**Automated Fleet Management System (AFMS) Training**

**Questions and Answers**

\>\> G. Rush: Jim, before you go on, we have a question from California
about the warranty date and confirmation. Hold on just a second.
California, do you have a question? Hello ‑‑ did I hang you up?
California, do you have a question?

\>\> Caller: We\'re having trouble with the push‑to‑talk, so I had to
call in. I don\'t know if other offices are having that same problem.
But I have quite a few questions, but I\'ll just ask two right now.

\>\> G. Rush: Donna, move back from the speaker just a tad.

\>\> Caller: It\'s these microphones I\'m trying to get rid of because
I\'m on the phone. The first one on the warranty date, Jim, can you go
back to that screen?

\>\> G. Rush: Donna, turn down the volume on your broadcast.

\>\> Caller: Is that better?

\>\> G. Rush: No, you\'re still echoing. Turn don\'t some.

\>\> Caller: We are.

\>\> J. Crews: Donna, if I heard you right, you wanted to go back to the
warranty date?

\>\> Caller: Yeah, you had put in today\'s date as the warranty date.
Are you saying you want us to put the date received as the warranty date
or the expiration of the warranty?

\>\> J. Crews: It should be the expiration of the warranty. So let me go
back and take a quick look at that. I\'m going to go into the query
change ‑‑

\>\> G. Rush: Good one, Donna. It\'s the date the warranty ends, not the
date it begins.

\>\> Caller: That\'s how we have been entering it here, but I just
wanted clarification on that one.

\>\> J. Crews: I should have put in 2011 is actually what should have
been entered.

\>\> Caller: \'10.

\>\> J. Crews: Again, I can go up to the update vehicle.

\>\> G. Rush: Thanks, Donna, we get our first change.

\>\> J. Crews: Go back into the field, put in 11. Back up to the top.
Save changes. Vehicle has been updated.

\>\> Caller: And my second question, I think what I\'ll do is just
e‑mail you the rest of the questions. This is really kind of irritating
for me, but are we able to edit this data at all times during the month
are we restricted to input during certain days like old AFMS?

\>\> J. Crews: We still have the four‑day utilization window, and so I
guess the answer is, yes, the system will be down for those four days,
but the rest of the time period, the system will be up. An example of
being able to actually update information, repair information, you can
basically go in and put at any time. It\'s no longer a feature of the
monthly utilization update. So we\'re trying to make the system
accessible to field users as much as we can, but we do still have a
four‑day window processing period.

\>\> Caller: All right.

\>\> G. Rush: Thanks, Donna. Thanks for your question.

\>\> Caller: Bye‑bye.

\>\> J. Crews: Any other questions?

\>\> G. Rush: No, let\'s move right along.

\>\> G. Rush: Whoa, Jim, sorry. We got one question from the field. Hold
on just a SEC. Is that line 2? Hi. Do you have a question for Jim? Wrong
line.

\>\> Caller: Until after they\'ve reported utilization in the month
it\'s been deleted or else the system won\'t create the obligation to
pay the bill.

\>\> G. Rush: Tom, would you do me a favor and repeat the question. I
pushed the wrong button.

\>\> J. Crews: Tom is our operational fleet manager.

\>\> G. Rush: Would you start over, Tom, I\'m sorry.

\>\> Caller: Everybody should know they should not delete the GSA
vehicle record until after utilization has been record in the month that
it\'s being deleted or else the system won\'t create an obligation to
pay the bill for that period of usage.

\>\> G. Rush: Great. Good point. Thank you. I don\'t know if everyone
understood that or not. I mean, before. So thank you for bringing that
up.

\>\> Caller: Okay.

\>\> G. Rush: Thanks, Tom.

\>\> Caller: Bye.

\>\> G. Rush: Do we have another question?

\>\> Caller: Hello? This is me. On fire vehicles on the monthly
maintenance, are they recorded in hours or miles? I noticed on the
fields it celled miles.

\>\> J. Crews: Well, it should be ‑‑ basically however you were
recording it before, we\'ve used the same parameters. If the asset
should be recorded in hours, then we\'re recording it in hours, but in
most cases our vehicles are recorded in miles. They would be recorded in
miles. So I would say that\'s ‑‑ that\'s what we had in the old system
is currently what we\'ve set up the new system.

\>\> Caller: Thanks. Because they give me both on fire engines.

\>\> G. Rush: Oh, okay. Great. Thanks so much, Idaho. Did that answer
your question? I think so. Okay, Jim.

\>\> G. Rush: While we\'re on type of work, we have a question from
Winarda in California. Her question is on unscheduled maintenance. Are
you there?

\>\> Caller: I am, Gwen.

\>\> G. Rush: Go ahead. Ask Jim.

\>\> Caller: Okay. My question is: when you do an unscheduled
maintenance, do you have an opportunity to do a comment as to why
you\'re doing an unscheduled maintenance?

\>\> J. Crews: Good question. Let\'s go back to that add screen here. We
don\'t have a comment section on the add feature. Let me go back to the
query here. Well, currently I don\'t believe that we set up the comment
field. If you go back into the master record, we have comment fields.

\>\> Caller: The reason I was asking is sometimes when you have vehicles
out on fires, they come back in, you do a maintenance that\'s outside of
its regular scheduled maintenance.

\>\> J. Crews: Right. Let\'s go back into ‑‑ this record was I422280.
Let\'s go back into the master record here. I\'m going to submit the
query for BC600. Here\'s that tag number. Now, down here at the bottom
here, you can see there\'s view NBC comments, view Field Office
comments. So it looks like we didn\'t have anything specific to
maintenance, but you could put your comments right here, Field Office
comments. So all the basic modules that have been set up actually do tie
back to the vehicle master. So to answer your question, go back to the
vehicle master and I think you\'ll be able to find a comment field that
you can enter that type of information.

\>\> Caller: Well, will that tie it back to a specific repair?

\>\> J. Crews: Well I\'ll have to look into that. Your question is good,
and that may be a future require. That we may need to look at. So we\'ll
make a note of that and we\'ll get back to you.

\>\> Caller: Thank you.

\>\> G. Rush: Thank you. I already made a note, Jim. So we\'ll do that.
Thanks. On line 2 we have a question from Ike ‑‑ oh, Ike\'s not ready
yet. Okay. Well, let\'s move on.

\>\> G. Rush: I think ‑‑ we have a question from Frank in Phoenix on
transferring vehicles. Hi, Frank.

\>\> Caller: We\'re having a hard time using this push‑to‑talk, so I got
pretty lucky to get on the phone here. But I do have two questions in
reference to the transfer module: the first one ‑‑

\>\> G. Rush: Frank, before you start, turn the sound from your TV down.

\>\> Caller: Thank you. Let me step away from it here. Is that better?

\>\> G. Rush: Can you turn the sound off or way down?

\>\> Caller: Okay.

\>\> G. Rush: Because we\'re hearing you on the phone and TV.

\>\> Caller: How about now?

\>\> J. Crews: Much better.

\>\> Caller: My first question is transferring every vehicles. I assume
this is only interior vehicles, not GAS ‑‑ GSA, right?

\>\> J. Crews: That\'s right.

\>\> Caller: Because GSA vehicles have to be handled by each appropriate
GSA agency. The other question is, when we\'re transferring the interior
vehicles, how do we transfer the credit cards? Are we doing the same
thing?

\>\> J. Crews: My understand is that the credit cards could be
transferred from the national operations center. So ‑‑ but again, that
will be some more policy that\'s going to be issued out from the fleet
management office.

\>\> Caller: Okay.

\>\> G. Rush: Did that answer your question, Frank?

\>\> Caller: Yes, you did.

\>\> G. Rush: Thank you for calling in.

\>\> Caller: Thanks.

\>\> J. Crews: Do we have some more questions?

\>\> G. Rush: Actually, Ruth from Monticello is on the line. Hold on.
Let me get Ruth on. Good morning, Ruth. Hello, Ruth. Ruth, hi.

\>\> Caller: Okay. I just want to know, a lot of our programs when ‑‑ if
I put in that I\'m transferring it, say, to our Moab office, do I also
say that they receive it or do they come in then and say, yes, I have
it. Is it a two‑office system or is it all handled from the sending
office?

\>\> J. Crews: Good question. Rites right now it\'s strictly handled
from the sending or losing activity. You know, ideally we would have
liked to have had something like what we had in fixed assets where the
gaining office would actually come in, do an acknowledgment and then the
transaction would process. But initially in the first design, this is
what we\'ve got set up. So we\'re just going to have to communicate to
the Field Office people on what we\'re trying to accomplish and then
work it the best we can.

\>\> Caller: Thank you.

\>\> G. Rush: Did that answer your question?

\>\> Caller: Yes, it did.

\>\> G. Rush: Great. So before you say someone got it, you better make
sure they got it. Right?

\>\> Caller: Definitely.

\>\> J. Crews: Right. When I show you the ‑‑ in the historical
transaction area, I can ‑‑ I\'ll be demo'ing it a little bit later and
we\'ll see some transfers we\'ve actually accomplished and it will show
the user I.D., the date and time that action was done. So I think we do
have a mechanism to hold people accountable for transactions that maybe
should not be appropriately accomplished.

\>\> G. Rush: That\'s the good part. They\'ll know who you are. Thank
you, Ruth, for your question.

\>\> Caller: Thank you.

\>\> G. Rush: Jim, do you still have more on the transfers?

\>\> J. Crews: Um\... did we get that vehicle transferred? I think we
did.

\>\> G. Rush: Okay. Well, before we go to break, we have time for a
couple of quick questions. We have Karen on the line from Lake Havasu.
She has a question. Karen?

\>\> Caller: Hi, Gwen. Mine goes back to the transfer. When somebody
transfers a vehicle to another unit, does all the information go with
that or do we have to reenter the information?

\>\> J. Crews: All the information will transfer over. What you\'ll need
to do is you\'ll need to put in a new cost structure because initially
it will default a default cost structure, but basically you\'ll need to
go in and add the new cost structure, but everything else, the record
will go over into the new reporting office and you\'ll be able to access
it and work with it just like you would any of your other ‑‑ your other
vehicle records.

\>\> Caller: Thank you.

\>\> G. Rush: Thank you, Karen. We have a question now from Eddie in
Phoenix. Eddie? Good morning.

\>\> Caller: Good morning, Gwen and Jim. Two questions: one, will the
fuel type automatically default? And, two, will we have to put the
number of passengers per trip?

\>\> J. Crews: No, the fuel type will not automatically ‑‑ well, are you
asking specifically in the utilization screen?

\>\> Caller: Yes, will it change to E85, diesel, gasoline ‑‑

\>\> J. Crews: Right, yes, it will. I think in that one example I showed
you where it had E85, so it will show your regular gasoline and then
your alternate fuel type will be listed as well.

\>\> Caller: Okay. And then we\'re no longer required to report how many
people are in the vehicle per trip?

\>\> J. Crews: My understand is that is not a requirement, but I think
to give you a better answer I\'ll have to get back to you later on that.

\>\> Caller: Thank you.

\>\> G. Rush: That answer your question, Eddie? Thank you. Thanks,
Eddie. We have time for one more call. Sandra in Spokane. Good morning,
Sandra?

\>\> Caller: Hey, Gwen, how are you doing? My question is about the
exception cost code. Basically if you don\'t use a vehicle during a
month and you still want to put an exception cost code, you have to put
like a 1 mile usage when the vehicle hasn\'t moved. Is there any way you
can kind of enhance that to where during that month if the vehicle
isn\'t used but you want to use an exception cost code it can be put in?

\>\> J. Crews: Yeah. That\'s a good point, and I think we\'re going to
have to look at an enhancement for that because I think as you mentioned
the existing design was based on what we had previous, and so excellent
point. We\'ll take a look at that.

\>\> Caller: Appreciate it. Thank you.

\>\> G. Rush: Okay. Thank you for your call. I think we have found the
echo. So hopefully when we come back we will have the push‑to‑talk
feature available again. But at this point, we\'re going to take a
15‑minute break. When we come back, we will present our third AFMS
computer demonstration and take more of your questions. So stick with
us. There\'s a lot more to come. See you in 15 minutes.

Let\'s go ahead and take questions from the field if we have any
questions.

\>\> G. Rush: Dawn has been holding, Donna in Sacramento, has a question
on ‑‑ I\'ll let her ask you. Donna, you\'re on.

\>\> Caller: You guys are a kick. Actually, that\'s a lot better from
before, huh? No feedback. Now I have two questions. I think this program
is going to be pretty slick compared to the relic we\'ve been using. I
do have a question on the reporting queries on the SINs and the BLM item
class. Is there a way to build a side‑by‑side translation table so that
we can just pull up one report and see that a 105C ‑‑ not wanted 5 ‑‑
maybe a 105A equals a 168 class rather than flipping from table to
table?

\>\> J. Crews: Donna, hi, this is Jim. I think what Tom found initially
in the design was that we could not have a one‑to‑one ‑‑ at all times we
could not come up with a one‑to‑one relationship between the BLM class
code and the GSA SIN number. So that\'s why initially we would have
liked to have established it that way, because then we could have
eliminated one of your data entry requirements, but we found we could
not do that. So there is a one‑to‑many relationship between those two
tables but we probably could set something up.

\>\> Caller: This next and last question is on your requisition query
screen. I don\'t know if you want to pull that up now, but you had made
a comment about if you wanted to query by agency order number or license
plate, and you mentioned that a lot of the data is already populated in
there, like the item class, and that was populated by the NOC. Can you
clarify if that\'s true?

\>\> J. Crews: Let me go into the screen real quick.

\>\> Caller: You loaded in the agency order number like the ‑‑ the
description of the vehicle showed up and you said that was ‑‑ that the
field did not need to enter that?

\>\> J. Crews: My understanding of the process is that you\'ll continue
to process your orders through the fleet management staff like you have
in the past. Instead of them taking that information and entering it
into separate databases, it\'s going to be input into this particular
screen, into this module, and once it\'s entered, then you\'re going to
have the opportunity to come in and actually query, and again you can
query by agency order number, the tag number for the new vehicle or the
tag number by the replace vehicle. So that\'s ‑‑ I believe the process
is still the same. The work isn\'t shifting to the Field Office. We\'re
just giving you the capability to go in and perform queries.

\>\> Caller: Okay. I don\'t think I asked my question right. Can you
pull up a vehicle on that?

\>\> J. Crews: Sure. I\'m going to pull the vehicle up by the agency
order number. So I typed in 01740 here. I go back up to the top, submit
the query ‑‑ let me try that again ‑‑

\>\> Caller: I think you deleted it, didn\'t you?

\>\> J. Crews: I may have typed that in wrong. There we go. That\'s the
record that we had up.

\>\> Caller: Now, the data that\'s on the screen where it shows class
and standard item number, is that for the vehicle being purchased or the
vehicle being replaced?

\>\> J. Crews: I would say I need ‑‑ it\'s for the vehicle that\'s
actually being purchased.

\>\> Caller: Then tell me this, if that\'s the data for the vehicle
being purchased, why does the field have to reenter that data when the
vehicle is received, when you\'re adding the BLM vehicle to AFMS, why do
we have to add that data back in if it\'s already populated in there?

\>\> J. Crews: You\'re making an excellent point, and if we can ‑‑
develop and move towards a more integrated system, you\'re absolutely
correct. You go in and do the BLM add and some of this information, SIN
and class, would default into your basic record. So that\'s a good
point. We\'ll take note of that and see if we can\'t work on that
design.

\>\> Caller: Thanks.

\>\> G. Rush: Thank you for the question. Also, our programmer is
listening. So, you got that, Jim? We have another question from BERGAT
in Barstow. Good morning.

\>\> Caller: Can you hear me?

\>\> G. Rush: Yes.

\>\> Caller: I have a question, when you transfer a vehicle, do we still
have to do a transfer in fixed asset?

\>\> G. Rush: Do you want me to take that one, Jim? That part will not
change. In fixed assets, at the National Operations Center in Denver, we
will still do that, and the reason is, these are still two separate
systems, and in fixed assets we cannot remove that from our sort of
accountability until we have the money. Once we have the money, then we
will do that. So that really doesn\'t change. This is just everything,
you know, as far as fixed assets is concerned will remain the same.

\>\> Caller: Then I have a couple more questions.

\>\> G. Rush: Okay.

\>\> Caller: For the repair input, is there a specific limit on
characters? Like it is in FSS?

\>\> J. Crews: I\'m not quite sure I understand your question. Can you
be a little more specific?

\>\> Caller: Don\'t we supposed to enter what the repairs are in a
field?

\>\> J. Crews: Right. I think ‑‑ in the transaction detail I think ‑‑
I\'m not sure exactly what the instructions are as far as how much
detail you can put in FFS, but ‑‑

\>\> Caller: No, I\'m talking about the repair that we have to enter in
AFMS.

\>\> J. Crews: Right. You\'re going to enter the record, and then down
at the bottom I think I showed you where you\'re going to actually get
at the type of repair that was performed, and you\'re going to check
everything that was pertinent to that particular repair transaction.

\>\> Caller: So we just do the checklist?

\>\> J. Crews: That\'s correct.

\>\> Caller: And the last question, on the available report, do we still
have to list, then, the accessories?

\>\> G. Rush: So far we\'re going to do that. Sherry and I haven\'t had
a chance to get together yet. What I would like to see, I see this
system actually cutting down a lot of the paper work from the field. The
physical necessity to go out and verify everything is still there, but
we\'ll get back to actually not just you but everybody out there if we
can simplify this, we sure will. But that\'s a very good point.

\>\> Caller: Okay.

\>\> J. Crews: I think we\'re going to take one more question,
push‑to‑talk.

\>\> G. Rush: Thanks. Do we have any other questions coming in from the
push‑to‑talk?

\>\> Caller: This is Marie Smith in ELKO. My question is: currently we
send receipts, copies of receipts, to Kathy. Are we going to have to
continue to do that for receipts over \$500?

\>\> G. Rush: Marie, just to clarify, you\'re talking about repair
receipts and that type of thing?

\>\> Caller: Correct.

\>\> J. Crews: Currently until we can look through the process a little
bit more and get comfortable with it, we\'re going to ask you to
continue to send those receipts in. If there\'s any way that we can
streamline and maybe incorporate that authorization number and be able
to validate those transactions and then in tourniquet out some of your
requirements in the field, that\'s what we\'re ‑‑ what we\'re currently
after.

\>\> Caller: Well, currently, this month, I will start inputting the
repair maintenance receipts all that into the new AFMS. Will Kathy
LECLERQ have the ability to check to see what\'s in there and the
description and where it was performed and then not have to call me and
say, okay, I need this receipt?

\>\> J. Crews: That\'s an excellent observation. We\'ve had a couple of
meetings with their office, and that\'s exactly what we\'re looking at,
trying to look and validate the repair and maintenance activities
entered into the AFMS, and so some of that workload that you\'re
currently doing can be offloaded. So good observation, and that\'s
exactly the direction that we\'re moving.

\>\> Caller: Thank you.

\>\> G. Rush: Thanks, Marie.

\>\> Caller: This is gale in Reno.

\>\> G. Rush: Hi, gale.

\>\> Caller: Hi. How are you?

\>\> G. Rush: Good.

\>\> Caller: My question is, are you going to flash the website address
for this new program? And will our user I.D.s and passwords be the same
as we\'re currently using as in the old system?

\>\> J. Crews: Good question, gale. Yeah, we\'re getting ready to go
over our final activity schedule, and a part of that is we will be
talking about how to access the training environment and then you will
be using your existing user log‑in I.D.s and we\'ll be providing you a
generic password to actually go into the training environment. So let us
go over that schedule, and I think that will clarify your question.

\>\> Caller: Thank you. I have one more question for you. I still have
concerns about the transfers. In the GSA vehicles, in order to delete a
GSA vehicle, we have to confirm that we have an 1152 for that. However,
with the BLM vehicles, we\'re able to do a transfer to another office
with no existing DI104 that we do now, and I guess I have some concerns
about documentation on transfers should that losing office not
coordinate with the gaining office property manager and the vehicle just
shows up.

\>\> J. Crews: You mention a good point. Those are discussions topics
we\'ve had. We realize we\'re going to have a few bumps, but overall I
think if we communicate clearly with the field and they know what the
expectation is as far as those paper work processing transactions, then
I think we\'ll be okay. But initially we\'ll probably have a few bumps.

\>\> G. Rush: Okay. Any other questions, gale? Okay. Thank you. We have
one other call, Ruth in Monticello. Okay, Ruth. Hi.

\>\> Caller: Hi. Ruth in Monticello, and I have never been able to
figure out in the old system how to do an exception code on repairs for
the vehicle. Will we be able to do that in the new system?

\>\> J. Crews: I\'m sorry, I didn\'t catch the question. Can you repeat
the question?

\>\> Caller: For instance, we had a vehicle and we sent it off with our
law enforcement officer and in the process of her national detail, the
vehicle was damaged. They brought it back and said charge the damages to
Nevada in this case. But I couldn\'t find anywhere when I put the repair
costs in there how to charge Nevada for those.

\>\> J. Crews: I think that transaction is still going to have to be
handled by our accounting ‑‑ in our accounting area. So we\'ll look at
how we may be able to incorporate that in the future system design but
currently you\'re still going to have to contact our accounting
personnel to handle that type of ‑‑

\>\> Caller: It\'s just that when ‑‑ use an exception code for gas or
miles and such, it would be helpful if you could also do the repairs
that way.

\>\> J. Crews: That\'s a good point. We\'ll take a look at that and see
if that\'s feasible. Thanks for your input.

\>\> G. Rush: Thank you, Ruth, for calling in.