As described in the Configuration topic, the File Submission Action setting determines if interrogation files are uploaded to PTAGIS and/or archived on the local machine as a backup. To support the near real-time goals of the PTAGIS program, interrogation files are uploaded as soon as possible. Therefore, File Submission Action, when set to an upload and/or archive action, will trigger when:
1.Check for Files Every (n minutes) setting expires.
a.By default, this is set to check for new files every 15 minutes on the hour.
b.If the File Submission Action fails due to an intermittent network failure, the action will reoccur again when the next 15-minute interval expires.
c.If set to zero, the File Submission Action is not triggered on an automatic interval.
2.A user selects Data > Initiate Upload/Archive menu command in the M5 Control Panel.
3.Site monitoring services are started or restarted from a menu command in the M5 Control Panel.
4.File Submission service is started from a menu command in the M5 Control Panel.
5.M5 Monitor Service is restarted after a system reboot or system service restart.
Verifying File Submission Process
Before files can be submitted, the M5 system must be configured with the Registered Email address of a user authorized with PTAGIS to submit data for the target interrogation site. The email address entered into M5 configuration must exactly match the email address registered with PTAGIS.
To verify the file submission process is configured correctly and a connection is viable:
1.From M5 Control Panel, edit the Site Configuration for the connected M5 Monitor Service.
2.Ensure File Submission Action is set to Upload and Archive and Registered Email Address has the correct email address
3.Press the Test button to the right of the File Submission Action field, and an attempt to upload a sample data file to PTAGIS will be initiated from the machine M5 Monitor Service is running on:
a.If successful: a prompt will display File Submission Validation Successful with additional information about the sample file submitted.
b.If unsuccessful: a prompt will display File Submission Validation Failed with additional information about the type of failure:
i.Authorization Failed: Unauthorized indicates the email address is invalid or not registered for the configured interrogation site.
ii.If some other failure message is displayed, most likely this is due to a network-related issue. Verify the network connection by opening a browser on the machine running M5 Monitor Service (which might be different from the machine M5 Control Panel is running on) and copy-and-paste this URL into the browser and hit return: https://api.ptagis.org/. If the browser cannot load the PTAGIS API landing page, contact a system administrator to determine if this URL is blocked by a network firewall. If the page does load, please contact us for further troubleshooting.
Upload Failures
If the file submission process fails it will retry again after a delay configured in the Check for Files setting. No alert will be generated because most likely the failure is due to an intermittent network issue that will eventually be corrected with a subsequent file submission attempt.
If the file submission process determines the data file is corrupted or, has an invalid file name or format, an alert will be generated and the file will be moved into the Corrupted Files folder:
•Windows: C:\ProgramData\PTAGIS\M5\CorruptedFiles
•Linux: /usr/share/PTAGIS/M5/CorruptedFiles
Test vs Production File Submissions
M5 Monitor Service can be configured to submit interrogation file submissions to PTAGIS for testing purposes only. This test data will not be available in the production reporting system. This feature is useful for evaluating new releases of software, hardware, or evaluating an experimental interrogation site. If a system is configured to submit interrogation files for testing purposes only, the M5 Control Panel will display 
in lower right status bar. If no indicator is displayed, file submissions will be processed normally into the production PTAGIS database.
NOTE: it is not recommended to configure M5 to submit test data without contacting PTAGIS first.
To change this setting:
1.Open the System Properties dialog from the target computer running M5 Monitor and and click the Enviroment Variables button
a.A user account with elevated privileges is required
2.Select BasePtagisApiUrl variable in the System Variable list from the Environment Variables dialog and press the Edit button.
3.In the Edit System Variable prompt, enter the following Variable value:
a.https://testapi.ptagis.org for test file submissions
b.https://api.ptagis.org for normal, production file submission
4.Reboot the target computer, reconnect M5 Control Panel, and verify status bar indicator is correct.
Data files are placed into archives within a folder defined by the Archive Folder configuration setting. Within this folder are zip archive files containing compressed data files, one for each year and month. Using Windows Explorer, select and copy one or more files and paste them into a temporary directory to view their contents. If these files were uploaded, they can also be downloaded by logging into the PTAGIS website.