Are purchase order formatting filters necessary?

[ThomasThoren]

There are checks in place that make sure purchase orders match this regular expression: [A-Z]{2}\d{3,}

I understand that this is in order to filter out bids, permits, memoranda of understanding and any other type of document that isn't a contract. However, this also seems to block some contract purchase order numbers.

Just today, I noticed that this contract was skipped over because its purchase order begins with three letters instead of two (JOB1595968). http://www.purchasing.cityofno.com/bso/external/purchaseorder/poSummary.sdo?docId=JOB1595968&releaseNbr=0&parentUrl=contract

At the very least, the regular expression needs some refinement for this particular case. There might be other departments out there that are also silently failing these checks, so we would have to root those problems out as well.

Instead of going through all of that trouble, would it be such a bad thing if we didn't filter purchase orders at all and instead grabbed everything?

cc @AbeHandler

[ThomasThoren]

PBC is another three-character purchase order that is valid. http://vault.thelensnola.org/contracts/contract/1158604-the-steeg-law-firm-llc-contract-with-city-of-new

[AbeHandler]

Hm. Those regex checks prevent the software from doing unexpected things. how about you send a slack message for approval? then have some sort of override system?