OEB EBT Standards Working Group
Global Item #735:
v2.2 Implementation Strategy
Approved by OEB EBT Working Group
Last updated on Apr 28/03
By Mark Kerbel, The SPi Group
Table of Contents
1.Introduction
2.Rollout Strategy
2.1Blackout Period Deadlines
2.2Straggler Documents Left at Hubs
2.3Business Processing Implications
2.3.1Response Intervals
2.3.2Remapping of v2.1 to v2.2 Across Blackout
2.3.3Sentinel Value for Unknown Source Transactions
2.4Monitoring Readiness
2.4.1Role of the OEB
2.4.2OEB Process Initiation Responsibility
2.4.3Participant Reporting Responsibilities to the OEB
2.4.4OEB Reporting Responsibilities to the Working Group
2.4.5Working Group Communications
2.4.6OEB Monitoring Measures
2.4.7OEB Decision Responsibilities
2.4.8OEB Compliance Measures
2.5Monitoring Checkpoints
2.6Summarized Itinerary
3.Market Testing
3.1Approach
3.2Account Selection
3.3Trading Partner Pairings
3.4Timelines
3.4.1Test Preparation Phase
3.4.2Round 1 and 2
3.5Scenarios
3.6Test Results Reporting Criteria
Market Testing Report
1.Introduction
In order to facilitate a smooth rollout of the v2.2 schemas and implementation guides per the GI 686 compliance deadline (of July 7/03), the OEB EBT Standards Working Group decided to formalize a market testing strategy and rollout plan.
A complete itinerary of all milestones is noted at the end of this document for convenience.
This document can be downloaded from:
735 v2.2 Rollout Strategy.doc
2.Rollout Strategy
The derived approach is to allow for a controlled shutdown and startup of the market, combined with monitoring checkpoints to ensure targets are being met (or at the very least, problems are known in a timely manner so that appropriate decisions can be made).
2.1Blackout Period Deadlines
A staggered ‘blackout’ period concept will be used via the following itinerary:
Time / EventFri Jul 4 11:59 PM / Market participants complete last v2.1 PIPE upload to hubs.
Sat Jul 5 5:00 PM / Market participants complete last v2.1 PIPE download and FA upload or download from hubs
… complete blackout … / … Hubs, Market Participants upgrade to v2.2 …
Sat Jul 5 5-6:00 PM / Hubs to quantify # of stragglers (documents not yet downloaded)
Mon Jul 7 9:00 AM / Commence full v2.2 document transmission
The last PIPE upload deadline applies to market participants, but not hubs, that may continue uploading documents routed to each other. Such additional traffic should complete as soon as possible.
Any further v2.1 PIPE document spoke/point upload attempt to a hub after the Jul 4 cutoff will be rejected – including attempts after Jul 7. v2.1 documents may be downloaded from hubs after this weekend, assuming spokes allow for this.
Participants should prepare rollback plans (i.e. undo a v2.2 upgrade and revert back to v2.1) that may be invoked during the blackout period. Such plans should endeavor to complete a v2.1 reversion by Mon Jul 7 9:00 AM.
Such rollback plans may be directed by the OEB at the scheduled blackout period conference call should disastrous conditions exist. However, once the market commences full v2.2 transmission on Monday, there will be no rollback to v2.1.
2.2Straggler Documents Left at Hubs
Hubs should be proactive and inform subscribers of stragglers, i.e. documents not yet downloaded, as soon as possible (e.g. possibly a few hours prior to the blackout, and no later than one hour after the blackout).
If there are any stragglers past Saturday 5 pm, manual intervention may be required as hubs may be inclined to flush them prior to shutdown. Hubs may derive processes mutually agreeable with their subscribers if this is required.
For cases where subscribers usually leave old documents at their hubs for long periods of time and only periodically download them, hubs, on or before Fri Jun 27, should notify subscribers of any documents older than 12 hours, and remind subscribers to be diligent during the coming week leading to the v2.2 rollout.
2.3Business Processing Implications
2.3.1Response Intervals
Any 2 business day minimum response intervals for transactions will be extended to 6 business days. This will apply for any transactions uploaded from Thu Jul 2 through to Tue Jul 15 for exception handling situations.
2.3.2Remapping of v2.1 to v2.2 Across Blackout
Responses sent after Jul 7 to v2.1 transactions sent prior to Jul 7 will have to be specified in v2.2 format. The following examples illustrate this point:
v2.1 prior to blackout / v2.2 after blackoutLDC uploads v2.1 Usage on Jul 4 / Retailer must wait until Jul 7 to upload IBR using the v2.2 ‘RetailerBillAmount’ charge code
Retailer uploads IBR on Jul 4 using the v2.1 ‘Commodity’ charge code / LDC must wait until Jul 7 to upload ISD using the v2.2 ‘RetailerBillAmount’ charge code
A v2.1 document is downloaded from a hub on Jul 5 but no FA was sent acknowledging the download / One must wait until Jul 7 to upload an FA Accept to the hub using the v2.2 FA
2.3.3Sentinel Value for Unknown Source Transactions
Some LDCs have indicated that they may not populate the Source Transaction Reference Number during the transition period from v2.1 to v2.2. Such LDCs should notify their trading partners if they may exhibit such behaviour.
The XML node <SourceTransactionReferenceNumber> in an InvoiceSettlementDetail EBT shall be set to the static value ‘UNKNOWN’ to identify such instances of unknown source transactions in v2.2.
2.4Monitoring Readiness
2.4.1Role of the OEB
The OEB will play an integral role in understanding the state of the market’s readiness, as well as motivating participants to ensure they comply with v2.2 and GI 686 standards.
2.4.2OEB Process Initiation Responsibility
The OEB shall be responsible to initiate the monitoring process (outlined below) by distributing it to all market participants. This notice should specify that participants are immediately required to report their readiness activity deadlines (as captured in the readiness spreadsheet noted below).
2.4.3Participant Reporting Responsibilities to the OEB
The WG has derived a readiness spreadsheet (similar to the proposed spreadsheet for v2.1a implementation monitoring), noting all the pertinent facets of system testing as well as rollout preparations across all market participants and hubs, including awareness of their responsibilities and the processes described in GI 735.
This spreadsheet can be downloaded from:
Market Readiness.xls
Market participants are responsible to send timely updates of their readiness activities to the designated OEB representative (as indicated on the spreadsheet) no later than Wed 9 AM each week. Such communication shall strictly be of the form of the relevant rows of the spreadsheet for the given market participant (i.e. no free form text will be permitted).
2.4.4OEB Reporting Responsibilities to the Working Group
The OEB shall provide an updated cut of the spreadsheet to the WG web site team no later than Thu 9 AM, who shall distribute the document no later than Thu 12 PM as part of the weekly WG meeting package.
2.4.5Working Group Communications
At each Friday’s EBT Working Group meeting, the first hour will be devoted to assessing material updates to participants’ market readiness.
The last Friday in May shall concentrate on reviewing the status of the Market Test Preparation phase. During (at least) each of the successive two weeks, the status of Round 1 and Round 2 phases will be reviewed. For reference, the conference call number is (416) 212-0400, Passcode 6652#
2.4.6OEB Monitoring Measures
Since the OEB will be the central authority through which all reporting must be provided, the OEB will therefore be very aware of participants that have not declared planned completion dates, or those that have not completed their activities per their declared planned completion dates.
It is the OEB’s discretion to follow-up with such participants to assess the situation at hand.
Data of this nature (i.e. missing or late information) may be highlighted in the spreadsheet (e.g. displayed with a red background).
2.4.7OEB Decision Responsibilities
The OEB will ultimately be responsible for providing the approval to proceed to the next stage of readiness at each conference call. This implies that an OEB representative must participate in each conference call where approval is required to proceed to the next stage.
The OEB will attempt to derive clear criteria for approval to proceed (e.g. the pre-market opening criteria of 80% of LDC retailer enrolled meter points). At the OEB’s discretion, stricter criteria may be applied to Jul 3 approval compared to Jul 6 approval.
2.4.8OEB Compliance Measures
The OEB intends to investigate appropriate compliance measures that may be enforced at its discretion. This can only be invoked in a timely manner using the reporting and monitoring mechanisms noted above.
2.5Monitoring Checkpoints
A set of checkpoints and a fall back plan in case of major problems needs to be specified.
Time / EventNo later than every Wed 9 AM preceding the cutover weekend / Market participants will email their readiness updates to the OEB.
Every Fri preceding the cutover weekend, during the 1st hour of EBT WG meetings. / The OEB will review updates provided by market participants and assess appropriate measures.
Participants that have been active in Market Testing should endeavor to participate in these sessions.
Thu Jul 3 9:00 AM / A conference call will take place to review market readiness for the planned weekend events.
If serious problems exist amongst a significant number of participants that span a material size of the marketplace, the rollout may be delayed at the discretion of the OEB.
Sun Jul 6 4:00 PM / A conference call will take place to review market readiness and prepare for v2.2 operations.
If serious problems exist amongst a significant number of participants that span a material size of the marketplace, the rollout may be rolled back at the discretion of the OEB, meaning that participants would invoke their v2.1 rollback plans.
Mon Jul 7 4:00 PM / A conference call will take place to review the first day’s progress of v2.2 operations, and notify trading partners of existing problems and pending resolution dates.
If serious problems exist amongst a significant number of participants that span a material size of the marketplace, appropriate measures will be taken at the discretion of the OEB.
2.6Summarized Itinerary
For convenience, a complete itinerary is noted below.
Time / EventNo later than every Wed 9 AM preceding the cutover weekend / Market participants will email their readiness updates to the OEB.
Every Fri preceding the cutover weekend, during the 1st hour of EBT WG meetings. / The OEB will review updates provided by market participants and assess appropriate measures.
Participants that have been active in Market Testing should endeavor to participate in these sessions.
Thu Jul 3 9:00 AM / A conference call will take place to review market readiness for the planned weekend events.
If serious problems exist amongst a significant number of participants that span a material size of the marketplace, the rollout may be delayed at the discretion of the OEB.
Fri Jul 4 11:59 PM / Market participants complete last v2.1 PIPE upload to hubs.
Sat Jul 5 5:00 PM / Market participants complete last v2.1 PIPE download and FA upload/download from hubs
… complete blackout … / … Hubs, Market Participants upgrade to v2.2 …
Sat Jul 5 5-6:00 PM / Hubs to quantify # of stragglers (documents not yet downloaded)
Sun Jul 6 4:00 PM / A conference call will take place to review market readiness and prepare for v2.2 operations.
If serious problems exist amongst a significant number of participants that span a material size of the marketplace, the rollout may be rolled back at the discretion of the OEB, meaning that participants would invoke their v2.1 rollback plans.
Mon Jul 7 9:00 AM / Commence full v2.2 document transmission
Mon Jul 7 4:00 PM / A conference call will take place to review the first day’s progress of v2.2 operations, and notify trading partners of existing problems and pending resolution dates.
If serious problems exist amongst a significant number of participants that span a material size of the marketplace, appropriate measures will be taken at the discretion of the OEB.
3.Market Testing
3.1Approach
An approach, based on pre-market opening testing, has been derived.
A test preparation phase was recommended, including a simple test to “shake down” participants’ testing systems and processes. Following this, two weeks of testing will be performed, using different sets of retailers and LDCs each week.
Given the market’s far more in-depth knowledge and experience, it was recommended that market testing occur over:
- snapshots of actual accounts instead of mocked-up data
- end-to-end from the CIS perspective, and not simply an EBT perspective (i.e. the EBT is the manifestation of the communication between participants, but test results should be analyzed by examining the XML data as well as CIS results)
- wherever possible and mutually agreed to by testing partners, negative tests, such as sending an incorrect source transaction reference number
- wherever possible and mutually agreed to by testing partners, pathological data (i.e. non-compliant GI 686 style EBTs), such as sending a source transaction reference number of “BLAHBLAH”
Each participant will report to the OEB whether it determined that a given test completed successfully, that is, not only were schema-valid EBTs exchanged, but the given EBTs met the Implementation Guide and GI 686 requirements.
3.2Account Selection
Retailers can indicate a preference of which of their accounts they wish to test with each matched LDC in each round of testing. Preference is provided to the retailer given that the testing burden on them is far greater (given the limited number of retailers compared to LDCs).
This number may vary depending on the retailer and LDC combination, but obviously, at least one account should be tested, but it is recommended that at least 3 accounts be tested.
3.3Trading Partner Pairings
Retailers have expressed the ability to handle a number of trading partners through each round of testing, usually in the neighbourhood of 3 to 5 (or more) testing partners.
LDCs shall mutually agree with retailers which round of testing they wish to schedule. The goal is to allow for as many unique pairings as possible, with some LDCs perhaps testing more than once in order to minimize retailer processing discrepancies.
If desired by market participants of a common CIS vendor, they may indicate to the OEB that they wish to have a small subset of the vendor’s installations be involved in testing. This assumes that such participants do so at their peril and bear the responsibility should their particular installation not be compliant (due to perhaps unique customizations or particular configurations) since the market participant and not the vendor is held responsible for compliance.
3.4Timelines
While trading partners are encouraged to test as soon as possible, the following market testing timelines have been derived as completion dates.
3.4.1Test Preparation Phase
This initial phase allows participants (especially retailers) to prepare their systems and processes for further rounds of testing with multiple participants.
This includes the deployment of test CISs, loaded with previously agreed upon account numbers (including all associated historical EBT information).
A single simple scenario (noted below) will be exercised with a single trading partner in order to allow the retailer to test its preparations and ensure it can handle the number of simultaneous testing partners it has committed to.
This is to complete no later than Tue May 27 in order to allow sufficient post-mortem evaluation and the implementation of enhancements in preparation for the next phases of testing.
3.4.2Round 1 and 2
Two rounds of multiple (at least from the perspective of the retailer) trading partner testing will take place, each lasting one week.
Round 1 will occur between Mon Jun 2 – Fri Jun 6.
Round 2 will occur between Mon Jun 9 – Fri Jun 13.
3.5Scenarios
For the sake of simplicity, the minimal testing to be performed assumes no enrolls, drops, customer moves, etc.
For the test preparation phase, Scenario 1 as indicated in GI 686’s examples are to be exercised (relevant to the DCB or RCB example, given the particular retailer).
For Round 1 and Round 2, it is the LDC’s preference (mutually agreed to by the retailer) to exercise Scenario 5 or 6 as indicated in GI 686’s examples (relevant to the DCB or RCB example, given the particular retailer).
Obviously, the order and transaction type of EBTs exchanged, and not the specific sample account numbers, dates, or dollar values are to be extracted from the GI 686 examples.
Trading partners are encouraged to expand their test scenarios beyond the minimal set noted later in this document. This may include pathological data testing, or simply confirmation that processing of the majority of v2.2 schemas unchanged from v2.1, other than incrementing the version number to 2.2, continues to function as expected.
If desired, participants may provide XML transactions to their trading partners even prior to formal scenario testing in order to validate that trading partners consider the data reasonable.
For convenience, the following page provides a template for tracking test preparations and results. These can strictly be for internal circulation, and are not required to be part of the status reporting to the OEB.
3.6Test Results Reporting Criteria
The following criteria are recommended when indicating the status of a test’s results:
- Pass: Both test partners agree that the test executed completely per v2.2 and GI 686 compliance.
- Marginal: Both test partners agree that the test executed substantially correct per v2.2 and GI 686 compliance with only minor deviations, which will be corrected and retested.
- Fail: At least one of the test partners did not consider that the test demonstrated proper v2.2 and GI 686 compliance.
When indicating the status of a given participant’s production rollout, the status can be self-reported.
OEB EBT WG v2.2 Market Readiness
Market Testing Report
Market Participant Name:Last Updated:
Test Preparation Phase
Trading PartnerScenario[1]
Test Accounts
Planned Completion Date
Actual Completion Date
Status of Test Results[2]
Comments
Round 1
Trading Partner 1Scenario[3]
Test Accounts
Planned Completion Date
Actual Completion Date
Status of Test Results
Comments
Trading Partner …
Scenario
Test Accounts
Planned Completion Date
Actual Completion Date
Status of Test Results
Comments
Round 2
Trading Partner 1Scenario
Test Accounts
Planned Completion Date
Actual Completion Date
Status of Test Results
Comments
Trading Partner …
Scenario
Test Accounts
Planned Completion Date
Actual Completion Date
Status of Test Results
Comments
OEB EBT Standards Working Group- 1 of 10–September 9, 2018
GI 735
Approved by OEB EBT Working Group on Apr 28/03
[1] One of DCB1 or RCB1.
[2] One of Pass, Marginal, or Fail.
[3] At least one of the following four: DCB5, DCB6, RCB5, RCB6.