TariffShark Hosted Services Update

TariffShark has been offered with a hosted subscription service option since FERC Order 714 took effect in April 2010. In Q1 2014, all hosting servers were upgraded.

Why Did We Upgrade Servers?

We upgrade servers from time to time to keep things running optimally. The fact is, our customers been making eTariff filings and the amount of data being stored has increased. Also, business is good: the number of customers supported by the servers has grown nicely. So, to keep up with the resource demand, the servers have been configured to run with faster processors, more memory, and more storage.

Disaster Recovery Update

Also in the first quarter of this year, we updated our disaster recovery procedures. Through the power of scripting, recovering from a potential disaster will be done with greater automation than in the past. Fewer manual steps means greater efficiency and speed in the event of a disaster. In the latest test of our disaster recovery procedures, a test server was booted in our DR data center, all data restored, and back online in under an hour.

If you’d like to learn more about Hosted TariffShark, please visit our website or contact sales.

eTariff and FERC Docketing

An NGA gas pipeline recently submitted a type 570 {Normal} eTariff filing and associated it with a prior filing.  The company had been hoping to receive a sub-docket, but the 570 submittal was assigned a new root docket number by FERC’s auto-docketing software.  We think this filing scenario raises an important question:  Under what circumstances is an eTariff filing assigned a new root docket number and under what circumstances is it assigned a sub-docket?  In this article, we will describe our understanding of the rules.

A Normal, New, or Cancel type filing is always assigned a new root docket number. This is true even if the filing is associated with an earlier eTariff filing.  The type 570 filing described above falls into this category.

A Compliance or Refiled type filing is assigned a new root docket number when it is not associated with earlier eTariff filing.  However, when such a filing is associated with an earlier eTariff filing, it is assigned the next available sub-docket number.

An Amendment, Motion, or Withdraw type filing MUST be associated with an earlier eTariff filing and is assigned the next available sub-docket number.

A Report type filing may or may not be associated with an earlier eTariff filing. When associated, it is assigned the next available sub-docket number … and when it isn’t, it is assigned a new root docket number.

If you want to learn more about the rules surrounding eTariff filings types, contact TariffShark Support.  Though we are not regulatory experts, we always do our best to answer questions relating to eTariff rules and regulations.

TariffShark Team Simulates Disaster and Recovery

During the evening of December 4, 2013, the TariffShark team gathered in a conference room at the Links Technology headquarters in Schaumburg, IL to test our disaster recovery procedures.  In the event that our Tier 4 data center experiences an outage that causes the hosted TariffShark servers to become unavailable, we restore service to a secondary data center.  We test these procedures every 6 months as a service to our hosted TariffShark customers.

The test ran successfully in just over an hour.

If you’d like to learn more about Hosted TariffShark, please visit our website or contact sales.

TariffShark Software Update Available

For our enterprise TariffShark customers, TariffShark Releases 3.5 and 4.0.3 are available NOW on TariffShark.com.

Hosted customers, your hosted servers will be updated prior to the December 23, 2013 effective date of the Filing Type changes.

Background and Details

FERC recently updated their eTariff Filing Type definitions. The November 26, 2013 FERC notice identifies changes to filing types that affect Oil Pipelines and nominally affect the Part 284 program. Today we are announcing the availability of TariffShark software releases that accommodate these changes. Updated software, upgrade guides, and installation instructions are available NOW on the TariffShark website.

Note that only the following FERC programs are affected:

  • NGPA 311 Gas Pipelines 
  • Oil Pipelines

If you are already running a recent TariffShark release (R3.3, R3.4, R4.0.1, or R4.0.2), only the TariffShark database is affected by this update. Simply download and run the database installer in order to bring your TariffShark installation up to the latest release.

If you are running a TariffShark release older than R3.3 or R4.0.1, there is a free upgrade path. Consult the Releases page on the TariffShark website for more information.

Please contact TariffShark Support at 847-252-1611 or at support@tariffshark.com if you have any questions or concerns.