Stop accruing new silent failures in EVSS, Lighthouse Benefits Intake API, and Lighthouse Upload API immediately

[humancompanion-usds]

Problem Statement

Despite our best efforts we continue to have new silent failures in EVSS, Lighthouse Benefits Intake API, and Lighthouse Upload API. We've committed to reaching zero silent failures as quickly as humanly possible.

• Dingee to brief Worthington on the initiative to Show status of form submissions to users on MyVA and confirmation page for forms handled by Benefits Intake API.
• Theis + Chapman + Dingee to develop a SOP for when we do email notifications and give up trying to submit the file, vs. another backup. Present plan to Worthington.
• Theis to confirm all EVSS document uploads are not accruing additional errors, or COAs if a decision is needed to implement

Acceptance criteria

• Worthington has seen the form confirmation page redesign and the form status in MyVA work
• Worthington has seen the SOP for email notifications
• Theis has confirmed EVSS EVSS document uploads are not accruing additional errors

VFS team work to start immediately sending email notifications in response to fatal errors in async processing

• Veteran facing forms

[humancompanion-usds]

Here is the diagram in Mural for when we would send emails. Will get another round of input and then share with Charles.

[humancompanion-usds]

• Meeting scheduled Monday with Charles, Bill, Emily, and I to go over the diagram.
• Happy to report that the Veteran-facing Forms team will be turning on email notifications on 1 form on Monday and then, presuming all goes well, the rest of our 9 forms later in the week. This will cover the submission in progress, received, and action needed (error) statuses. Once we've done that I will publish the pattern for this in the Design System (also later next week) and we'll notify all teams using Lighthouse Benefits Intake API that they can follow that pattern.

[humancompanion-usds]

Charles pushed the meeting to Friday because of the OCTO Leadership offsite. I'm going to let him know that we are shipping emails early this week on the 21-10210 and then following that up very quickly with 8 additional forms. I still have a 1:1 with Chris today (supposedly) so I will let him know as well.

[humancompanion-usds]

We've published a pattern in the Design System on when to send emails for forms that are handled asynchronously. That will handle forms using Lighthouse Benefits Intake API as a primary or back-up submission mechanism. We'll be asking all teams to send at least the action needed email in the event of an error by Monday 11/11 (Veterans Day).

EVSS is being deprecated and teams are actively moving away from it. But more work needs to be done there to send emails.

Need to dig into Lighthouse Upload API.