WISEflow now has a list of computer recommendations, and provides user guides and troubleshooting. Experience form last year is that you will have the least chance of technical issues if you use a dedicated desktop with one screen (at least 27 inch), one camera, one microphone, one keyboard, one mouse, one loudspeaker device, one printer, direct wired (USB/HDMI) connections to all peripherals, administrator access, cabled (LAN) access. The most chance of issues were with a corporate laptop without administrator access, laptop with an internal and an external camera, intelligent firewalls, or active virus scanners.
Use this LAST CHANCE to test your setup to make sure that you will not have any technical issues during the exam, even if you have already participated in an earlier Mock. At least join at the start of the session to run through the ID checks, and participate for an hour or so to check that the webcam and monitoring continue to work. The currently available mock flows will remain open until 6 March 2022, but you will not be able to test on your own with full invigilation.
The Pre-Exam mock will use Pre-exam (2021): Part 3 only. The Main Exam flow will be a single flow with all 2021 exams (A, B, C, D) - you may use any of the papers.
- The participant password is: abc
Things to do and to check:
- Turn off screensavers, sleep/hibernate functions, scheduled tasks like virus checking and backup, and delay windows updates.
- Printing. As in the real examination the printable parts will be made available approximately 10 mins before the start of the flow (you might have to refresh your browser page).
- Taking entry images. Hold your valid ID card or passport into the camera, next to your face.
- Video and audio surveillance. Try the integrated chat widget (human invigilation will however be very limited).
- If you have a technical issue during the mocks, contact the invigilators using the chat widget. If this is not working, these are mocks, so you can also ask in the EQE Telegram Groups for advice.
- If you are kicked out and need to get back-in, enter WISEflow and start the flow (Lockdown Browser) and complete the ID check (if necessary). The chat widget appears bottom right before you are asked for participation or administrator passwords. So, you can access it from any computer with an internet browser where LockDown Browser is also installed.
- The invigilator password was not shared in the e-mail, so you will have to request it from the invigilators if you have technical issues. The invigilator password is needed to enter the flow after the start, or to exit early. There are also other WISEflow functions that can be accessed when instructed by an invigilator, such as saving or printing.
- Practice using the External references to see if they can be accessed. You should also try to search in the EPO Guidelines using Advanced Search, and navigate to the National Law tables. Browser shortcuts that work on my Win10: SHIFT+LEFT MOUSE (open in new tab), F5 (refresh - or use icon), ALT ← & ALT → (backward & forward - or use icon), SPACE or PAGE DOWN (scroll down), SHIFT+SPACE or PAGE UP (scroll up), HOME & END (top & bottom of page), jump to pdf bookmarks using toolbar icon, CTRL+SCROLL MOUSE (zoom - or use icon, or (i) options), CTRL+A, CTRL+C.
- Practice opening tabs, copy/pasting into your answer, and searching in the exam. Try not using the computer for 10 minutes to see if your screensaver or sleep/hibernate freezes the system.
- Test commands and actions that you may need, such as Winkey-SPACE for changing keyboard layout, F5 (or click on Refresh icon), CTRL-ALT-DELETE to allow a different network selection.
- When you have practiced enough with the exam, you can see whether some of the actions that caused problems last year will still cause you to be kicked out. For example, using ALT-TAB and multiple-finger gestures on a touchpad.
- On my system: hitting ALT-TAB ONCE generates a warning that it is an unauthorised action, and if repeated will require the adminstrator password to continue.
Great tips, thanks!
ReplyDeleteThank you Pete for summarizing all of the above points!
ReplyDeleteHow can you contact the invigilator in order to request the invigilator password if, for example, you do not start the flow on time, i.e. if you are outside the lockdown browser? Is there an external chat or the like?
I think if you log in to WISEflow (which is possible from any browser), you have access (I think).
DeleteI see it in the Mock. If you enter WISEflow and start the flow (Lockdown Browser) and complete the ID check, the chat widget appears bottom right before you are asked for participation or administrator passwords.
DeleteSo, you can access it from any computer with a browser where LockDown Browser is also installed. 😊
Doe anyone know whether Wiseflow is affected by the Java logging library (log4j) vulnerability issue?
ReplyDeleteI just tried the lockdown browser again with the mocks.
ReplyDelete2 issues:
1) the text in the text editor was slightly fuzzy or out of focus. Did anyone else experience this? The text elsewhere was fine, so it wasn't my eyes!
2) I chose paper B. The only thing I wanted to test was the copy-paste function of the claims. However, the formatting of the claims was terrible when copied over to the text editor. Did anyone else experience this also?
There is a button (Tx) to remove formatting, usefull after copying. However, you might have to check for missing spaces, as the last word of a line and the first word of the next line get glued together.
DeleteThanks for your reply-however it was much worse than this!
DeleteThe claim features were all out of order. The features from claim 1 were copied to the bottom of the page. Nightmare!
For some reason, they cannot get this consistent. Some exams allow a very good copy/paste and some are a disaster. It seems to be a combination of incorrectly made pdf's and LockDown Browser. Experience from last year is that most exams seem to work reasonably. But the claims for B are particularly critical to copy correctly.
DeleteOn Windows, CTRL-SHIFT-V pastes in one go without formatting - that can sometimes help.
Hi Alexander,
DeleteI have the same blurred answer text issue as you, with assignment open in the same tab.
However, after I close the assignment, the answer text becomes clear again.
It happens on my office PC and invigillant told me to try on my Home PC.
On Home PC, this issue did not happen...
Almost all technical issues are related to using a work computer or laptop because many things are disabled and you are not authorised.
DeleteThe least problems are seen with those using a personal computer with administrator permissions.
thanks a lot Ken/Pete
DeleteHi Pete, thanks for all your work and the great tips. Does upgrading to Win 11 affects Wiseflow lockdownbrowser ? Not a problem or something to avoid ?
ReplyDeleteNo - avoid Win 11. LockDown Browser is continuously trying to crash (opposite to normal software). Any kind of conflict will give problems. And if LockDown Browser disables your microphone/camera for some reason, you will spend 20 minutes of the exam with the helpdesk trying to get it working again.
DeleteDid anybody try using the table function ? I noticed you can not adjust the column width. Interesting to use the table function or better to avoid ?
ReplyDeleteI tried it last year during a mock. It might be useful for small tables - I wasted a lot of time copy/pasting the information. Also realise that a table will usually not give marks because it might be ambiguous (you will abbreviate the text) - they want you to explain your conclusions, so you will still need it.
DeleteIf it helps you to speed up, then use it.
Hi Pete,
ReplyDeletethank you for your work!
I am looking forward to your updated PCT Global Reference - Part (1) and (2) for EQE 2022. When will the download be available? Thank you very much!
Dear Pete,
DeleteI am also interested in the updated PCT Global Reference for EQE 2022 from your Fireball Patents website. Maybe you can give a short update on the planned availability? If the download won't be available prior to the upcoming eqe, it would be good to know. Then I have to change my plan and order something else well in time.
Thanks!
Thanks for your interest in the books:-)
DeleteThe download links are now available at fireballpatents.com/study-materials
This time I checked the problems that I previously had with opening the exam document, it takes a time to open. Nowadays less than 30", in the past it was around 5'.
ReplyDeleteBut, I checked this 2021 version with previous ones. Before pandemic, the scheme was 3 hours for reading and preparing and 2,5 for writing. If you check the material, less claims but the rest of pages have increased considerably. So, I am scared about how to manage the time.
In 3 hours we have to read all the documents (you can jump if you see that field is different, but you can lose "definitions", "equivalents", etc. + write. My head is exploting. Which timetable would you recommend Peter? 1,5 for reading and 1,5 for writing? 1,5 for reading the same that we had for 3 hours is extreme, but less than 1,5 could be risky (specially if you have partial problems or similars).
Thanks Peter
Unfortunately, you cannot predict what you will need in part 2. My advice is to limit reading to the minimum needed for part 1. As soon as you see a "simple" attack (Novelty, Extension or Patentability), put it in your answer. Finish the reading and do any remaining novelty attacks. Then do any straightforward inventive step attacks. Concentrate on attacking all independent claims at least once. Leave any partial problems attacks to the very end - they eat up your time. So, max. 1.5 hours reading and analysing on part 1. Aim for 1 hour. And try searching electronically for missing definitions.
DeleteI realize that my message was not recorded last Friday. Again, thank you very much for your useful tips. Very helpful this info. I will practice in this way. I need to improve the speed. Thanks again.
DeleteI was thinking about it some more. You will be able to print your own C1 answer before the second part to have as a reference. But the new documents provided in C-2 will not have any electronic annotations from part 1 - they are all new copies. The claims of the patent are electronic only, so it seems like the best strategy may be to work with the prior art on paper, and note electronically where you find features in the editor (although making long tables in the editor can be tricky)
DeleteAlternatively, spend 5 minutes carefully hand-copying the claim features to a paper copy and do everything on paper. You will then have everything for both parts.
I was barred from accessing the online EPO legal documents.
ReplyDeleteYou've been organising too many illegal parties!
DeletePossible cause is that your firewall is blocking urls. Solution is the to whitelist complete www.epo.org domain. You can test it by opening any flow.
DeleteI found the mock useful but I had similar issues regarding the claim formatting in paper B (I could not attach a sample unfortunately). When pasting the claim into the editor parts of the dependent claims were mixed into claim 1. Pressing the Tx button just removed the new line characters and some spaces so doesn't fix the problem. The only way round seems to be to copy only a few words at a time (sometimes one line at a time). I used a Mac.
ReplyDeleteThe second issue I noticed is that when I tested switching from a primary laptop to a secondary (backup) laptop (in case the first one dies during the exam), all highlighting and annotations in the exam paper are lost. These seem to be stored locally. The answer written in the editor window is, however, stored online and was still there.
Hope this is helpful/informative.
Johannes
Thanks, Johannes. It is good to have people testing out these things.
DeleteI also heard that when you start the 2nd part of C, all your annotations from Part 1 are also lost, which is pretty annoying.
Furthermore, if you open several tabs, the annotations in each tabs look to be saved separately. So if you close a tab by accident, all annotations in that tab are lost.
Delete