We have found repeatedly in research that our users don’t know what
‘beta’ means. In this situation they come up with their own
interpretation of what it means, for example that:
- certain features are not available to them
- Notify as a whole is not available to them
- they are using a ‘different’ version of Notify to those using it for
real
In the most severe cases this ambiguity actively dissuades users from
adopting Notify. We know this from support tickets and user research;
there are probably a host of other teams we haven’t spoken to.
Here’s a quote from a user research session just last week:
> Once we’ve got the facility to receive inbound messages […] that’s not
> available to us at the moment with a beta account
From support tickets:
> We see that the service is still in beta mode – can we assume
> uninterrupted service reliability and performance?
> we do not have a .gov.uk email address any longer but I was wondering
> if we would be able to utilize the notify system which is currently in
> beta
> We are currently using the BETA version, are we able to switch to the
> TEST version so we can add other numbers to send SMS to?
> I have previously enquired about this option [receiving text messages],
> but thought it was still at Beta stage. If we can set it up so that
> notify handles the responses that would be great.
> [after going live] Should I see the wording LIVE on the login screen
> as I still see BETA.,....
> Also I note that you are a BETA service just now and that to use the
> service we would need a .gov.uk email address. We don't have this, is
> there any way that [redacted] could use the service as I note that one
> of the teams have an account?
---
This commit removes the beta badge from Notify, and hopefully with it
the confusion it’s causing our users.
Both `<button type='submit'>Submit<button>` and
`<input type='submit' value='Submit'>` can be used to submit a form.
We have historically[1] used `<input>` because it’s better-supported by
IE6 in that:
- the `submit` attribute is mandatory on `<button>`, not on `<input>`
- the `innerHTML` of a button will be submitted to the server, not the
value (as in other browsers)
Reasons to now use `<button>` instead:
- IE6/7 support is no longer a concern (especially with deprecation of
TLS 1.0 on the way)
- Because an `<input>` element can’t have children, the pseudo-element
hack[2] used to ensure the top edge of the button is clickable doesn’t
work. We’re seeing this bug[3] affect real users in research.
1. We inhereted our buttons from Digital Marketplace, here is me making
that change in their code: 8df7e2e79e (diff-b1420f7b7a25657d849edf90a70ef541)
2. 24e1906c0d (diff-ef0e4eb6f1e90b44b0c3fe39dce274a4R79)
3. https://github.com/alphagov/govuk_elements/issues/545
We pin pointed the problem to a bad loop that was calling the format_phone_number_human_readable 216 for 25 rows, yikes.
This PR fixes that performance problem.
In research we saw developers having difficulty getting back to Notify once they’d
navigated to the documentation.
One way we think this might be alleviated is by keeping Notify open in the same tab,
and having the documentation open in a new tab.
It’s polite to tell users that this is going to happen.
`rel=noopener` stops the site we’re redirecting people to (Github) have script
access to the orginal Notify tab (see https://mathiasbynens.github.io/rel-noopener/ )
original Notify
We have a team who want their (short) web address as the text message
sender. This commit updates the validation of text message senders to
allow `.` as a valid character, which is currently blocking them from
doing this.
We can be fairly confident this works because:
- the team are sending large volumes of messages already with their
existing provider
- we’ve tested it with all combinations of
- both our text message providers
- an Android phone and n iPhone
I personally think it’s more robust to have a test also cover the
counter-fact.
And it’s easy to understand what’s going on if you can see the valid and
invalid examples side by side.
Using a separate validator class to check for appropriate characters in
a text message sender means that we’re not doing this validation in a
different way from the other checks (length and required). So the code
is cleaner.
It’s confusing showing green ticks for cancelled invites. This commit
changes the appearance so that only pending or active users (ie those
that could actually do some damage) get green ticks.
Also fixes missing edit links caused by instances of `User` having
`.state` but instances of `InvitedUser` having `.status`.
Right now these are two separate lists. Which makes it harder to add
improvements that will make large numbers of users easier to manage.
Another thing we did for templates, when they started to get
unmanageable, was add a find-as-you type search. We’ve observed real
users interacting with this to great effect, so I think it makes sense
for users too.
Like for templates, it only shows up when there are more than 7, so that
it’s not clutter for teams who don’t have a lot of members.
Some teams have a lot of users now (I think the record is 172). So we
should make it easier for teams to manage large numbers of users.
This is the same change we made for templates (from most recent to
alphabetical) when the number of templates was getting unmanageable.
Sorted on email address because invited users don’t have a name (and
not sorted on both, because a lot of departments have a
`lastname.firstname` scheme for email addresses, but people generally
enter their names as `Firstname Lastname`).
