Drinking Water_Content Page_Using the DNR’s web form for entering public drinking water results

Using the DNR’s web form for entering public drinking water results

Each laboratory needs to get a user id for each person that will be doing data entry on the DNR web form. This is an important security step, and allows us to make sure that each user is authorized to enter data on behalf of the laboratory. The user IDs are issued under Wisconsin’s state-wide Web Access Management system (WAMS) and are obtained the following way. If you already have a WAMS id for another program (such as CMAR or wastewater), you may use that same id for entering public drinking water results.

Obtaining a WAMS user ID and register to use the web data entry

  1. Go to on.wisconsin.gov
  2. Click on “Self registration” (in the middle of the page).
  3. Follow the self-registration steps to request a user id and password.
  4. Once you have completed the self-registration with the Department of Administration then go to DNR’s switchboard to request access to the DNR web data entry website
  5. After receiving the information from the switchboard registration, we will add your user id to our security tables and grant you access to the DNR web form.
  6. Once these steps are complete, you will be notified that you can begin using the DNR web page. You'll receive an e-mail with a link to the web page and instructions for entering the public water results.

Entering public drinking water sample results using the data entry form

  1. Log onto the DNR web data entry application, using your WAMS ID and password.
  2. Enter the Public Water System (PWS) id of the water system that you’re entering data for.
  3. Select the sampling form that you're entering data from (Bacteriological, Nitrate, Inorganics, etc).
  4. Enter the data.
  5. Save/submit the data. This can be done in one step to Submit the data immediately, or as two separate steps, if you wish to save the data and then review it prior to submitting it to DNR. If the data is incomplete or incorrect in any way, you can save it and then come back to it later to edit and submit. The system will not allow you to submit a sample that’s incomplete or that doesn't pass our validation checking.

After you log in, you’ll see a “Help” button at the top right-hand side of the screen. This contains our data entry documentation and it’s highly recommended that you read it before entering any results. It contains a number of suggestions for entering data correctly, which will help you avoid any unnecessary errors and hopefully streamline your data entry process.

At any time, you can click on the “Sample List” link at the bottom of the screen to see the samples that you had previously entered. The status code on each sample indicates whether it’s New, Submitted or Received. A status of “Received” indicates that the sample has been received and processed into the DNR’s Lab Data Entry database. After a sample is “Received” you can no longer delete it from the sample list. Each evening, we run a program that does additional error-checking and loads the samples into our Drinking Water System. Those samples will be viewable on the DNR’s public internet site the following day.

Submitting public drinking water results via file transfer

Note: Files must be in one of the DNR-approved formats, as either a tab-delimited text file or an XML file. The file format must have been tested and approved by DNR before a lab can use the file transfer process. Excel spreadsheets and Word documents cannot be accepted.

  1. Log onto the DNR web data entry application, using your WAMS ID and password.
  2. To transfer a file, click on the “Upload File” link at the upper right of the screen. You can then use the “Browse” button to locate and select the file you wish to transfer. While you can only select one file at a time, you can upload as many files as you want within a single session. Hit the “Upload File” button to complete the transfer.
  3. Click on the link to logout. If you have opted to receive confirmation of receipt, you will receive an email regarding the status of the file transfer within the hour.