| PCMS FAQ, Updates and Reported Issues |
PCMS FAQ, Updates and Reported IssuesLast updated July 28, 2025Frequently Asked Questions Gas Fill Method: When a manufacturer uses more than one gas filling method, the reported method for the product line should be the one that allows the highest fill percentage. This field is used to determine if any of the options within the product line exceed the allowable percentages. It can also be used by an inspector to confirm that the manufacturer has the required equipment to achieve the percentages claimed. IA Affirmation Questions: The IA is expected to perform the same checking and review functions they perform today. The affirmation questions simply affirm to NFRC that the required review / tasks have been performed. Submissions to IA: Laboratories should continue to provide the same information in the same way as they currently do to the IA. If the IA chooses to use the files uploaded to PCMS, they may change that method, but that is their decision. The files uploaded to PCMS are primarily for the use of NFRC. Updates 7/25/2025 File size limitations have been adjusted to allow for a combined upload size of 250MB (spreadsheet and report) 5/16/2025 Fix to allow uploading test reports back-to-back. Fix for U-Factor Tolerances. Improvements to Report Pairing / Grouping (Filtered to Manufacturer and Series Name added to Product Line Grouping). Ability for IA to replace the Air Leakage Report was added. Updates to Notifications (Email Subject Headers, Evaluation Returned Notifications). Various minor improvements. 5/9/2025 File Size Limitations which prevented uploading of very large pdf files, have been adjusted. 4/11/2025 Security updates were deployed. 3/28/2025 Updated "2004 Model Size" to "Validation Size on the Report Details Page, Product Line - Information Section. 3/18/2025 Provided the ability to delete and reupload air leakage reports. An issue where downloaded files using the Firefox browser were assigned the incorrect extensions, making it difficult to download .zip files was corrected. Tolerances for product size were updated to correctly reflect the rules. +/-13mm allowed for windows, +/- 25mm allowed for doors. Tolerances for U-Factor were updated to correctly reflect the rules. Sim and test values are first rounded to 2 decimals, then 10% or +/-0.03 determined and applied to the comparison. Improvements to dashboard navigation and review pages were made for staff users. 3/05/2025 An issue where gas fills were flagged as different during validation due to the capitalization of the code has been corrected. (Example: 'Arg' and 'ARG' were considered to be different codes) 3/03/2025 Inactive laboratories have been removed from the dropdown filtering lists on the Lab Report Summary page. 2/25/2025 The ability to delete reports from the Lab Report Summary page has been added. The default page size on the Lab Report Summary page has been increased from 10 to 25. The Report Upload workflow has been changed to remember common selections and facilitate uploading multiple reports to the same manufacturer sequentially. 2/19/2025 A link to the CPD Codes Document was added. 2/18/2025 Hyperlinks from the Dashboard to filtered views of reports in each stage was deployed. 2/13/2025 The submit button is now disabled after the initial click, while the system is processing, to eliminate duplicate submissions. An IA column was added to the Lab Report Summary to allow for better filtering. The user is now automatically logged out if the session has expired. An error which caused frame emissivity to appear as a validation issue twice has been corrected. 2/12/2005 The initial ability to delete reports was added. The timestamp was added to the Lab Report Summary to help differentiate report uploads. When items are grouped with a horizontal bar separating them, the system will now ignore if there is also a blank space. 2/11/2025 The acceptable range for CI intercept and slope values was expanded. 2/07/2025 If the incorrect report type is uploaded, the system will now process and fail that submission rather than stalling. 2/05/2025 An update to fix a problem with accepting valid VIG/VIC gas fill entries was deployed. A problem with sending email notifications when a product is certified was corrected. 2/03/2025 Initial Launch of PCMS for production. Reported Issues Errors Reported when uploading Entry Doors NFRC now requires that uploads contain completed door fields (Description, Core Fill, Skin Material, Substructure Edge, and Panel Material) when uploading certain products. NFRC has more tightly integrated ENERGY STAR compliance within its system and because ENERGY STAR uses this information (specifically Description) to determine compliance, we will need that information explicitly entered in the future. The current CPD will allow you to enter without these fields completed, but you should not do so, as in the future, this system will manage all upload functionality and those entries will be rejected. PCMS will accept incorrect report submissions PCMS requires the user to select Manufacturer and Report Type when uploading. The entries in the Upload are not used by the system, so if they do not match, the system will not automatically reject the submission. If it was done inadvertently, that upload will be rejected at a later stage when the error is discovered. PCMS will also allow the selection of any file as the report upload and once again that will be rejected when the error is discovered. We have intentionally not restricted the file type allowed in this selection to accommodate different lab processes. Please exercise care when selecting files. User Interface Issues Status Descriptions - We will be adding descriptions to the Dashboard page to better explain the statuses which are being used. |