Troubleshooting the SIDPERS Electronic Update Process

If you go into the E-Trans Manager option of "Transactions Sent", do the "Reconcile", and all your transactions failed, there is a good possibility that the transactions never made it through the electronic update process.  To troubleshoot this issue, it's important to understand the process itself.  The following are the steps that occur in the electronic update process, once a user selects to send the transactions to SIDPERS.

1. Transactions show in the "Export Transactions" screen in E-Trans Manager.
2. User goes in and selects the transactions to export and selects "Create Tx Files for Selected Transactions".
3. Transaction files are created in the folder specified in the "Path of File Folder".  NOTE: this is a location relative to the web server, NOT the end user.
4. If the "FTP Files to SIDPERS on Create Tx" is checked, then the files are then FTP'ed to SIDPERS in the location specified under the "Directory to place electronic files" found in the FTP section of the E-Trans Manager "Admin" page.  This folder should be the folder where the uspin.sh script looks for them to.  It is also the same folder that the AITS system places their electronic transaction files.
5. If the "FTP Files to SIDPERS on Create Tx" is NOT checked, the files must somehow be moved to the SIDPERS system in the folder where the upsin.sh script will pick them up and process them.  Some states, instead of using FTP, have different ways of getting these files to SIDPERS.
6. The uspin.sh script on the SIDPERS box runs.  It will pick up these files and process them.
7. As part of the upsin.sh script, an email is generated that gives a synopsis of the transactions that were processed and whether or not there were any errors.  This email goes to the person specified in the "Email Address" in the E-Trans Manager Admin screen.  If you look at each of the transaction files, the first line actually contains this email address.
8. After the upsin.sh script runs , a user can then go into the "Transactions Sent" screen in E-Trans Manager and select the "Reconcile SIDPERS" button.  This will check to ensure that the electronic transactions made it into SIDPERS.  Usually the upsin.sh script is set to run in the late afternoon, and the users do this function the following morning.

If ALL your transactions fail for the day and an email does not get sent, then it could be a failure in any of the following places:

1. SOP is to use the "FTP Files to SIDPERS on Create Tx" and the user forgot to check this box when exporting.  The files will still be sitting in the folder and can just be moved over to SIDPERS manually for processing.
2. SOP is to NOT use the "FTP Files to SIDPERS on Create Tx" , but whatever process implemented to get the files to SIDPERS failed in some way.
3. The "Export Transactions" process was done AFTER the upsin.sh script was run.  If this is the case, the files will be processed the next time the uspin.sh SIDPERS process is run.
4. The upsin.sh script did not run for some reason.