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« on: Friday 22 April 16 14:50 BST (UK) »
Hi All,
I am an ICT programmer at Sunderland City Council. I have been made aware of this blog and of an e-mail I received via the registrars regarding the online BDM system.
First off, I'd like to apologise to you all regarding the length of time it has took to get around to this problem. I hadn't actually realised that people like yourselves were using the system just to search the records database! We built the website to allow people to order copies of certificates and I was under the impression that was all it was used for, now that I know it has another use I will try and keep it available in the future.
Just a quick explanation as to why it went missing. We started to have problems getting payments through our payment portal, resulting in garbled orders, customers not being able to make a payment and customers making a payment but no order details coming through to registrars. It was getting very messy so the decision was taken to switch it off. About a month ago I switched it back on having installed some stronger validation and 'markers' in the web pages to try to find the problem. After a week we had some perfect orders and some without payment. During that time I was forwarded an e-mail from a customer who had noted that it seemed to work fine with Internet Explorer(IE) - but not other browsers (for example Chrome, Firefox etc). Based on that information I have updated the pages again. Now the system will let any browsers search the records - but will only allow IE users to purchase a certificate. This will hopefully get it back online and while it is restricted to just IE we can investigate what the issues are with the other browsers.
I have made the changes and asked the service if we can go live again this Monday (25th April 2016). I will try to visit this forum and keep you up to date with any changes - and I would really appreciate it if you have any feedback that I could use to make the service better - and if you have any information about errors you may receive when making orders.
Once again - sorry for the long delay and thanks for your patience.
Kind Regards,
H