This week's release:

Global | R&R | On the Spot Recognition & AwardFilePlus

We heard from the Client Support Team and our clients:

"Award file uploads seem to go wrong sometimes. After uploading a file, the system creates a long list of batches with 0 value, that should not be there. Monetary awards are created, but there are too many, and budgets get overcharged."

We found this was due to the interaction between two different processes: award file uploads, and daily bug fix releases in the back end. Starting the release process would trigger behaviours that stopped award file uploads while they were still in progress, and then attempted to pick them up from the very beginning, leading to the issues users noticed.

So far, all we could do was cancel incorrect batches after the issue happened, and ask clients to upload their files again at a safer time. This involved manual clean-up work from the Client Support team, and sometimes, our developers. It could also mean that clients had to wait longer than intended for their awards to be ready to send.

A update is now ready, to help prevent the issue from occurring in the future. It will go live in separate stages, first for On The Spot Recognition, and then for AwardFilePlus. We hope that, in the longer term, it will increase our clients' confidence with the self-service file upload tool, and reduce the manual workload to clean up unwanted batches.