EFILE UPDATES AND ISSUES ADDRESSED.

[Great-Kazoo]

While far from perfect, it is nice to know they acknowledge issues and at this time, not going to do away with EFiles.

1 weeks applications are over 1K, not including F3 transfers close to another 1K.

Good morning registered eForms users:

For the past two weeks you have been experiencing various performance related issues while attempting to use eForm. These issues have included slow response times, inability to finalize and submit forms, pay.gov screen not displaying, inability to select product types for some submissions, inability to view PDF’s, the system abruptly returning the user back to the home screen, and some of you have not been able to log in at all. While any of you have been able to successfully submit your eForms, others have not been able to get them out of your “Draft” folders.
First, we want to offer our sincere apology for what you are currently experiencing while using eForms. The quality of eForms’ current performance is not indicative of the quality of performance that ATF strives to provide its customers. We share your current frustrations and we want you to know that we are doing everything that we can to address these issues. We continue to meet every day with “experts” in the field, and we are confident that we will soon find a solution.
We believe that eForms is a worthwhile investment for us, as well as for you, the firearms industry. And we think that you feel the same. The statistics below are reflective of this week’s work (our eForms week is calculated from one Wednesday to the next for reporting purposes):

New eforms user registrations: 405
Form 1 submissions: 208
Form 3 submissions: 930
Form 4 submissions: 898
So, in spite of the performance issues, eForms is doing what it was designed to do. It may be slower and it may be temperamental at times, but we believe it to still be a worthwhile investment.
We are committed to provide, you, our customers, the best service that we can and to this end we will continue our efforts to resolve the issues with our eForms system. While we are trying to resolve these issues it may be necessary for us to perform system restarts throughout the day where we may bring eforms down for an hour or so. We request your patience with us and your understanding that this process is unavoidable until we can correctly identify and resolve the issues.
We will provide you with periodic updates on our efforts to ensure you of our commitment and to keep you informed. We thank you for your patience and your continued use of eForms until these issues are resolved.

[RANGERRON72]

Got the same email......think about it. 2000 form submissions per week, and Eastern time zone to Pacific, average business day is 14 hours of time available for submissions. 14 hours times 7 days, equals 96 hours in the week, or twenty submissions an hour.........What a joke? I think this must have been done by high school students working an internship in Martinsburg, WV!!!!!

Just venting, actually NFA Branch has decades of technology to catch up with.........its OK if it cuts approval times.......

[Jeff350]

I have been trying to register and start a Form 1 to SBR a lower for about 3 weeks now, and I have never been able to get anywhere. Most times I don't even get to a login screen. Today I saw a login screen but couldn't register.

I hope this starts working better, I am anxious to get this thing started!

[Great-Kazoo]

I have been trying to register and start a Form 1 to SBR a lower for about 3 weeks now, and I have never been able to get anywhere. Most times I don't even get to a login screen. Today I saw a login screen but couldn't register.

I hope this starts working better, I am anxious to get this thing started!


It took them 5 business days to inform me (via e-m) my registration was accepted. FFL's have the same issues.

[Jeff350]

It took them 5 business days to inform me (via e-m) my registration was accepted. FFL's have the same issues.

Well I was finally able to at least get registered and got the confirmation e-mail.

Now to just fight my way through the actual "paper" work.

[Great-Kazoo]

Sorry – we will be bringing eForms down at 10:05 AM Eastern for a restart to address slowness issues. Should be for an hour. Please save your work and log out

[RCCrawler]

Holy hell does the system ever work? I've been trying for 3 days, and it's either down for maintenance or when it is up it doesn't work.

[Monky]

RCC.. my form 4 guy said during peak times it's next to impossible. He takes time out early saturday mornings from his family and runs them then. Said he's never had an issue on a saturday morning.

[Great-Kazoo]

Holy hell does the system ever work? I've been trying for 3 days, and it's either down for maintenance or when it is up it doesn't work.

6-7 in the a.m . or after 10:30 - 11pm I had one sit in ??? land for 20 min before i received authorization #

I tried the 2nd one @ 7 in the morn on a sunday. Start to finish it took maybe 4-5 min tops.

[asmo]

Hey they are rebooting the system 4 times day now vs. the 1 a day previously.. At that rate it should be fixed anytime now. Right? err wait..



Again, daily restarts of the eForms servers will be conducted daily at the following times until further notice:

4:00 am – 5:00 am
9:00 am – 10:00 am
NOON – 1:00 pm
3:00 pm – 4:00 pm

[Great-Kazoo]

Hey they are rebooting the system 4 times day now vs. the 1 a day previously.. At that rate it should be fixed anytime now. Right? err wait..



[/B]

Wonder if they are swamped with folks filing . They were rebooting to move those in que to the next step / update.

[brutal]

e-mail said to "clear out hung threads."

Great programmers heh?

It's probably Winders server too...

[RANGERRON72]

Here is the whole message from today's email........when you got the email a couple weeks ago about the number of Forms processed and you calculated 14 business hours in a day (Eastern zone to Pacific zone), it was like each Form was taking 10 minutes......hell, you could run that on a single server PC...........one user at a time.......SO THEIR SOLUTION IS TO RE-BOOT!!!!!! Having spent 35 years in the IT industry, this level of incompetence is beyond comprehension.......It has to be intentional.



Good afternoon:


As you are aware, eForms has had performance issues for the past three weeks. We are diligently working with experts in the field to resolve the issues. Until we can get the issues resolved we will be implementing automated restarts of the server at 4:00 am, 9:00 am, NOON, and 3:00 pm eastern time. We have determined that the restart of the servers clears “stuck threads” on the servers and improves the overall performance of eForms. We realize that the unscheduled restarts were disrupting your workday and this will allow you to plan around the scheduled restarts.

Restarts will take approximately one hour to complete during which time eForms will not be available. Again, this is only a temporary measure until a more permanent solution is implemented.

Again, daily restarts of the eForms servers will be conducted daily at the following times until further notice:



4:00 am – 5:00 am


9:00 am – 10:00 am


NOON – 1:00 pm


3:00 pm – 4:00 pm


Finally, Pay.gov has notified us that they will be upgrading their system on Saturday, February 22, 2014, from 6:00 PM to Midnight Eastern Time. Pay.gov has advised us that systems using pay.gov will experience a service outage during this period. This means that you will not be able to pay the tax for the eForms 1 and 4 during this time period. Forms can be created and saved to your draft folder until the upgrade is completed and the taxes can be paid.

Thank you for your patience as we try to improve eForms.

Sincerely,

[RCCrawler]

Woohoo, finally got mine done, it went right through.

Crazy they think they need to reboot 4 times a day. I'm guessing my website crunches way more data, and we don't reboot anywhere near that often.

[TFOGGER]

AKA The Microsoft Fix...when you have to reboot for no apparent reason, then everything works as it should, until it doesn't again. rinse and repeat.

[brutal]

Having spent 35 years in the IT industry, this level of incompetence is beyond comprehension.......It has to be intentional.


Not disputing the incompetence, but if you've spent any of that time involved, even peripherally, with any .gov IT operations, there's a high probability the servers/services are contracted out.

As should be evident to any observer given the O'care debacle, let alone those in the know, a lot of the systems/OS/servers/software/middle-ware/database, etc. used is often forced upon whomever by political forces beyond their control.

Not excusing it on any level, just saying...

[electronman1729]

Got mine in yesterday. Key is first thing in the morning.

[RCCrawler]

That is what I heard and tried this morning, and it didn't work.

[Great-Kazoo]

That is what I heard and tried this morning, and it didn't work.

Efiles or something else [Coffee]

[RCCrawler]

I try with the wife first thing in the morning as well, she's a little more responsive than the atf website, but usually not working at that time either.[Rant1]

[Great-Kazoo]

In an attempt to improve the performance of eForms we are restarting the eForms system everyday at the following times (Eastern time). During each restart eForms will be unavailable for 1 hour.




Restart times:

4:00 AM

9:00 AM

NOON

3:00 PM

11:00 PM

[Lurch]

Sounds like the ATF has found the problem and has hopefully fixed it.

[paddywagon]

That sure would be nice

[brutal]

Sounds like the ATF has found the problem and has hopefully fixed it.

[LOL]

That your April Fools' joke or just regular sarcasm?

Rebooting a server (likely Windows/SQL) five times a day isn't a fix.

[Lurch]

[LOL]

That your April Fools' joke or just regular sarcasm?

Rebooting a server (likely Windows/SQL) five times a day isn't a fix.

Apparently a shop in Texas that will remain nameless has been sending batches of forms in the mornings and plugging up the system. They have admitted to sending batches and the ATF says that it's causing delays and outages. Weather it really causes problems or not they have been told to stop immediately or lose their efile privileges. So I guess we will see if it gets better in the coming days.