The whole CAA Medicals & CELLMA issue has definitely riled me enough to get me to register with flyer to reply to this thread.
I applaud & appreciate the intent of the CAA in digitizing the admin process with the intent of efficiency for all parties. However, the current state is a mess and it appears to be unsuitable for users and AMEs. The CAA website was initially and is still not fit for purpose and CELLMA is an off-the-shelf existing RioMed GP Medical Practice patient management system shoehorned onto the side with no changes that would amend the process or workflow to make it suitable for the task of providing service to the users.
I also notice that this morning 26th July the whole CAA portal is down only providing a server 503 (Service Unavailable) error.
My first issue was that for many months - I could not actually get a working login for the CAA portal (
https://portal.caa.co.uk) no matter what I tried. I'd enter all the details - jump through the hoops - then not get the account verification email. The resend account activation email button and the forgotten password button didn't result in any steps forward. This happened repeatedly with the added complication that every time I created an account any attempt at using the Username resulted in "Username unavailable"! So over the many tries I'd exhausted Roger.Wilco001, Roger.Wilco002, ... Roger.Wilco999
I rang the CAA helpline and with a slightly shorter holding time than HSBC - I was able to speak to someone. They were courteous but unhelpful. I explained the problem that the CAA portal account activation was not working. That the account activation email was not being received etc...
I asked that as I only wanted a Class-2 renewal to restart training was there an alternative way to move forward while the portal issue was being sorted? - answer was effectively "NO" - "CAA Portal + CELLMA" or the highway.
I also asked if the CAA could kick one of my now multitude of CAA portal accounts and initiate the password reset their end - or cancel the multiple inactivated accounts as the majority of portal providers can do? - answer was that they have no access to the user management of their portal!
As I have run my own office/home IT infrastructure for over 8 years and been in a related industry my working career - I was in a position to at least look into what was happening and had identified and captured an abnormal/non-standard handshake between the CAA server sending the account activation email and my own infrastructure.
So I rang the CAA helpline again armed with the detail I had collected. As my CAA Portal Account woes seemed to hinge on the non-successful sending of the account verification email from their end. Again after finally getting to speak to someone who was courteous but unhelpful. I explained that I had useful information for the CAA's IT team or IT portal provider and either could they pass the detail onwards - or provide contact details of who I should communicate. Was told that they would not. Was told that it wasn't a CAA Infrastructure problem but must be my problem. I pointed out that the CAA had been communicating with me on that email address over the last year or more and so why was it my problem? The conversation basically ended with the CAA telling me - "use Gmail everyone else is". Beats me why I need multiple email addresses for the CAA?
Second problem was with (still is with) CELLMA. Once I have had a working CAA Portal - applying for and getting and accessing CELLMA account has been just as bad. Requesting a CELLMA account was reasonably straight forward from a working CAA Portal. Though, for ages I kept getting a "not enough licenses" error when trying to initialize my CELLMA account. Eventually, that did resolve but it took many attempts over a month. The only way to access the CAA variant of CELLMA is through the CAA Portal. I have had consistent issues jumping from the CAA Portal to CELLMA where I get token errors, or logout errors (while trying to login), or just plain old server 500 or 400 errors. Successful access to CELLMA initially was maybe only one in five attempts. It seems to have improved a bit - but I'm trying to avoid going anywhere near it.
So it has taken three months + to get to a point of being able to request a Class-2 renewal. I won't be holding my breath hoping for a smooth issuing process.
RioMed's sales blurb about CELLMA doesn't bode well for users or Medical Practitioners as they don't seem to be a priority and are not mentioned at all. Seems the only advantage of CELLMA is for
"evidence-based data aligned towards proper surveillance and monitoring"
for the CAA.
https://www.riomed.com/cellmas-aviation-authority-medical-records-system/