The USA Staffing Release Notes provide an overview of the most recent functionality deployed to the USA Staffing Stage and Production environments. The icon designates the completion of a feature previously defined in the Program Roadmap.
This content was released to USA Staffing Production on 4/30/2026 and 5/4/2026.
Assessment
Modified Assessment Package (AP) business logic to remain incomplete when importing an Assessment Package Template or copying an AP from another Vacancy. This will help ensure HR users have the opportunity to review for Merit Hiring Plan compliance and add/modify assessments as needed before marking the AP complete.
Announcement
Announcement Questionnaire Items
Introduced new options for managing response limits for Short Answer Textbox and Narrative Textbox response types in both the Announcement Item Library and the Announcement Questionnaire, which allows Office Administrators and HR Users to choose whether to enforce character limits, word limits, or no limits at all—providing clearer guidance for applicants and eliminating the need to use outside tools to meet word count requirements. These configurations will be clearly displayed for applicants during the online application and in the application PDF. For Short Answer and Narrative Textbox response types, users can select one of the following Response Limit options:
- Do not enforce a character or word limit
- Enforce a character limit (1–20,000 characters)
- Enforce a word limit (1–5,000 words)
Note: Any character or word count limit changes made in the Announcement Item Library will be applied to newly created vacancies. Existing vacancies that have not yet been released to USAJOBS will need to be manually updated with any necessary changes.
See: Setting a character limit for a narrative response and Edit Announcement Item Overview
Classification
Human Resources users with Create/Edit Position Descriptions permission will see a new How would you like to create your Position Description? modal when creating a Position Description. Selecting the USA Class option will open USA Class in a new browser tab.
See: Position Description Development Overview and USA Class Resources