We have a dedicated team of expert professionals who not only provide outstanding technical support, but we help keep you up to date. Staying abreast of the ever-changing rules and regulations, policies and procedures in the mailing and shipping industry is a daunting task at best. We hope you will find this blog filled with pertinent information you can use to run your business more efficiently and profitably. As always, we welcome your feedback and comments.
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With the recent publication of our latest white paper - ”Intelligent Mail Full-Service: Critical Steps to Understanding and Implementing” – we want to hear from you.
Take this opportunity to comment, question, disagree – whatever you want – but do it here. Reply to this blog post. Let us know how we did.
Wallace Vingelis
Director, Postal Industry Practice
Window Book, Inc.
Phone: (617) 395-4569
email: wvingelis@windowbook.com
In our ongoing efforts to educate mailers and the postal industry as a whole about critical changes happening with the USPS, we are publishing an informative, 29-page white paper titled, “Intelligent Mail Full-Service: Critical Steps to Understanding and Implementing”.
The Postal Team here at Window Book believes that in this white paper you’ll discover:
- What’s going on in the Postal industry
- The differences between the Full-Service and Basic options
- What Full-Service will do for you (It’s not just about the discounts!)
- The 3 ways to participate in the USPS PostalOne! System
- What steps you need to take, and in which order, to get going with IM Full-Service
- And much, much more!
Click here to download your free copy of Intelligent Mail Full-Service: Critical Steps to Understanding and Implementing.
Wallace Vingelis
Director, Postal Industry Practice
Window Book, Inc.
Phone: (617) 395-4569
email: wvingelis@windowbook.com
There was a meeting of the MTAC 135 Workgroup today to discuss the feedback from USPS Engineering on the D&R (Dispatch & Routing) tags. (rewind a few weeks –> mailers had requested some additional white space be allocated on the D&R tags to allow them some room for “mailer information” – Engineering’s first response was “no – we don’t see a business reason for it” – the industry said “it’s not YOUR business need – it’s OURS” -> fast forward to now) Engineering now says they can accommodate either a longer or wider tag, but the industry has to make a decision on which because it can’t support both. When that decision is made by the industry, Engineering will work on and publish specs detailing where the mailer info white-space is. (btw, rumor has it than an internal USPS mock-up document showed the mailer info at the bottom of the tag)
The USPS will first contact the tag and print vendors to see what they can support (longer or wider or either) – then they will survey the mailers. More info to follow as it becomes available.
A meeting attendee asked if the USPS will change THEIR stock to accommodate the new sized tags (when in use) to fully cover the mailer’s tag if there is the need for an “overlay”.
The USPS responded that they will need to look into how to accomodate this – just as the industry will – and they will let us know.
Wallace Vingelis
Director, Postal Industry Practice
Window Book, Inc.
Phone: (617) 395-4569
email: wvingelis@windowbook.com
At last week’s MTAC meetings, things were a little different than normal. Instead of a lot of committee and workgroup updates on the first day (Wednesday), the USPS requested that the MTAC membership and attendees break out into separate workgroups to focus on USPS innovation for the future. There were 10 separate groups all tasked with the same thing: bringing innovative ideas to the attention of the USPS for consideration and implementation. All 10 groups ranked their top 3 ideas and presented them to the rest of the MTAC attendees. These 30ish (not every group had 3) ideas were captured and sent around for everyone to vote on with the goal being a Top 3 list for the USPS to act and report on.
Unfortunately, the Top 3 list was not available before we broke the meetings on Thursday, but as soon as it’s available, I’ll post it here. In the meantime, check out the list of top ideas we voted on:
Wallace Vingelis
Director, Postal Industry Practice
Window Book, Inc.
Phone: (617) 395-4569
email: wvingelis@windowbook.com
If you need assistance with the USPS FAST system, you can submit your issue via email to FAST@usps.com. Or, depending on the date, you can call one of the two numbers below:
- Prior to August 30, 2010 – call 1-800-522-9085
- After August 30, 2010 – call 1-877-569-6614
** If you are having any problems with your Customer/Supplier Agreements (CSAs) – you must log these issues with the FAST Help Desk via one of the methods listed above. **
Wallace Vingelis
Director, Postal Industry Practice
Window Book, Inc.
Phone: (617) 395-4569
email: wvingelis@windowbook.com
This group was formed by the Mailers Technical Advisory Group (MTAC) to discuss and work through any FAST-related issues that were tabled and passed to it by MTAC 122 – as well as new issues that have come up since the announcement of this group forming. The first meeting was held this past week on Wednesday afternoon. If you are interested in joing this User Group, please contact the Industry Co-Chair Michelle Billman of ALG Worldwide Logistics at mbillman@algworldwide.com.
Here are a few highlights from that initial meeting:
There is a “patch release” (14.3.0) coming out on August 15 (FAST is trying to follow the overall PostalOne! release schedule.) Here is some helpful info from the latest DMM Advisory:
*** FAST Release 14.3.0 and Scheduled Outages (August 15-16, 2010): FAST® Release 14.3.0 will deploy to the production environment on Sunday, August 15, 2010. Updated release notes for FAST 14.3.0 are available on RIBBS>Site Index A-Z>FAST/Surface Visibility>Important Links>FAST Release Notes. The FAST production system will not be available from 4 a.m. through 8 a.m. (CDT) on Sunday, August 15, 2010.
FAST Release 14.3.0 will deploy to the Test Environment for Mailers (TEM) on Monday, August 16, 2010. The FAST TEM system will not be available from 8 a.m. through 12 Noon (CDT) on Monday, August 16, 2010. ***
The pre-release notes available on RIBBS were updated to include information about the new Help Desk set up for FAST. The industry seems a bit hesitant (I’m being nice here) about how helpful this will be. They are concerned that if they have a truck full of mail at the dock that is not being accepted, they will more than likely still have to go through their current escalation routine to get the mail accepted as opposed to just calling the Help Desk for resolution. The USPS says those calls will route to a Manager on Duty at that facility. The problem there is that the normal escalation process inside the facility already includes contacting that manager, so that Help Desk routing could end up with a mailer saying “Hello Manager John – I need to complain about Manager John I was just talking to.” (Could be a touchy situation!)
Last discussion item was about the open issues handed off from MTAC 122 and how to open new issues moving forward. It was decided to table that until next meeting when Ed Wanta (USPS) would be on the call.
As we hurtle along towards 2011 and increased postage prices due to the USPS exigency filing, IDEAlliance formally published the Mail.dat 11-1 specification for the industry’s review. This new specification is designed to take into account new items being requested by the industry and the USPS for better communications amongst ourselves and with the USPS via PostalOne! Although, truth be told, it’s more the latter than the former. With the publishing of the final spec, there are a few things/dates people need to know:
- All reviews must be complete and comments turned in by Friday, 08/06/10. Due to the compressed schedule for publishing this spec requested by the USPS, there is only 1 week to dig into and review this new spec.
- The “must-catch” date is 12/02/10 – This is the date software that receives and reads Mail.dat files (like Window Book’s DAT-MAIL or the USPS PostalOne! system) must be ready to receive (catch) files formatted using the 11-1 spec.
- The “must-send” date is 02/02/11 – This is the date software that creates Mail.dat files must be able to produce files formatted using the 11-1 spec.
- Expected date of exigency price increase is 01/02/11 – These 3 dates create a 60-day window between catch and send dates for Mail.dat with the price increase date right in the middle.
- When reviewing the new spec, it’s easier to start at the back! Find the section in the back that details the changes to the spec between 11.1.0.0 and 9.1.0.3 (page 154) and use that to guide you through your review.
- Pay attention to the new “air box” scenario described on page 150. These are containers that mailers are being required to use even though the USPS doesn’t have many technical details about them.
For those of you just getting familiar with Mail.dat (and Mail.XML), Window Book will be presenting a Mail.dat/Mail.XML Webinar on Tuesday, 08/10/10 at 3:00 pm EDT. Interested parties can register at http://www.windowbook.com/WindowBookWebinars.aspx.
Wallace Vingelis
Director, Postal Industry Practice
Window Book, Inc.
Phone: (617) 395-4569
Fax: (617) 395-5969
email: wvingelis@windowbook.com
URL: www.windowbook.com
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