POL00091670
POL00091670
Route 24 Dee
Tea. Fa wpelaty 4 bys 1957
Beer, Christine At BCH 46 by porbeuthaty ee
From: Holleran, Ruth ak fone # bus roth. Contp
To: Rego, Mena_Gen; Smith, David
Ce: Charlton, Peter dry Tareas Oe (44VE
Subject: Congo 4 and Lost Transactions
Date: 24 December 1997 11:53 (Lonas lag ya peste
Dave, Mena aX”
You may want to be aware that we are ‘losing’ BES transactions at an alarming rate. The reason is
without the EPOSS shell the BES system does not force the outlet to commit the transaction. If the user
does not commit the transaction and the system times out, - after 1 and a quarter hours the transaction
is lost. We knew this would happen i.e. a Known Problem but procedures were meant to cover this as
far as possible, until we got the next release.
Clearly these aren‘t adequate and a further update was sent out last friday to all 205 outlets. We are
able to spot these lost transactions because good old SPMRs are using receipts to complete the cash
account and, then ABED data from BES forms the supporting information to reconcile against in CFD.
Because BES has lost the transaction the two.amounts-differ— hence the error. (Thank god for the cash
account !!), Data in CFD is 2 weeks old st So we will not Séé“any.impact of the update for another
3 weeks so the errors will increase and ti ight service management “keports(seen by Andy and John
H & others) will increasingly see red - just SO-you-are-aware..Generally-the error happens in the newer
outlets so hopefully things will simmer down as they get used to it. But the problem worsens because it
can be aggravated by printer difficulties. In these cases the printer won't print receipt, SPMR writes
manual one and because of distraction forgets to commit and we loose record on BES if system ‘times
out’, This scenario accounts for 50% of lost transactions to date.
So the upshot is the issue is being managed but if the update doesn't work we may have to take some
action to hold progress on for example rollout of cards. I am watching this closely and have agreed with
PDA that we may have to resort to this.
Again just so you are aware.
Ruth
ore
” any’ mw ~ 9 wel
Page 1
POL00091670
POL00091670