The Purchasing Hierarchy project team is preparing for the user acceptance testing (UAT) phase of the project, which is planned to begin in Hilary term 2026. This is a key opportunity to make sure the system meets the needs of departments across the University before it goes live.
The project team has already completed extensive internal testing to ensure the system is stable and ready for wider validation. Now, we’re inviting departments to help confirm that the system works well in real-world scenarios.
We’re looking for volunteers
We’re inviting expressions of interest from departments to take part in testing the changes to the hierarchy design. We’re aiming for a broad mix of participants, but please note, we may not be able to support every department who is interested in participating.
If you would like to take part, please complete the registration form by Wednesday 24 September.
What does user testing involve?
All participants will be invited to an online user testing briefing session before testing begins. This will cover how to access the system, run the tests, and log your results.
You’ll be asked to complete the tests within a one- or two-week window, this includes testing for department, divisional roles and central finance roles. The project team will represent central finance within the tests. There will then be another two weeks to allow time for any issues raised to be resolved and retested.
Each participating department should aim to complete tests across four key roles:
- Requester
- Budget Holder
- Quality Checker
- Finance Approver
These roles can be fulfilled by different individuals or by the same person, depending on your department’s setup. We anticipate testing will take up to 4 hours for each participant, possibly longer, depending on the number of scenarios the department would like to test and how many people are involved in the testing from the department.
Once departmental testing is complete, scenarios will pass through divisional approvers and then to the project team, who will complete the central finance role testing to ensure full testing of the end-to-end processes.
The project team will be available to support you throughout the process via email or Teams calls.
What will you be testing?
There are multiple test scenarios covering various real-world processes, including:
- Raising different types of requisitions
- Approval workflows for general ledger and project requisitions
- Special item handling (e.g. radioactive materials)
- Amendments and cancellations
- Purchase order generation and approvals
You can view the full list of scenarios below. You’re welcome to suggest additional scenarios you’d like to test. Just let us know when filling in the relevant section of the registration form.
Scenario description list
A full list of the planned test scenarios. Please note: this list is subject to change and intended to give you a feed for the extent of the testing required.
- No self-approved requisitions (where the requester is the approver, the requisition must be approved by another person)
- Approver is in multiple approval roles and doesn’t receive multiple notifications
- Requisition for a new supplier
- Multi-line requisition within a single department, including different cost centres or project
- Multi-line requisition across multiple departments
- Multi-line requisition with same budget holder across multiple departments
- Project-based requisitions and associated approvals
- Special items requisitions (radioactive, schedule 5, live animals, human tissue and other controlled items)
- High-value requisitions over £125k – divisional approval
- Split line distribution across cost centres or project
- Add additional approval step
- Confirmation requisition
- Requisitions using overseas suppliers (foreign currency and zero-rated tax equipment or substances)
- Internal trade requisition
- Amend requisition not yet approved
- Amend partially approved requisition
- Approve requisition using user worklist
- Reject requisition using user worklist
- Delegate approvals and approve
- Request more information during approval
- Scheduled PO generation
- Manual PO generation
- Amend PO in Buyer Work Centre
- Change the requisition value with PO
- Cancel a requisition with PO
- Cancel a line in a requisition with PO