Technical connection: Integration testing

Overview

Purpose of this step

To carry out integration testing in the Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP) pre-production environment and demonstrate that you have completed and passed the integration testing stages.

This guidance explains the steps involved in integration testing and how to submit evidence of this.

Integration testing uses a limited set of requests to test functional and non-functional aspects of the solutions used by providers, schemes, third-party administrators, or integrated service providers (ISPs) to connect directly to the ecosystem. These are designed to confirm that:

• the solution is compliant with the PDP central digital architecture (CDA)
• the solution successfully integrates with the CDA
• user journeys operate as expected

Who completes this step?

• test manager
• primary technical contact

Read the full list of roles and responsibilities.

Before you begin

You will need to:

• confirm deployment of test crypto material through the connection portal
• be familiar with:
  • the integration test pack
  • PDP standards

What you need to do in this step

1. Confirm prerequisites outlined in the integration test pack have been met.
2. Connection proving.
3. Integration testing with PDP test team.
4. Upload your integration test report evidence.

1. Confirm prerequisites outlined in the integration test pack have been met

After you have deployed your test crypto material, PDP’s implementation manager will email you for confirmation that:

• you have read the integration test pack
• you have all the required test data
• you have set up the required test data (users and pension data) on your solution that is due to be tested

You must respond by email to confirm this.

2. Connection proving

Once you’ve confirmed that you have met the prerequisites, PDP will run a connectivity test to check that you are connected correctly to the preproduction environment. As part of this, your solution’s ability to process find and view requests will be tested.

If you fail connectivity testing, we will create a Jira ticket which records details of the failure. If we cannot resolve the issue through Jira, we will arrange a call to provide support. It is recommended that IT security, infrastructure and development teams are in attendance. If we are still unable to solve the issue, we will escalate your issue to our technical development team.

3. Integration testing with PDP test team

Once you have passed connection proving, the PDP implementation manager will email you to schedule a 3-hour testing window.

Integration test execution is comprised of 3 parts:

1. Re-running connection proving.
2. Stage 1.
3. Stage 2.

During the integration testing window

Test execution consists of 3 phases. Once the connecting organisation passes a phase, they move on to the next one.

Connection proving: This phase executes a find request. This will confirm that the connecting organisation’s system has successfully connected with ours. The provider must then register a pension based on this find request and respond to a view request.

Stage 1: This phase runs all tests that can be completed without intervention from the connecting organisation. It will also execute code to set up the matches necessary prior to the required actions from the connecting organisation.

When stage 1 successfully completes, you will be emailed a file to update your matches in your system.

Stage 2: This phase verifies that your updates have achieved the expected results.

If you have passed, the results of both stages will be emailed to you as a single PDF.

If there’s a failure that cannot be addressed in the integration testing window, the test analysts will try to diagnose the failure. If they are unable to diagnose or fix the problem, it will be escalated to the technical development team for support. Once your issue has been resolved, we will schedule a new integration testing window. We will keep you updated on progress through Jira.

PDP may request connecting organisations’ logs as part of this process.

4. Upload your integration test report evidence

The test manager must:

1. Sign in to the connection portal.
2. Click ‘Start process’ on the home page.
3. Read what is required for integration testing and click continue.
4. Click ‘Upload files’ and select the integration testing report you received.
5. Once this has been uploaded, click ‘Continue’.
6. Check your answers and click ‘Confirm and submit’.

You will receive email confirmation of your submission.

What happens next

PDP will review the uploaded evidence of successful integration testing. Once PDP has approved it, we will email your service manager requesting they submit service acceptance.

How long will it take?

You should get a response from PDP confirming the outcome of your submission by email within 5 working days. If you have not heard from us by then, let us know via support.

All emails from PDP will come from [email protected] or from [email protected]. Check your junk or spam folder and ask your IT department to add this email to an allow list of addresses.

Support

Changelog

Last updated:12/03/2025