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October 20, 2015
First EPC and FCC Form 470 Release Notes Issued
USAC is currently making improvements and enhancements to the E-rate Productivity Center (EPC), the account and application management portal used by E-rate applicants, consultants, and service providers to manage program processes (such as submitting forms) and to submit questions. As part of this process, USAC is making available "release notes," which summarize the changes that have occurred and provide additional information and/or guidance.
USAC has now implemented its first set of improvements and enhancements to EPC - Release Notes R1.1.2.1 - which appears below.
Release Notes R1.1.2.1
EPC
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Applicants with either Full or Partial Rights to the FCC Form 470 or 471 can now update their organization's profile, including updating the address, entity attributes, and the student counts for schools and school districts. Consultants who have been given these same rights by their clients can also make these changes.
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The applicant's Billed Entity will always appear first in the list of organizations on their Landing Page. For example, the library system will appear first lin the list of entities, followed by the library outlets and/or non-instructional facilities (NIFs) associated with that library system.
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Applicants who used a single Billed Entity Number (BEN) to identify the school district or library system as well as the district office or main branch, and whose BEN was imported into EPC as a NIF, can now request to have that number changed back to their BEN. A new entity number will be assigned to the NIF. USAC's Client Service Bureau can make those changes on your behalf.
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Libraries that were imported as a library outlet, but that are actually library systems, can be switched in the system (and vice versa). Please contact USAC's Client Service Bureau if your library system is not properly associated with its member libraries.
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State E-rate Coordinators will now have access into their constituents profiles. For example, the school state E-rate coordinators have been granted view-only access into the profiles of the public schools in their state. They will not be able to file forms on behalf of the public schools unless the schools specifically provide those rights to their state school coordinator. Similarly, state library E-rate coordinators will have view-only access into the state's public libraries EPC accounts. State Coordinators do not have any access into non-public school accounts.
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Email domains with four or more characters, such as .education or .library, are now accepted.
FCC Form 470
- The Allowable Contract Date (that is, 28 days after the posting of the FCC Form 470 and the earliest date when an applicant can select a service provider) is now listed on the FCC Form 470 record. For any FCC Forms 470 filed after October 9, 2015, the date when this change was implemented, the Allowable Contract Date also appears on the PDF version of the form.
- All users can use the "Follow" button on any FCC Forms 470 to receive News notifications when that FCC Form 470 is updated, including when a new RFP document is uploaded or when the contact or technical contact is changed.
- FCC Forms 470 records now correctly list the form create date and time in the correct fields.
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