5.0 webinars
are now available for your users to register for
beginning in February.
Yep.
Want to thank Treasury for being on the call today
and of course, you can always ask questions directly
of the Treasury Department.
This is the program team from the Treasury for G-Invoicing
and my team.
My name is Andrew Zeff. I work for Robert Mattison.
We're part of the Agency Onboarding and Implementation team,
AIT from FRB.