Issue identified
Of the 19 user accounts established to represent 23 different schools, 9 users had difficulty accessing the service via the DfE Sign in Process (DSI)
Basic access requirements
For users to gain access to the plantech service via the DSI sign-in three elements need to exist; firstly, the user needs to have an active account within DSI. Secondly, the school where the user works needs to be approved to use the plantech service. Thirdly, the school DIS administrator needs to approve the user to be able to use the plantech service. If any of these elements are not available, users will not be able to use the plantech service.
Image: Process flow of sign-in journey
Problem categories
During the Beta pilot phase of the project several users indicated that they were having issues signing into the service, the issues reported were categorised as:
- No user DSI account
- School not available for selection within DSI
- User account not approved by school administrators with DSI access
- Unspecified internal DSI sign in error
- Specified error that enabled user to pass DSI sign in but fails authentication at Plantech service level
Proposed solutions to reduce and manage errors within the plantech service
In the first release of the Beta “pilot” environment there is no information provided to users on the “Landing page” that describes what the basic access requirements to the service are. The complexity of this process risks becoming a barrier to access particularly where users may have limited experience of using the DSI sign-in service, SO firstly we propose to include utilising the GDS warning component to highlight sign-in requirements and hopefully circumvent those issue before they arise.
Image: Warning component added to landing page
Secondly, where users have been passed though Plantech service from DSI we have proposed building a dynamic error handling page that examines the tokenised message from DSI identifies missing values and displays practical guidance on next steps.
Image: Dynamic error page
Investigation of errors encountered within DSI service
The team is looking at the DSI service to investigate what improvements could be made within that environment.