Original publication date: December, 2008

Special WebCATS Release for SBA-Funded Programs

If you perform quarterly EDMIS uploads, you’ll be receiving a new WebCATS/WinCATS build in the days preceding Christmas (sometime on or between December 19-24). Because time is of the essence, we won’t schedule the WebCATS build 424 upgrade with you in advance, but we do promise to consider time zones and work around your program’s business hours as much as possible. Once we’ve completed the WebCATS upgrade on our end, we’ll contact you with instructions for downloading the WinCATS portion of it.

Why the rush? This 424 build contains vital new EDMIS export capabilities that you’ll need for your January uploads, as well as brand new disaster relief tracking capabilities that SBA is requiring beginning January 1, 2009.

Required Capabilities for January EDMIS Export

In the September issue of our newsletter, we highlighted all the proposed changes to the SBA Form 641 and which ones would require updates to the EDMIS export process. We’re happy to report that all the 641 changes that required updates in time for your first FY 2009 export in January can be found in the new WebCATS/WinCATS builds so you’ll be fully compliant with EDMIS. Here’s a summary of the EDMIS export updates in the new WebCATS/WinCATS builds:

To satisfy line 26a, a client’s 8(a) certification status (yes or no) is now always part of the exported 641 file.
To satisfy line 43, recently-received 8(a), HubZone, and/or SDB certifications will be uploaded to EDMIS with the counseling session immediately following the certification date to indicate that an SBA resource contributed to the certification.
To satisfy line 50b, which was recently clarified to represent total preparation time for all counselors participating in a counseling session, WebCATS now allows you to enter preparation and travel time on a per-counselor basis. The totals of these times will be uploaded to EDMIS, but the more granular tracking method will allow individual programs to better assess counselor resources and effort.
To satisfy line 51, the total number of counselors participating in an initial or follow-up counseling session will now be part of the exported 641 file. The SBA 641 report in WebCATS now reflects the new fields and layout of the SBA Form 641.

Brand New Disaster Relief Tracking Capabilities

Just days ago (on December 12 to be exact), SBA rushed some last-minute information to us in regards to tracking disaster relief efforts. Specifically, counseling and training assistance provided in the areas of disaster relief and energy assistance are to be tracked using special FEMA and energy assistance codes. To accommodate this, a new drop-down field titled “FEMA/Energy Assistance” has been added to WebCATS build 424.

Although details on this new tracking requirement have been a little sketchy from SBA thus far, we wanted to at least get some preliminary tools into WebCATS for you so that you could begin tracking this specialized assistance come January. OutreachSystems received the following explanation from SBA regarding this new requirement:

“...[SBA is looking to develop] a way to track special programs (like energy grants, disaster grants, etc.) through EDMIS. The idea is that if a partner gets funds outside of their regular funding agreement, we need to be able to identify the counseling (and probably training) that was provided using those funds...”.

Unfortunately, we don’t know too much more about it than what’s written above. If you have questions about this new tracking requirement, we encourage you to contact SBA for more details.

Some Capabilities Removed from WinCATS

As part of OutreachSystems’ long-term vision for WinCATS, we’re continuing to remove data entry capabilities from WinCATS. With this newest build, all forms have been removed from WinCATS. If you want to view, create, edit, or delete a record, it has to be done from WebCATS. Since data entry capabilities have been quite limited for some time now in WinCATS, most of you probably won’t miss the ability to manage records in WinCATS.

However, there are two exceptions to this. The first exception is that if you used WinCATS to generate worksheets based on subsets, you have temporarily lost this capability. The good news is that the ability to base worksheets on subsets will be added into WebCATS in build 425 (due out in February). The second exception is that if you used WinCATS for your EDMIS error correction, you have permanently lost this capability. You will continue to generate your EDMIS exports using WinCATS, but the data entry correction will now exclusively be handled in WebCATS, using the EDMISrx error records, as described in step 3 of the How do I create and upload my SBA data exports to EDMIS? FAQ.

Other Miscellaneous Updates

In addition to EDMIS-specific updates, you’ll notice a few other interface changes when you upgrade to WebCATS build 424. Three obvious changes that you’ll immediately notice are:

Graphic and text references to OutreachSystems. See the featured Who is OutreachSystems? article for a detailed explanation of the new OutreachSystems division Softshare has created.
An empty client and contact record list when you first open the client and contact summary views. Previously, WebCATS would render all client or contact records beginning with the letter “A,” but for some centers this took a significant amount of time. And since you’re seldom looking for a company or contact whose name begins with the letter “A,” we decided that you should be allowed to choose which records are initially rendered. So these lists will now come up empty so that you can choose which record or record list subsets to display.
Changes to the left-hand menu system. You’ll notice that there is no longer a “Tools” menu. Instead, it’s been changed to “Manage” and is devoted to managing saved resources such as subsets, custom reports, survey definitions, and attachments. In addition, the “Manage” menu also holds the “Synchronization” command, formerly titled “Administration.” So where did the “Select Center” and “Worksheets” commands go? They now live under the “View” menu.

There are other, less obvious enhancements (but still cool) that you may come across as a result of upgrading to WebCATS build 424. Although we are not highlighting them in the newsletter at this time (you can read about them in WebCATS’ build notes), we promise to do a full write-up in February, when build 425 is released and these features become available to all WebCATS users.