Non-technical Description

Each of the Time Out Of Training (TOOT) fields on the Form R Part B was limited to a maximum of 999 days.

A PGDiT who had been on long term leave had a total combined TOOT that exceeded that limit, the limit has been increased to 9999 days (approx. 27 years). This limit was chosen as it is not possible to identity a non-arbitrary four digit limit, but having some limit helps eliminate any obvious copy paste or other input errors.

Trigger

• Validation on TOOT blocked Form R submission

Detection

• PGDiT raised a support ticket

Resolution

• The TOOT limits have been increase from three digits (999), to four digits (9999).

Timeline

All times in BST unless indicated

• Nov 1, 2023: 16:08 - Support issue posted in #self-services-support

• Nov 1, 2023: 16:35 - Fix submitted

• Nov 1, 2023: 17:25 - Fix deployed to production

• Nov 1, 2023: 17:28 - Support channel notified of the fix

Root Cause(s)

• Validation limits were set too low

• Field validation guidance noted 999 days as a limit

• It was believed to be enough

• This amount of TOOT is an extreme outlier, out of over 74,000 submitted forms this is the first time that 999 days has not been enough

Action Items

Lessons Learned

• Outliers happen, but I feel be made the right choice at the time - given the data we had.

• We should always be prepared to adapting as new data becomes available.