NOTE: This codebase is no longer in use. It has been replaced (why) by a database backed application (ministryofjustice/prison-visits-2) and decoupled public booking interface (ministryofjustice/prison-visits-public).

Visit someone in prison

Also known as “Prison visit booking”, is one of the 25 'exemplar' government digital transformation services.

It is a Ruby on Rails cookie based (no database) service which enables a user to pick 3 posible visiting times and submit the required details of a visit to the relevant prison.

The request is sent via secure email to prison staff who manually process the request before returning to this app to respond to the user.

Editing prison data

Prison details are store in a single Yaml file which can be edited directly on this website by anyone with access to this repository. Yaml files use a two-space indentation syntax, so be careful.

Prison visibility

All known prisons should exist in the data files. If a prison is not in scope of the service, it should be disabled and can be given a specific reason.

To enable visit requests to a prison, set enabled to true.

- nomis_id: RCI
  enabled: true
  name: Rochester
  ...

- nomis_id: SFI
  enabled: false # this prison does not accept online visit request through this service
  name: Stafford
  ...

When a disabled prison is chosen on the prisoner details page, the user is shown this message:

HMP [PRISON_NAME] is unable to process online visit requests. Instead you can contact the prison directly to book a visit.

This message can be changed using the reason parameter.

reason: 'it_issues'

Will change the message to:

HMP [PRISON_NAME] is unable to process online visit requests right now. You can contact the prison directly to book a visit instead.

reason: 'coming_soon'

Will change the message to:

HMP [PRISON_NAME] isn’t able to process online visit requests yet. You can contact the prison directly to book a visit instead.

Weekly visiting slots

Slots are defined per prison via a weekly schedule. Only days listed here with a list of slots will appear on the slot picker.

Use 3 letter strings for days of the week. Times are entered in 24 hours format.

slots:
  wed:
  - 1350-1450 # creates a 1 hour slot every Wednesday from 1:50pm
  sat:
  - 0900-1100 # creates a 2 hour slot every Saturday from 9am
  - 1330-1530 # creates a 2 hour slot every Saturday from 1:30pm

Slot anomalies

Use this to make exceptions to the weekly schedule.

When a day is found in slot_anomalies the whole day is replaced with this data. Therefore if the weekday usually contains multiple slots and only a single slot is to be edited, the rest of the slots need to be re-entered.

slot_anomalies:
  2015-01-10:
  - 0930-1130 # replaces Saturday 10 January 2015 with only one slot at 9:30am

Note slot anomalies must be listed in chronological order.

Non-bookable days

Use this to remove specified dates from the weekly schedule. Eg staff training days, Christmas day.

This overrides both slots and slot_anomalies.

unbookable:
- 2015-12-25 # removes any slots from 25 December 2015

Note unbookable dates must be listed in chronological order.

Response times

Set the amount of full working days which booking staff have to respond to each request. The default is 3 days.

Eg On a Monday, requests can be made for Friday. Set to 2 and it will be possible to make requests for Thursday.

lead_days: 2 # two full working days after current day

Working days

Use this when a prison has booking staff who can respond to requests over weekends. This will allow visits to be requested 3 days ahead (or custom lead_day) regardless of whether they are 'week days'.

works_weekends: true

Prison finder links

When the services links to Prison Finder it turns the prison name into part of the URL. Eg 'Drake Hall' becomes drake-hall.

When the Prison Finder link doesn't not simply match the prison name in lower case with spaces replaced with hyphens, use this.

finder_slug: sheppey-cluster-standford-hill

Adult age

Visit requests are limited to a maximum of 3 "adults" (18 years old and over, by default). The adult age can be reduced to restrict the amount of visitors over that age.

Note visiting areas have 3 seats for visitors and one for the prisoner. Children are expect to sit on the laps of adults.

adult_age: 15 # allow only 3 visitors over the age of 15

Renaming a prison

Follow these steps if you need to rename a prison.

1. Rename the prison name in the Yaml file (see above).

2. Register the old name in the legacy_data_fixes method, using the old name as the key, and the new name as the value.

Combining prisons

If a two or more prisons are combined, a similar process should be followed. See commit 7afd6a0 for details.

Set-up

Clone the project into a directory on to your environment using instructions on GitHub.

Open terminal and go to the project directory and install the dependancies by running (assuming you have Bundler installed):

bundle install

Run the server by running:

rails server

Then point your favourite browser to http://localhost:3000/prisoner.

Note as services on GOV.UK should not be accessed directly, the root of this app redirects to www.gov.uk/prison-visits.

Dependencies

Bower packages

The Bower packages are commited to this code base in the /vendor directory.

• SlotPicker - for the choose-date-and-time calendar
• GOV.UK Elements - used for UI styles and behaviour
• RespondJS - for responsive IE6 layouts

Note SlotPicker requires Modernizr for touch and CSS animation detection. This is part of the SlotPicker package.

Prison staff info

Currently a private Gem which contains information for booking staff.

Automated tests

By default the tests use PhantomJS

brew install phantomjs

You will also need to initialize the test database if it doesn't exist

bundle exec rake db:create RAILS_ENV=test

This app uses RSpec for Rails tests.

rake

Feature tests

Locally (using Google Chrome)

rake spec:features

In parallel

rake parallel:spec

Environment variables used by the application

Sending emails

To prisons

We use MessageLabs to send emails to prisons because they're on the Government Secure Intranet (GSI). On preprod, we use Sendgrid to send to maildrop so we can get access to them easily. You will need to configure them if you want to send email when submitting a booking request locally.

Source: app/mailers/prison_mailer.rb

• GSI_SMTP_HOSTNAME
• GSI_SMTP_PORT
• GSI_SMTP_DOMAIN

To visitors

These SMTP settings are used to send emails to visitors. Because these using SendGrid's SMTP server, they must be sent via SendGrid. You will need to configured them if you want to try and test email by submiting a booking request locally.

Source: config/environments/production.rb

• SMTP_HOSTNAME
• SMTP_PORT
• SMTP_DOMAIN
• SMTP_USERNAME
• SMTP_PASSWORD

Service URL

This URL is used to configure the session store host and to generate links in emails. For development and test environment it is set to localhost.

Source: config/environments/production.rb and config/initializers/session_store.rb

• SERVICE_URL

Message Encryptor Secret Key

The key is a base 64-encoded value and is used to encrypt serialised data that are transmitted in URLs in the emails that are sent to prison staff (to process requests) and visitors (to view or cancel requests).

Source: config/initializers/encryptor.rb

• MESSAGE_ENCRYPTOR_SECRET_KEY

Start Page

On production, we set this to https://www.gov.uk/prison-visits because that's the official start page for the service, but you can configure a different one.

Source: config/routes.rb

• GOVUK_START_PAGE

Google Analytics ID.

Source: config/application.rb

• GA_TRACKING_ID

Prison Estate IP

This is a comma-separated list of IP addresses. Users on these addresses can access metrics, the prison booking admin pages, and the prison staff info pages without needing to log in.

Source: config/application.rb

• PRISON_ESTATE_IPS

Zendesk

These username and token need to be configured if you want to use feedback.

Source: config/initializers/zendesk.rb

• ZENDESK_USERNAME
• ZENDESK_TOKEN

Session Secret Key

This is used to cryptographically sign sessions both by Rails and by the Sidekiq queue maintenance interface.

Source: config/secrets.yml

• SESSION_SECRET_KEY

Kibana

Trusted Users Access Key

It's the key you pass in the URL when requesting the metrics page to send application metrics to Elastic Search for use in Kibana.

Source: config/application.rb

• TRUSTED_USERS_ACCESS_KEY

Elastic Search Url

This is used to send application metrics to Kibana via Elasticsearch. It is optional.

Source: config/initializers/metrics_logger.rb

• ELASTICSEARCH_URL

Stastsd

These are used to send application statistics to Kibana via statsd. They are optional.

Source: config/initializers/statsd_client.rb

• STATSD_HOST
• STATSD_PORT

Smoke test configuration

Only the first two (local part and domain) are needed in order to run the application; to run the smoke tests you'll also need the email password and host.

Source: config/environments/development.rb and config/environments.

• SMOKE_TEST_EMAIL_LOCAL_PART
• SMOKE_TEST_EMAIL_DOMAIN
• SMOKE_TEST_EMAIL_PASSWORD
• SMOKE_TEST_EMAIL_HOST

Override booking window

This is used to test after 28 days in advance. It is optional.

• OVERRIDE_BOOKING_WINDOW

Redirecting traffic to the new app

Supports redirecting a proportion of new booking requests to the new prison visits application. Should be a value between 0 (no requests redirected) and 1 (all requests redirected).

• NEW_APP_PROBABILITY