Tech Debt: display technical errors on the error page as they occur in staging and development

[GeorgeGoodall]

Problem statement

When we have an issue with dev or staging that causes an error to be thrown. all we see on the site is 'sorry the service is unavailable right now' we then have to go hunting for the cause of an exception or search the logs (to which we don't all have access to)

Proposed solution

a conditional clause that states when not in the production environment we display an verbose error page instead of the default error page

• Bring all error page templates into one template
• Modify error page template to print out the actual error
• Add in debug flag for production

[GeorgeGoodall]

@eveleighoj Hey Owen, what do you think about this idea?

[MJFaucherFolie]

As agreed in Tech Refinement on 3rd December to merge the "page not found" error with this ticket

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Description

• Users who land on the Check service via a historic bookmark (saved before we implemented the Dashboard and changed the URL structure) are landing on the "page not found" webpage.
• Users are emailing digitalland@communities.gov.uk and exiting the service.
• Users who land on the "page not found" webpage believe the only action they can take is email and exit, instead of re-starting from the beginning (which typically fixes the issues they're experiencing)

Additional context

Intended outcomes

If a user lands on a broken page, they should be advised to restart the process

Impact

How many people are affected (05/11/2024)

• There are low counts of people via Jira emailing, but a larger number of people on Smartlook who land on this page

What part of the process is it impacting

• Checking their datasets

Is it preventing people from completing an action or a minor annoyance

• It is preventing people from using the service.
• The outcome of this page is typically an email and exiting the service

Jira

2 October 2024 - https://mhclgdigital.atlassian.net/browse/DLSD-1038

[rosado]

@MJFaucherFolie do we know what is the majority of the addresses that end up with a 404? I assume it's the check tool result pages?

[MJFaucherFolie]

@MJFaucherFolie do we know what is the majority of the addresses that end up with a 404? I assume it's the check tool result pages?

There are a few more details on an old ticket. I don't think it was just the check tool result pages leading to this issue. I believe that people who saved old URLs also see this page. Happy to talk about this if you like :)