File validation

When you submit a file, it goes through the following stages of validation:

• File-level validation checks that the file is structured correctly
• Simple validation checks that are applied to the submitted record(s)
• Complex validation checks that are applied to the resulting new or updated record(s) after the record merging process

Once processing is complete, you will see the submission summary page.

The system processes each record one at a time and accepts any records that pass validation. It will only reject a whole file if it is not structured correctly.

For XML files, it expects the data items to be named per the schema and in the correct order. You can leave a data item blank in the file or omit it completely as long as the remaining items are still in the correct order. For a CSV file, the system expects no headers and 54 fields.

Validation errors are listed by NHS number. If errors or warnings are generated during processing of your file, you can view them on the Submission Summary screen by clicking the NHS number(s) displayed.

You can use the 'Download all validations' button to download all the validation error messages into a CSV file so you can review them offline.

The records submitted section provides a summary of the submission outcome: how many records were submitted, and how many were rejected and accepted.

The system will try to tell you everything that is wrong with a record in one go. This is not always possible, so it will carry out the simple validations first, which check the format and length of the values for each data item.

The system will check the record against each simple validation rule, and if any errors are found, it will reject the record and notify you of all errors at this stage.

These are mainly cross-field checks or where we need to check that a code is valid.

These rules are applied after the record merging process to ensure that any merged or updated records remain valid; therefore, the record must have passed all the simple validation rules to reach this stage. Again, the system will run through all these rules for each record and attempt to tell you everything that is wrong with it.

Note that a single problem may trigger multiple validation rules.

The system generates both errors and warnings.

Errors are shown when a mandatory validation rule has been broken, therefore a record with at least one error will be rejected.

Warnings indicate that your record could be improved, but the system will accept it as long as there are no validation errors. We may use warnings to tell you when your record would fail a new rule we are introducing or to warn you of something illogical in the data.

If you have many errors or warnings to review, or want to do this later or offline, you can download all the error messages to a CSV file and save it locally.

We have produced a Validations Rules document which provides more information about validation messages and what they mean.

Find previous submissions

You can find a list of all submissions made by your organisation by selecting submission history from the top toolbar. This shows you all the file submissions, who submitted them and when. You can filter this list by various filter options.

By clicking the detail link. you can access the submission summary screen, which shows any validation errors and warnings for that submission.