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Debbie Matthews headshot, woman with long, blonde hair wearing black blazer and white shirt

 

 

 

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.   

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. 

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

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. 

 

 

Debbie Stephens

Deputy Chief Information Officer
United States Patent and Trademark Office

 


 

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