Business to Business (B2B) Form 7: Guidelines and specifications

Introduction

The Business to Business (B2B) Form 7 provides an efficient mechanism for Ontario businesses to electronically submit their report of a workplace injury or illness with immediate confirmation of receipt. 

About this manual

Purpose and audience

This document provides guidelines for businesses intending to use the B2B Form 7 as well as a technical specification for systems development to interface with the B2B Form 7.

It is also intended for vendors or businesses who want to extend or develop their Occupational Injury/Illness/Disease Management and Reporting (OIIDMR) applications to be able to submit workplace injury or illness information to the WSIB using the B2B Form 7.

The intended audience includes project managers, business, system and programmer analysts, database administrators, and application developers.

Usage

The main focus of this document is to assist vendors and businesses who want to extend or develop their OIIDMR systems with the ability to submit workplace injury or illness information to the WSIB using the B2B Form 7 channel. Although implementation details may vary from system to system, applications will be deemed compliant as long as the interface and data format specifications outlined in this document are met.

This document only addresses interfacing and submitting a Form 7 to the WSIB using the B2B Form 7. It does not cover applications used in the business's environment to interface with this service.

Attachments

While it can be indicated on Form 7 that attachments or additional documentation will accompany the Form 7 being submitted, the B2B Form 7 will not accept attachments or any additional documentation. Additional documentation should be faxed to the WSIB using the existing fax numbers – 1-888-313-7373 or 416-344-4684.

NOTE: When faxing additional information, to assist in matching it with the B2B submitted Form 7; please include the B2B Form 7 confirmation number and the claimant’s name on each page of the documentation being faxed.

Overview of reporting requirements

Businesses must report a workplace injury or illness within three business days of learning about it if their employee:

• needed treatment from a health professional, or
• was absent from work, or
• earns less than regular pay (e.g. working fewer hours or being paid less per hour), or
• requires modified work at less than regular pay, or
• requires modified work at regular pay for more than seven calendar days following the date of accident

You must provide a copy of the injury or illness report to your employee. Learn more about injury and illness reporting.

Overview of B2B Form 7

Definition of B2B Form 7

The B2B Form 7 is a system which receives data submitted from a business's OIIDMR application in an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) format and transfers it to the WSIB’s claims process. By creating a Form 7 in the form of an XML message, a business can send accident information to the WSIB online and receive a positive confirmation of acceptance (or rejection) response - also in the form of an XML message. Upon receiving a Form 7 report, the B2B Form 7 system validates the data against business rules (as defined in the Form 7 Field List) and transfers the XML data to the claims process. Any XML submissions that do not pass the validation will be rejected, the submitted data will not be saved and an appropriate status message will be returned to the submitter so that the problem can be corrected and the form resubmitted.

Security layer

Businesses are able to access the B2B Form 7 only after registering with the WSIB to use the service. Only requests carrying the credentials of registered businesses will be processed. Please email [email protected] for the test credentials.

Developers will require a test ID and password to submit a 'test' Form 7 in order to perform an end-to-end test. Please email [email protected] for the test credentials.

Protocol layer

The B2B Form 7 uses HTTPS (Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol with Secure Sockets Layer) encryption for transporting XML messages. This is the only available interface to the system and all communications must be encrypted.

A submitting application must be able to access the Internet via HTTPS in order to communicate with the B2B form 7.

Businesses using proxy servers may have additional coding requirements depending on the proxy’s configuration.

Information layer

XML is a meta-language, like HyperText Markup Language (HTML), that enables cross-platform data interchange using a standard method for encoding and formatting information. Unlike HTML, XML lets you publish information about a data’s structure and its meaning or context.

Business application requirements

The basic business application requirements are as follows:

• capture all injury/illness report information as defined by the WSIB current official Form 7 report
• provide a mechanism for the user to send the report to the WSIB B2B Form 7
• connect to B2B Form 7 online via HTTPS
  • send User ID and Password credentials for authentication
  • send the injury/illness report information formatted in an XML message that is compliant with the WSIB Form 7 schema specification
• adhere to the business rules for information requirements (review Form 7 Field List )
• receive, log and process status and error messages

Specifications

This section contains detailed specifications describing all acceptable message transmissions that the WSIB can process and all responses the WSIB can generate. Using this specification, a business or third party vendor can construct a computer system capable of generating and receiving such messages. Upon successful validation of an incoming message, the submission will be fed into the claims process.

Connectivity

All transmissions (outgoing and incoming) must be encrypted using the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) v3 protocol - often referred to as HTTPS.

When using a test ID, the test data will be validated, but the submission is not logged, stored or forwarded on to the claims process.

• for production submissions, use the B2B Form 7
• for test submissions, use the B2B Form 7 Specifications Confirmation Service

Messages

As defined in Appendix C - Schemas, valid messages may consist of a user ID and password, an XML payload, and additional fields (if required). Each submission message should only contain 1 Form 7.

When a schema is revised, the new schema will be published on wsib.ca as a replacement to the existing one. To assist in the transition to the new schema, XML messages that use the existing or old schema will be allowed for a period of six months from the publish date for the new schema. After which time, messages using the old schema will be rejected.

XML

The B2B Form 7 uses Extensible Markup Language (XML) version 1.1 as defined by the W3C.

Security specifications

Businesses must have valid credentials (user ID and password) issued by the WSIB. The credentials must be submitted in order to authorize the business user to submit Form 7 information to the B2B Form 7.

Multiple Form 7's may be submitted within an authenticated session, but the session will be terminated after two minutes of inactivity.

Getting authorized

Please email [email protected] for the test credentials.

Message specification summary

To facilitate the development of systems, the detailed requirements for submitting a Form 7 via the B2B Form 7 are captured in the field list and the schemas identified in the appendices.

The following messages are accepted or generated by the B2B Form 7:

• B2B Form 7 sign on message
• Form7 message
• Acknowledgement message

Each message must be constructed as defined in the appropriate schema.

The acknowledgement messages returned to the business for submissions that fail validation are defined in Appendix B – System error responses.

Message specifications: sign on

Each sign-on message will only contain the WSIB provided user ID and password credentials in the form of an HTTPS request. The format for authentication is: Authentication?UserId=myusername&Password=mypassword

The acknowledgement message will be returned to indicate the results of the credentials authentication.

Message specifications: submission

Multiple XML messages may be submitted within an authenticated session, but each message may only contain one Employer’s Report of Injury/Illness (Form 7). The message content for a submission could vary depending on the incident or injury type being reported, but a message must adhere to the business rules as defined in the Form 7 Field List (i.e. mandatory fields). The format for submission is:

SubmitForm7?authHandler=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Message specifications: acknowledgement

The message syntax for an acknowledgement message returned to the business may vary but will fall under one of the following categories:

• accepted credentials
• rejected credentials
• accepted submission based on compliance with the business rules as defined in the Form 7 Field List
• rejected submission based on non-compliance with the business rules as defined in the Form 7 Field List

If the credentials are valid, a session is established for the submission of the Form 7 XML data.

A positive response message returned to the business for a validated report of injury/illness will include a unique identifier for the submission - referred to as a confirmation number. This identifier, along with the submission date and time, ties the incident stored in the business’s system to the submission received by WSIB’s system. When contacting us to inquire about a B2B Form 7 submission, please have the following ready so that we can locate your submission quicker:

• confirmation number provided when submission was accepted
• date (and time, if possible) the Form 7 was submitted
• business telephone number
• claimant's last name
• claimant's date of birth
• date of accident from the submitted Form 7

Submission error specifications

Before a message will be accepted, it must be validated against the Form 7 schema. At this point, additional business logic validation is conducted, and rule violations will be returned to the business system so that the user can correct the problem. Only after all rule violations are corrected will the document be accepted, a confirmation number returned to the client and the submission entered into the claims process.

Every XML message received from a registered business will be acknowledged with an electronic reply message. If we’re unable to process the message, a deterministic error code and message will be attached to the reply.

Submission errors fall into three basic categories:

• server faults
• security faults
• schema faults/business logic faults

Server faults

Server faults occur when there is a problem accessing the service due to connectivity problems.

Security faults

The security infrastructure will protect the integrity of the service and perform credential authentication.

In case of a security fault, an appropriate response message will be generated and returned to the business. For more information, review Appendix B - System Error Responses.

Schema faults/business logic faults

Schema faults occur when there are schema validation errors due to incorrectly structured XML documents. In addition, a Form 7 message must adhere to the business rules as defined in the Form 7 Field List.

Business logic faults occur due to errors detected by schema validation as well as the application of business rules and logic on the injury/illness information provided. For example - a reported incident may successfully pass the schema validation, however, the employee has lost time and/or earnings and all required sections of the form are not completed. This is largely a data entry error and is easily rectified. Review Appendix B – System error responses.

Overview of client development and implementation

The steps required to develop and implement software to access the B2B Form 7 are as follows:

1. The interested development party (i.e. vendor/business) reviews this Guidelines and Specifications document - contacting us, as needed.
2. The vendor/business registers for access to the B2B Form 7 Specification Confirmation Service.
3. The vendor/business develops/customizes client application software according to these specifications.
4. Once the client application is complete, the vendor/business conducts extensive internal testing to ensure that the system produces a well formed and valid XML based on the Form 7 schema.
5. The vendor/business conducts an end-to-end test using the test credentials and the B2B Form 7 Specification Confirmation Service URL.
6. The vendor makes developed/customized client application available to their business customers.
7. The business registers for production access to the B2B Form 7.

Test submissions

Vendors or business developers with a registered test ID and password must use the specification confirmation service for test submissions.

Vendors and business developers are allowed to send requests to the B2B Form 7 specification confirmation service only using the test ID. These submissions will be processed but the data will not be stored. The submitting application will receive the appropriate B2B Form 7 responses.

NOTE: The specification confirmation service is not intended for client application system testing. We expect vendors/businesses to thoroughly test their applications’ compliance to the B2B Form 7 specifications before they perform an end-to-end test.

Test submission support

Developer support will be provided for test submissions. The following types of feedback will be available on request:

For a successful incident submission:

An acknowledgement message (in the form of acknowledgement.xsd) similar to the message provided for real submissions will be returned for each successful transaction.

For a rejected or failed submission:

An acknowledgement message (in the form of Acknowledgement.xsd) similar to the message provided for real submissions will be returned for each unsuccessful transaction. 
A log will contain a record of each failed authentication attempt. The log will also contain a record of the submitted XML document, exactly as it was transmitted to us, and a record of any schema or business rule validation encountered for each submission.

Using the B2B Form 7 production environment

The production URL will only accept submissions from registered business production user IDs.

Production support

Please contact us at 1-888-243-1569 or 416-344-4122 (TTY: 1-800-387-0050) between 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday to Friday for any support.

Appendix A - Field list

The Form 7 is divided into eleven sections. In order to capture sufficient claimant, business, health care provider and accident/disease information, all fields are mandatory - where it is logical to do so. Please review the Form 7 Field List document for all the fields and their characteristics.

Appendix C - Schemas

Schemas

Form7.xsd

Form7BasicComplexTypes.xsd

Form7ComplexTypes.xsd

BasicSimpleTypes.xsd

BasicComplexTypes.xsd

Acknowledgement.xsd