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September 13, 2019
TIP OF THE WEEK: To request an extension of the September 30, 2019 deadline for the delivery and installation of Funding Year (FY) 2018 non-recurring services, the applicant must certify an FCC Form 500 in EPC on or before September 30.
Commitments for Funding Year 2019
Funding Year 2019. USAC released FY2019 Wave 24 Funding Commitment Decision Letters (FCDLs) on September 12. As of September 13, FY2019 commitments total over $1.72 billion.
On the date that FCDLs are issued, you can access your FCDL notification from the Notifications section of your landing page in the E-rate Productivity Center (EPC).
EPC Deployment News
Early next week, we will be deploying the following changes in the EPC system:
New sender email address for USAC review questions
When USAC posts questions to applicants during the review of submitted forms and requests, we also notify applicants by email. Currently the notifications are sent from the email address EPC.Application.Administrator@usac.org. After the deployment, the notifications will come from EPC.Application.Administrator@portal.usac.org. Please add this email and/or the domain portal.usac.org to your safe senders list.
Uploading responsive documents to question templates
During a Program Integrity Assurance (PIA) or a post-commitment review, applicants have been unable to upload relevant documents to the EPC question template when the template either does not contain any questions or when "No Answer" is the only applicable response. After the deployment of these EPC changes, applicants will be able to upload additional documents that may be responsive to these PIA or post-commitment questions.
County information automatically added to entity profiles
When creating or updating an entity profile, the applicant is required to provide the street address, city, state, and zip code. After the deployment of these EPC changes, when a new profile is created or an existing profile is updated, EPC will automatically add the county to the address record based on the address information provided by the applicant, if the county location can be determined.
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If the county provided by EPC is correct, no action is necessary.
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If EPC determines that the address information could refer to more than one county, EPC will provide a drop-down list so that the applicant can choose the correct county.
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If EPC cannot determine the county or the county name provided is incorrect, the applicant will be able to type in the correct information.
"Recent Information Change" notifications
USAC occasionally needs to inform a small number of applicants about a specific change in their information – for example, an update to a service delivery deadline or an invoice deadline issued in error.
In the past, we have sent these communications only by email. We now have a new type of notification – a "Recent Information Change" – to notify you of these changes in EPC in several ways.
When USAC creates a Recent Information Change notification, you will have access to it in several places:
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The News feed. The item will be marked "Recent Information Change" and include a new type of icon – an exclamation point inside a red triangle.
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The Notifications section of your entity's landing page. If you access the drop-down menu in the Notifications section, "Recent Information Change" will be one of the options.
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User emails. Every user on the billed entity's account will receive a notification by email of the change.
To find these notifications in the News feed, you can filter using the text "Recent Information Change" to locate them more easily.
Access to FCDL News posts
After the deployment of these EPC changes, users will be able to view their FCDL notifications by using the News dashboard on the FCC Form 471 record.
To view the News dashboard for an FCC Form 471, search for and locate your form record using the FCC Forms and Post-Commitment Requests section of your landing page. (You can also search for a form by choosing the FCC Form 471 option under the Actions tab from any EPC page.) Then click the menu option labeled "News" just above the progress bar at the top of the page instead of the News tab in the blue bar at the very top of the page.
Notifications no longer sent to removed consultants
After the deployment of these EPC changes, when a consultant relationship is removed from an applicant or service provider profile, that consultant will no longer receive any notifications related to that entity. Notifications related to other entities associated with the consultant will not be affected.
Improved state coordinator access
From their landing page, state coordinators are currently able to search for and view certain forms and notifications for public entities in their state (public schools, public libraries, or both depending on their state coordinator role in EPC).
After the deployment of these EPC changes, state coordinators will be able to search for and view the following additional forms and requests:
Note, however, that state coordinators associated with public schools and/or libraries will no longer automatically see any News posts associated with non-public schools and/or libraries.
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