This article discusses a scenario in which a Member Association is already onboarded with the Connect ID Service via their current NRS, however they want to change the NRS into a new one.
We assume that the new NRS already has all the features required to integrate with the Connect ID Service. That will be automatically true for either the FIFA Connect Platform (system oferred by FIFA) or COMET (a commercial system oferred by Analyticom). For other systems an onboarding process needs to be executed as discussed here: 01 FIFA Connect ID integration approach and checkpoints. When completed, one needs to come back to this article for instructions on the data migration.


If an MA decides to introduce a new NRS, the continuity of integration with the FIFA Connect ID Service should be taken into consideration. MA who has been integrated for some time has certain responsibilties:

  1. They are data owners, i.e. they own the data for all persons & clubs they have registered. This data is kept in sync between their current NRS and Connect ID Service thanks to the integration.
  2. As data owners, they have a listener working 24/7, which responds with person details whenever either a deduplication or an EPP process is taking place at another MA or TMS respectively.

In practice, it means that changing the NRS to a new one must involve a full data migration (at least for the records which have FIFA_IDs). 


The next paragraph shows an example plan of switching from an old to a new NRS.


Example plan for switch over between an old and new NRS

Prerequisites:

  • it is possible to export all persons & organisations data from an old NRS
  • it is possible to import, from the export file, all persons & organisations data to a new NRS
  • new NRS has been confirmed by the Connect ID team as ready for the Connect ID onboarding (support.id@fifa.org)

Step-by-step plan:

  1. New NRS is integrated with the Connect ID Service, i.e. new production credentials have been generated by the Connect ID team (support.id@fifa.org) and installed by the system supplier. New NRS is not yet used.
  2. All operations (e.g. persons registrations or updates) are frozen (stopped) in the old NRS. In practice this system becomes read only. The listener continues to operate (for the deduplication and EPP process).
  3. Data is exported from the old NRS
  4. Data is imported into the new NRS
  5. Listener of the old NRS is stopped. This can be executed by the supplier of the old NRS or, alternatively, Connect ID team may be contacted (support.id@fifa.org) and asked to revoke credentials for the old NRS. Careful: this operation cannot be reverted.
  6. Listener of the new NRS is started. If this works and the data migration has been completed, it means that the new NRS will start to respond with person details for the deduplication and EPP processes. If an MA cannot test it themselves, Connect ID team may be contacted and asked to perform the test.
  7. New NRS is fully operational and normal work (including the registrations) may commence.


What if it's not possible to have a freeze period in registrations?

For some MAs it may not be feasible to stop the registrations for the period of data migration. In such a case, the listener of the new NRS will have to be turned on (and the old one turned off) from the moment that any work starts in the new NRS. This will result in the temporary unavailability of person details for all the FIFA_IDs that haven't yet been imported into the new system. Both the deduplication and EPP processes will be affected, so it is strongly recommended to reach out to support.id@fifa.org and discuss such a scenario first.