The FAA’s DMS team issued the following notification to DPEs about DMS operations on June 28, 2019. If you missed it in your email, it is as follows:

“The deployment of DPEs and SAEs into the DMS system was completed in early May.
By now, the expectation is that all activities conducted by a DPE (practical tests,
proficiency checks, and administrative activities) must be recorded in DMS. This means
that DPEs must complete a pre-approval request and post-activity report for all activities.

This is very important: if you are not actively using DMS, you must take the steps
necessary to access DMS and use the system for designee-related work. In mid-July, we
will be making the first integration between DMS and IACRA. What that means is
IACRA authorizations will be updated to match those in DMS and IACRA will query
DMS to determine if you are a designated pilot examiner and have the correct
authorizations to perform the test in IACRA. IACRA will also have a new field to enter
the DMS pre-approval request number from DMS. If you are not an active designee in
good standing in DMS, or you do not have the authorization on your CLOA to perform
the test, you will not be able to perform the test and complete the record in IACRA.

We understand with DMS being new and designees becoming more familiar with the
system, situations may arise where a test or check is not captured in DMS. If this occurs,
you should contact your managing specialist (MS) to inform them of the circumstances
which caused the situation and receive guidance on how to process the test or check
results. If the automation in DMS caused the problem, please also send a message to the
DMS feedback mailbox: [email protected].

We also understand that there are things that could be done better in the system, and we are constantly working to improve DMS. Some of the significant changes in work now and in the near future will include:

• Pre-approvals submitted less than 24 hours in advance no longer go to manual approval. However, the requirement for a 24-hour notice will stay in policy, and your MS will receive a message for pre-approvals submitted with less than a 24-hour notice.

• Designees will have the ability to copy an existing pre-approval. The new preapproval will be auto-populated with the same information. Designees may simply make edits with the new information. This will be most useful for disapprovals and notices of discontinuance.

• The number of required fields on the pre-approval will be reduced to where, when, and in what type of aircraft the activity will be conducted. The other fields will continue to be available as optional fields on the pre-approval but will be required on the post-activity report. If you provide the information on the preapproval, it will automatically load to the post-activity report.

We appreciate the feedback we have received over the past few months and we
encourage you to continue to do so. We rely on your feedback to make improvements.

Thank you,

The DMS Team”