CBP Transitions to New CSMS System July 1, Ending Search Capability but Improving Email Notifications
CBP will fully transition to its new Cargo Systems Messaging Service platform on July 1, it said in a CSMS message posted to the new platform. The message, which was not posted to CBP’s legacy system, says CBP will no longer update the old website after June 30, though it will remain available as an archive until Sept. 30, 2019, when the old system will be fully shut down.
“Overall impacts to end users will be minimal,” CBP said in the message. Subscribers to current CSMS emails will not need to re-subscribe, it said. One of the main benefits touted by CBP is that subscribers will only get one email for every CSMS message issued, rather than the sometimes multiple emails that CBP would sent out for each CSMS based on the number of groups to which the user is subscribed.
“The elimination of duplicate emails is a huge improvement, from my perspective,” said Craig Seelig of software developer WiseTech Global. “CBP had all of the categories and some CSMS message were attached to one or many of these categories. As a software developer, we had to be sure not to miss any of the messages. In order to be sure, we had to sign up to receive email for all of the categories. That then created the duplicates,” he said. Under the old system, Seelig said he receives “between 3 and 8 CSMS email notifications for any CSMS message. But I have to do that so I know I do not miss anything.”
The previously announced changeover (see 1905230040) is necessary “due to the aging technology currently in use,” CBP said. “The CSMS messaging service has become increasingly unstable and poses a risk to CBP’s ability to send timely messaging on issues affecting the systems users,” it said.
Nonetheless, the switch caused some concern from the trade community on a recent conference call CBP held to discuss ACE. Among the changes is the elimination of the legacy system’s search function. Users are now told they can search messages by using their browsers’ “ctrl+f” find function, but because only the titles of the last 100 messages are listed, users don’t seem to be able to search the actual text of CSMS messages anymore.
Amy Magnus of A.N. Deringer said that she, for one, will “definitely will miss word search in the text of the documents.”
The diminished search capability also applies to a PDF “archive” of old CSMS messages that can be found on the new site. "The archive PDF is not the research tool the previous CSMS messages searching capability was," said Melissa Irmen of software developer Integration Point. "Having said that, most people tended to search by title words anyway, this just takes longer," she said. "I’m sure people will adapt. Many save off some of their 'favorites' to refer back to them anyway."
And the archive only dates back to 2011. Messages from as far back as 1992 are kept in the old system. That came in handy for some in the trade community when, for example, questions about Food and Drug Administration low-value shipments that arose following the de minimis increase to $800 were addressed by a CSMS message issued in 1994.