Skip to content

Configuring a new transit agency

Before starting any configuration, the Cal-ITP team and transit agency staff should have a kickoff meeting to confirm that information provided is complete, implementation plan is feasible, and any approvals needed have been obtained.

Then, the following steps are done by the Cal-ITP team to configure a new transit agency in the Benefits application.

Note that a TransitAgency model requires:

  • a list of supported EligibilityTypes
  • a list of EligibilityVerifiers used to verify one of those supported eligibility types
  • a PaymentProcessor for enrolling the user’s contactless card for discounts
  • an info_url and phone for users to contact customer service
  • an SVG or PNG file of the transit agency’s logo

Also note that these steps assume the transit agency is using Littlepay as their payment processor. Support for integration with other payment processors may be added in the future.

Configuration for development and testing

For development and testing, only a Littlepay customer group is needed since there is no need to interact with any discount product. (We don’t have a way to tap a card against the QA system to trigger a discount and therefore have no reason to associate the group with any product.)

Steps

  1. Cal-ITP uses the transit agency’s Littlepay merchant ID to create a customer group in the Littlepay QA environment for each type of eligibility (e.g. senior).
  2. For each group that’s created, a group ID will be returned and should be set as the group_id on a new EligibilityType in the Benefits database. (See Configuration data for more on loading the database.)
  3. Cal-ITP creates a new EligibilityVerifier in the database for each supported eligibility type. This will require configuration for either API-based verification or verification through an OAuth Open ID Connect provider (e.g. sandbox Login.gov) – either way, this resource should be meant for testing.
  4. Cal-ITP creates a new TransitAgency in the database and associates it with the new EligibilityTypes and EligibilityVerifiers as well as the existing Littlepay PaymentProcessor.

Configuration for production validation

For production validation, both a customer group and discount product are needed. The customer group used here is a temporary one for testing only. Production validation is done against the Benefits test environment to avoid disruption of the production environment.

Steps

  1. Transit agency staff creates the discount product in production Littlepay (if it does not already exist).
  2. Transit agency staff takes a screenshot of the discount product in the Merchant Portal, making sure the browser URL is visible, and sends that to Cal-ITP.
  3. Cal-ITP creates a customer group for testing purposes in production Littlepay.
  4. Cal-ITP associates the group with the product.
  5. Cal-ITP creates a new EligibilityType for testing purposes in the Benefits database and sets the group_id to the ID of the newly-created group.
  6. Cal-ITP creates a new EligibilityVerifier with configuration for a testing environment to ensure successful eligibility verification. (For example, use sandbox Login.gov instead of production Login.gov.)
  7. Cal-ITP creates a new PaymentProcessor for testing purposes with configuration for production Littlepay.
  8. Cal-ITP updates the existing TransitAgency (created previously) with associations to the eligibility types, verifiers, and payment processor that were just created for testing.

At this point, Cal-ITP and transit agency staff can coordinate to do on-the-ground testing where a live card is tapped on a live payment validator.

Production validation testing

  1. Transit agency staff (or Cal-ITP staff) does live test in the field.
  2. Transit agency staff uses the Merchant Portal to verify the taps and discounts were successful.
  3. Cal-ITP uses logs from Azure to verify the user was associated to the customer group.
  4. Cal-ITP verifies that Amplitude analytic events are being sent.

Configuration for production

Once production validation is done, the transit agency can be added to the production Benefits database.

Steps

  1. Cal-ITP creates a customer group for production use in production Littlepay.
  2. Cal-ITP associates the group with the discount product created previously during production validation.
  3. Cal-ITP sets that group’s ID as the group_id for a new EligibilityType in the Benefits database.
  4. Cal-ITP creates a new EligibilityVerifier with configuration for the production eligibility verification system.
  5. Cal-ITP creates a new TransitAgency in the database with proper associations to eligibility types, verifiers, and payment processor.

Cleanup

At this point, the customer group that was created in production Littlepay for testing purposes can be deleted. The temporary production validation objects in the Benefits database can also be deleted.

  1. Remove the association between the test customer group and discount product.
  2. Delete the test customer group.
  3. Remove temporary EligibilityTypes, EligibilityVerifiers, and PaymentProcessor that were created in the Benefits test environment.