Month: March 2011

TariffShark Dashboard: Keep Tabs on Your Filings

Filings in TariffShark follow a very specific lifecycle: Draft -> Filed -> Complete.  It is up to you to update the status of your Filings to help move them through this lifecycle.  TariffShark’s Dashboard helps you keep tabs on your Filings and highlights Filings where it appears that the status has not been updated.

First, a little bit about Filing status…

DRAFT

All Filings start out in “Draft” status.  You may update all aspects of Draft Filings as they have not been filed with FERC.  TariffShark even allows you to delete Draft Filings.

FILED

A Filing has a “Filed” status once it has been submitted to and accepted by FERC. Certain data associated with a Filing must not be updated once it has been filed. By updating the status to “Filed”, TariffShark protects much of a Filing’s data so that you are unable to change it (either intentionally or unintentionally).

COMPLETE

Finally, after a statutory period elapses or after FERC issues an order in response to a Filing, its status is “Complete”, which is where it spends the rest of its days.

The Dashboard

Click the gauge icon on the toolbar (circled below)…or select “View | Dashboard” from the menu…or press Ctrl-D on your keyboard and the Dashboard is displayed.

The first two tabs of the Dashboard (“Draft Filings” and “Filed Filings”) display information that can help you monitor the status of your Filings.

DRAFT FILINGS TAB

The “Draft Filings” tab lists all Filings that have a status of “Draft”.  The “# Days” column describes the number of days until the FERC Filing Date (which is a data element on the Filing).  If the number of days displayed is negative, that means that the FERC Filing Date is in the future.  If you’ve been staying on top of things and updating your Filings to “Filed” status upon submitting them to FERC, you would expect all Draft Filings to have a negative “# Days” value.  The rows are highlighted in different colors to visually depict which Filings may require your attention.

  • Rows are white in the grid for Filings that are to be filed more than 7 days in the future.
  • Rows are yellow in the grid for Filings that are due to be filed in the next 7 days.
  • Rows are red in the grid for Filings whose FERC Filing Date has passed.  These are the Filings where either the Status or the FERC Filing Date has probably not been recorded accurately.

FILED FILINGS TAB

The “Filed Filings” tab lists all Filings that have a status of “Filed”.  The “# Days” column describes the number of days that have passed since the FERC Filing Date (which is a data element on the Filing).  If the number of days displayed is negative, that means that the FERC Filing Date is in the future.  The rows are highlighted in different colors to visually depict which Filings may require your attention.

  • Rows are white in the grid for Filings whose FERC Filing Date is today or in the future.
  • Rows are green in the grid for Filings that were filed within the last 30 days.
  • Rows are yellow in the grid for Filings that were filed between 31 and 60 days ago.
  • Rows are red in the grid for Filings that were filed more than 60 days ago.

The yellow and red rows are the ones most likely in need of attention.

Searching in TariffShark

The TariffShark Premier desktop application has a built-in search funtion. Click the binoculars icon on the toolbar (shown below)…or select “Edit | Search” from the menu…or press Ctrl-F on your keyboard and the Search form is displayed.

On the Search form, simply type in the word or words you seek and click the Search button.  TariffShark will search Filings and Tariff Record Versions to find what you are looking for.

Filing data that is searched:

  • Title
  • Docket Number
  • Comments

Tariff Record Version data that is searched:

  • Description
  • Title
  • Narrative Name
  • Section Number
  • Comments
  • Plain Text Content

Search results are displayed in tabs.  TariffShark displays new tabs for every search performed.  If you search for a word that is found in both Filings and Tariff Record Versions, your search will return two tabs: one for Filings and one for Tariff Record Versions.

Give it a try and please feel free to comment below with your feedback.

  • Title

  • Docket Number

  • Comments

Changing a Filing’s Type

One of the questions most frequently asked of the TariffShark support team is how to change the Filing Type of a Filing.  The short answer is that once a Filing has been created in TariffShark, its Filing Type cannot be changed.  This may sound like the worst possible answer, but the news isn’t all bad.  Follow the steps outlined below and you’ll be up and running with a new Filing of the correct Filing Type in short order.

You’ll need to create a new Filing with the correct Filing Type and move all of the content from the incorrect Filing over to the new one…and also delete the incorrect Filing.

  1. Create a new Filing of the correct Filing Type.
  2. Deleting a Filing will also delete its FERC Attachments and Filing Cabinet items.  Therefore, save these to your desktop or network before deleting the incorrect Filing.
  3. Delete the incorrect Filing.  This also deletes its Filed Tariff Record Versions (FTRVs), but not the underlying Tariff Record Versions (TRVs).  Therefore, you have not lost any of the changes you’ve made to the content of your Tariffs.
  4. Using the TariffShark commands provided for this purpose, recreate all of the FERC Attachments and Filing Cabinet Items in the new Filing and upload the content saved in step 2 above.
  5. Add the TRVs that used to be in the old Filing to the new one.  You can do this en masse by bringing up the Filing Details and clicking the “Add Tariff Record Versions” command in the SmartBar.

Step 5 uses a little-known command that can save a lot of time.  For Filings with many tariff changes affecting many tariff records, using the “Add Tariff Record Versions” command means that the TRVs don’t have to be added to the new Filing one at a time.

TariffShark Documentation

Did You Know?

The complete documentation for TariffShark is right at your fingertips.  To open the TariffShark help system, simply select “Help | Help” from the TariffShark menu…or press the F1 key on your keyboard.  When you do, the help Table of Contents will be displayed.

The Table of Contents is an expandable and collapsible list of topics to help you more easily navigate the subject areas.  If you can’t find what you’re looking for in the Table of Contents, every page has a search box in the upper right-hand corner.  TariffShark’s help system uses Google search technology to help you find the content you seek.

Also, every help article is individually printable.  This allows you to print out only the articles that are most important to you.

TariffShark’s help documentation is stored on the Internet.  This enables us to update it as needed.  You do not have to wait for a software release in order to have access to the latest and greatest help information…it’s always right there.

Feedback

We wish to continually improve the help documentation.  We want it to be as complete and accurate as possible and super easy to understand…but we need your help.  If you see an area where the help documentation doesn’t meet your needs, let us know.  Send an email to support@tariffshark.com describing how we can make the documentation better.  If there’s a specific page that needs improvement, please send us the URL.