| Confirm interface with Street Manager | |
A new organisation with a code of "STWRKS" will be created which will represent Street Manager. When a works is sent or received from Street Manager the "STWRKS" recipient will be added to the works (if not already). Once a works has been sent or received via Street Manager then all subsequent notifications for that works will be sent via Street Manager and EToN notifications will stop being sent.
A new works will be automatically sent to Street Manager if the "STWRKS" organisation is added as a recipient. New works will also automatically be sent to Street Manager if both the Promoter and Authority are included in the list of Street Manager Organisations system setting.
The email IDs used for accessing the Street Manager API's from Confirm should not be used to access the Street Manager system through the Street Manager user interface. The Confirm system uses these email IDs to identify the Confirm generated transactions in the Street Manager system and any transactions in the Street Manager system created using these email IDs will not be pulled back to the Confirm system.
Batches will continue to be used to audit transfers to and from Street Manager. However, there are no XML file equivalents for Street Manager so the Batch File Name will be recorded. The Task Processor log file can be configured to show detailed information about individual API calls made to Street Manager for diagnostic purposes.
If Confirm is not able to contact the Street Manager API, there is a problem with authentication or Street Manager indicates that an internal error has occurred then Confirm will keep trying the current notice till the time it is successfully sent. Note that the Street Works Initiation System Settings > Notification Retries settings based limitation will be applied to only EToN based transfers.
If Confirm obtains an error back from Street Manager that indicates that Street Manager will not accept the data from Confirm (e.g. invalid USRN), then the notice will be flagged as unsent allowing the data to be corrected in Confirm and re-sent.
If there is more than one pending notice to be sent to Street Manager and a data error occurs on a notice that is not the most recent notice then the failing notice will be flagged as "Do not send" and Confirm will attempt to send the next notice.
If there is an error with importing a notice from Street Manager such that a record cannot be created in Confirm then the System Supervisor will be emailed with the error details. Confirm will attempt to re-import the notice the next time the works is updated in Street Manager.
If condition text or any comment exceeds the character limit of confirm while importing the notice from Street Manager, then the System Supervisor will be emailed with the original values and the work header number. The truncated text will be available in Confirm with
'...More in SM' text.
There are some instances where Street Manager enforces more stringent validation than was expected under EToN. Please feel free to lobby the DfT if you feel this difference could cause operational issues. Examples include:
Street Manager does not allow the USRN to be altered or corrected at any point once a works has been created. The only way to change the USRN is to create a completely new works (you can't even change the USRN if you create a new permit on an existing works).
Confirm allows the USRN to be changed on a number of notices, e.g. Permit Application after a PAA, Works Data Variation, etc. but these changes will not be reflected in Street Manager.
Street Manager has formalised the practice of not allowing Modification Requests to be sent in response to an Immediate Permit Application, and will reject this notice if sent from Confirm in this scenario. If you do not want to refuse the Immediate Permit but would like some small changes to be made then you should grant the permit and then submit an Authority Imposed Variation.
Street Manager does not permit Variations / Error Corrections after the works has stopped. The only way to achieve this is to revert the Works Stop, submit the Variation and re-submit the Works Stop.
For EToN, matching to Confirm lookup tables was mostly done based on the DfT reference fields on the lookup. In some cases, however, Street Manager adds more options than EToN supported, but during transition we still need any new options to be supported under EToN. Where new options are to be supported these will be added into Confirm with DfT references that most closely match the EToN equivalent. New options that have been added to support Street Manager will typically be matched based on the lookup table entry Code / Number in Confirm. The exception is Permit Condition Types which don't have a Code, in which case a partial match on Name will be attempted. If multiple matches are found using a DfT reference or Name then the first item will be selected based on the order that the items are typically presented in Confirm, e.g. by name or display order.
Given that Street Manager will be the official "system of record" for Street Works, data from Street Manager will be downloaded in Confirm in any way possible.
This includes automatically creating missing organisations. For example, if a new works prefix is received from Street Manager then a new Organisation with a matching DfT Ref 2 will be created in Confirm using the contact details from the Street Manager "Workstream".
Confirm will also create new Workstreams in Street Manager where necessary.
If an unrecognised USRN is received from Street Manager then the works will be recorded against the Provisional Street in Confirm as currently happens with EToN.
When documents are received from Street Manager a Document Link record will be created with a URL in the Document Location that will launch the document stored in Street Manager. The document will not be downloaded to the local Confirm system. The URL itself does not include the document file name, so this will be included in the Document Notes in Confirm. If the document relates to a specific Permit then the Permit reference will also be appended to the document link notes. Street Manager documents are actually viewed via a "proxy" service built on Confirm Web, which allows documents from Street Manager to be viewed from Confirm without having to log into Street Manager. You will need to install the latest version of Confirm Web to use this Proxy service, but this can be done in "beta" mode so a new version of Confirm Web can be installed that works with your current Confirm database. Note that the 'Received' flag will still be set to 'No' as changing this to 'Yes' for documents received from Street Manager will need a Confirm database change and will be considered in future.
If a notification is created in Confirm and there are outstanding published documents (with the $ORG_PREFIX$ prefix or "[Public]" in the document notes) that haven't previously been sent to Street Manager, then these documents will first be uploaded to Street Manager before sending the notification. The Document Location for uploaded documents will not be altered, so will still point to Confirm's local copy of the document. However, the URL that links to the copy of the document in Street Manager will be appended to the Document Description in Confirm.
Documents will not be sent to Street Manager if they contain "[Private]" in the Document Notes.
Street Manager allows documents to be attached to Permit applications and Permit changes and also to be generally uploaded against the Works. However, there is a current issue in Street Manager where it is not possible to see documents that were uploaded as part of a Permit change. For this reason we are currently uploading all documents from Confirm against the Works as a whole, rather than against individual Permit applications or changes. We will review this once the issue is resolved in Street Manager.
Street Manager does not allow specific Document Notes to be added, so the document notes associated with any published documents will not appear in Street Manager.
Note for on-premise customers: When the Street Manager agent uploads documents to Street Manager it must obtain them via the published URL, so you will need to make sure that the Street Manager Agent can access these URLs. The Agent will currently only support uploading documents that are published at HTTP or HTTPS locations.
In EToN, works references are allowed to contain letters, numbers and forward slash "/" and hyphen "-" characters. Under street manager forward slashes are not allowed but underscores "_" are allowed.
When transitioning legacy works from EToN to Street Manager (e.g. as a result of a Cat C inspection) we will need to replace any forward slashes in the works reference with underscores so that Street Manager will accept the works reference. We perform the replacement "on-the-fly", so keep the works reference the same in Confirm (with slashes) so that the original works reference in Confirm is preserved for audit purposes. This that means that what you see in Confirm won't be consistent with what is seen in Street Manager, so a works reference like ABC/123-A in Confirm would be ABC_123-A in Street Manager. We would advise that slash and underscore characters are avoided where possible on new works.
Inspections, Defective Apparatus and FPNs logged on EToN notices will be sent to Street Manager using the "historic works" mechanism.
For works that are Promoted from within Confirm (where the Organisation Notice Initiation flag is checked), notifications for any new Phase will automatically be sent to Street Manager.
A document link is created for each Works in Confirm with a URL that will launch the Street Manager for that Works when Confirm interacts with the Street Manager the first time for that Works. Users would need to log into Street Manager using their own credentials in order to follow this URLs.
Street Manager does not support noticing but there are a number of scenarios where Permits are not applicable, e.g. in Private Streets or where the Permit scheme only applies to certain Streets.
If a PAA / Permit application is received from Street Manager against a Street that only supports Noticing then the application will be linked to the "Dummy" Permit Scheme specified on the Street Works Notice Default System Settings.
If a non-Permit Notices are entered into Confirm these will be translated to notifications that Street Manager will accept, as follows:
Street Works inspections are changing from an annual 30% sampling size to a performance-based approach. This comes into effect on the 1st of April 2023. The system responsible for generating and storing inspection sample figures, targets and for generating sample inspections is changing. This will now be done in Street Manager. Confirm users are requested to send their pending Inspections to Street Manager prior to 1st of April. Once these are generated then we will import them into Confirm using Street Works Task Processor agent.
Confirm now supports actions to 'Generate Samples', 'Start Quarter', 'End Quarter' and 'Import Samples' from Sample Inspection Target screen.