SCA Functional Specification

SCA application has been enhanced to support the feature, where the application will generate performance metric data on the duration of time, taken by the application for each command execution. This data is included in the response and sent back to the POS system. The metrics define the total response time, UI time (taken by the user for inputs) and host communication time wherever it is applicable.

As every customer wants faster transactions at the Point of Sale. This feature enables merchants to identify the time-consuming steps during a transaction flow and take necessary measures to improve them. There may be improvements in the network infrastructure or training to the cashiers that can help improve the performance of the transaction. This feature helps with identification of such improvements and improve efficiency.

SCAPERFMETRIC parameter (Application Parameters) is introduced to enable the feature and receive the data using these following response fields in each command:

• UI_TIME: This field contains the overall duration for user interaction during the transaction. It includes the time for various User Interactions such as Customer Input screens, User selection screens, Error Messages for the benefit of the customer, card removal screens, Card read screens etc. The time duration is calculated from the point the screen is displayed until the user action is performed. This field does not include the duration for screens such as “Authorizing” screen which is displayed in parallel to the host communication.
• HOST_TIME: This field denotes the time application takes for creating the connection with the gateway/processor, sending the request and receiving response from the host. This field also takes the cumulative time for multiple requests which may be sent to the host during the transaction including two legged transactions, timeout requests, Auto Last Tran requests, DCC, Credit App Proxy etc.
• CMD_TIME: This field denotes the total amount of time application takes for processing a command sent from the POS. The time is measured from the point the request is received to the point that the response is sent.
• CP_TIME: This field denotes the total amount of time that the CP application (Commerce Platform application) has control of the UI and transaction flow within the current command. The CP applications include applications like Alternate Payments, TruRating etc.

The format of the returned value would be S.sss, where S is seconds (this can be 0 to any positive integer) and sss is milliseconds. In case of any insignificant time or 0.000 value, these fields will not be returned in the response. Refer to Protocol Specifications section for more details on the command response fields.