We will be performing required maintenance on the site between 11:00 PM and 12:00 midnight on Thursday, March 7th.
What to expect:
We expect a minimum amount of outage (less than 30 minutes) during this process. We will be updating the blog with information as the maintenance is being conducted.
Below are the bullet points from our opening presentation at the beginning of the All Partner call today.
Update 2/28: We still have approximately 128,000 returns to play back through the reporting system. This is going to take another 2-3 days.
Due to having to take Web Reports on and off line over the past week, it is significantly behind in being updated with the most current data. We are going to replay the data between midnight and 8 am until it is caught up. This is going to take a few days. We will update this post when all return data has been replayed.
Question: How should I have my Office Settings so the preparer does not print on the 8879 or on 1040 page 2?
Answer: Select ERO Name Only from the Signature on Form 8879 drop down box and select Hide preparer Name on 1040 Print
Question: What does marking Disable Third Party Designee Prefill do?
Answer: It prevents the preparer information from populating the third party designee information in the e-file section. The section will remain available in the event a third party other than a volunteer preparer needs to be designated.
Question: If I select Hide Preparer Name on 1040 print will it also hide the preparer name on the state return?
Answer; Currently no, but we are working on a solution that will incorporate the use of this option at the state level. When this feature is completed and in production the state name will not be printed on the state return if this is selected.
11:47am ET – We are continuing to monitor as site performance is currently operating at optimal levels. If anything changes, we will return and update this post.
11:29am ET – We have received a couple reports of slowness on the site/web reports. At this time, we are actively monitoring with our engineering teams. If you experience consistent slowness, we recommend closing all instances of your browser (not just the tab) and start back with a fresh session connection.
February 19th – Management Reports are now turned back on and be actively used at your site(s).
We wanted to provide an update on Management Reports. They remain turned off as we continue our investigations related to the issues experienced on Tuesday, February 12th. However, today, you will notice that you can now access the Management Reports menu, select a report, choose a date range and EFIN and click to run the report. When clicking to run the report, you will see the below screen. This is expected behavior at this time since Management Reports are turned off.
Issure ID 2480 is now resolved. For impacted returns, open each return and go to the Filing Status screen within the Federal Basic Information menu. Make sure “Married Filing Separate” is marked then clicked Continue and follow the prompts. You will be presented with the question to indicate if the TP and SP lived together at any point during the year.
Issue ID 2480: MFS Question Removed to indicate if SP lived with TP at any point during the year
(COMPLETE) Update 4:25pm EST: All deployments have been completed. At this time, loading the MA state program should function as expected. We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused your sites, volunteers, and taxpayers.
Update 4:12pm EST: We are now deploying to the last set of servers.
Update 4:04pm EST: We have finished deployment to 24 servers and are now deploying to the fourth set at this time.
Update 3:53pm EST: We have finished deployment to 16 servers and are now deploying to the third set at this time.
Update 3:41pm EST: We have finished deployment to the first 8 servers and are deploying to the second set at this time.
Update 3:30pm EST: We are in the processing of deploying to the first set of 8 servers.
Update 3:22pm EST: Our current level of concurrent users on the site is now at an optimal volume to proceed with the second rolling deploy to the web services to minimize potential disruptions across all sites. This should take approximately 1.5 hours to complete and will begin at 3:30pm EST.
Update 12:36 pm EST: Due to the number of concurrent users on the site, we deployed to the calculation servers first in an effort to minimize potential disruptions across all sites. We are currently watching the number of concurrent users in order to conduct a second rolling deploy to the web services.
For those sites impacted by not being able to add a MA return, please make sure you utilize the return tag feature so you can go ahead and prepare the federal return. You can also transmit the federal return and then use the State Only feature to send the state once you can add it to the return.
Update 11:56 am EST: We are deploying to the last set of servers
Update 11:11 am EST: We have deployed the fix to 24 services and are deploying the next set of 8 now (and yes, it is am in GA so I updated my other times
Update 10:59 am EST: We have deployed the fix to 16 servers and are deploying to a third set of servers now.
Update 10:41 am EST: We have deployed the fix to 8 servers and are deploying to a second set of servers
Update 10:26 am EST: We are in the process of pushing out a fix to the MA loading issue. We are doing this slowly across a few servers at a time to minimize potential disruptions.
We are aware that there is problem loading MA returns. The system will not let you add it to an existing return. If you have a return with MA on it, you may experience a long running calculation. If you can select the left navigation bar, select the personal information section to break the calculation. You may want to delete the state and tag the return that it still needs MA to be added when available.