Current Events
Update on IT Outage (Tuesday, 7 p.m. ET)
Current Status
As
of 4 p.m. ET today, we project 2,384 USPTO employees remain offline due to the
faulty CrowdStrike code, with over 1,200 addressed today.
Remaining
affected employees are required to plan to either receive IT assistance onsite
at USPTO headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, or schedule virtual assistance
to have their computers fixed. Please refer to the CrowdStrike
IT outage: FAQs for impacted employees webpage.
Virtual Assistance Status
As of 1 p.m. ET today, all employees who made virtual appointments for Monday that we weren’t able to honor yesterday have been addressed or contacted. Additional appointments are now available for Wednesday. We anticipate adding more appointments if current slots fill up.
- Virtual
appointments (for those outside 50-mile radius of Alexandria): TEAP Virtual Repair booking site
We
ask that you stay close to your phone within a four-hour window of your
designated appointment (i.e. if you have a 1 p.m. appointment time, please
remain available until 5 p.m.).
We
are working to implement notifications to employees who are next “in the queue”
so that they are given advance notice of a technician’s call. If your
technician missed your scheduled appointment window, please remain near your
phone for a call back. You will not lose your position in the queue.
Scam
Caution
Upon
joining a virtual appointment, or receiving a call back, request that the
technician confirm your workstation ID before proceeding with the call. Our
IT technicians will never ask for payment information. Employees are not
required to be on video for the call, though some IT personnel may ask to use
video calling, such as FaceTime, so they can view your screen as they walk
through instructions.
Onsite Assistance Status
Onsite resolution continues to move more quickly than anticipated, because one technician can work with more than one employee at a time to fix affected computers. Note, at this time, in-person appointments are not available at any other USPTO locations, including regional offices. Please make sure that the battery in your laptop is fully charged when you bring it for onsite assistance. If it is not, then please ensure that you bring the power adapter for your laptop.
Walk-In and Scheduled Appointments Available
If
your duty station is near Alexandria headquarters (Remote 50, routine, or
situational telework programs, or a non-teleworker assigned to Alexandria), you
are required to come to headquarters to have your computer fixed as soon as
possible. We
encourage all local employees to come to campus to have their computers fixed by
Wednesday, July 24.
- Employees
are encouraged to bring their computer’s power supply and power cable with
them to campus.
- Onsite
appointments: USPTO Onsite Repair booking site.
The
USPTO will pay travel time and expenses for TEAP employees whose primary
alternate worksite is within 50 to 150 miles of the Alexandria campus to travel
to campus via their personally owned vehicles (POV) through Thursday, July 25.
Please email ITOutageRepairTravelAuthorization@uspto.gov and copy your
direct supervisor if you are interested in this option.
Employees
unable to travel to headquarters due to sickness, dependent or childcare
obligations, travel, or who are requesting any other accommodation, should
schedule a virtual appointment and notify their supervisor.
More Information About Scheduling Appointments
For
detailed information about scheduling in-person appointments for Alexandria
vicinity employees and virtual appointments for TEAP employees, please see the
guidance posted to the System
411 page on July 22 at 4 p.m. ET.
If
the appointment links are unavailable or not working, the current appointment
times may be full, and please check back during the next scheduled update. We
have directed all supervisors to reach out via call or text to ensure that
affected employees have a line of communication over the course of the
remediation process.
Remaining
affected employees who received an initial service ticket on Friday or Saturday
still must make a virtual or onsite appointment, or come to headquarters for a
walk-in appointment. Affected employees should not call the USPTO IT Service
Desk to fix this issue.
Timekeeping Guidance
Guidance
on accounting for time was shared via USPTO Broadcast yesterday, Monday, July
22. Supervisors and managers are being instructed to be flexible in approving
outage time to limit negative impacts to employees.
Depending
on an employees’ regular work schedule, employees will be compensated with
non-production time for any days or hours that they would have normally been
working. This includes the time that their computers were offline, and time
spent working with or waiting for an appointment with an IT technician.
Specifics
about timecodes and further guidance will be shared directly from the
employees’ business unit leadership. Employees should work with their
supervisors to determine the appropriate accounting for time.
Next Update
We will publish our next update tomorrow to the System 411 page.
Posted at 08:34PM Jul 23, 2024 in Current Status |