We no longer need the `start_tour` page as this has been replaced with
the new `begin_tour` page.
We also no longer need to handle the `help` argument in the
`send_test_step` or `send_one_off_step` as these no longer are
responsible for the tour and don't need to show the help text.
Worth pointing out, the new tour joins into the send one off flow. When
doing a GET `check_tour_notification`, and submitting the form shown on
this page you are POSTed to `send_notification` with `help=3`. Also for
general sending of one off notifications, the POST to
`send_notification` is done with `help=0` which is a bit of a hack to
make sure that we don't show a back link on the `view_notification` page
for when someone gets there having just sent a one off notification.
This use of `help=0` may be a candidate for a refactor in the future as
it feels like a bit of a hacky way of doing things and is therefore not
as clear to developers what is going on.
Also removes the help argument from the csv routes used here. There is
no reason that we need to ever show help for CSVs and this is leftover
code from when we used to do the tour that way.
On submit of form on this page, will continue to normal sending flow
which can be shared code as there is no longer previous context needed
of where they have come from
Note, we choose to start our urls at step-1 rather than step-0 as this
is consistent when you would enter the first placeholder (excluding the
recipient) for the one off tour.
Also note, we expect a service to allow international sms by default
when it is first created but we keep the check for if the service does
just in case they visit this tour later on.
I emailed the Geography team at the ONS:
> Hi geography team,
>
> I work on GOV.UK Notify, which is a service run by Government Digital Service (part of the Cabinet Office). I was given your email address by [redacted] who’s been helping answer some of my questions on the cross-government Slack.
>
> We’re using some of the boundary datasets from the Open Geography Portal, and mostly they’ve been excellent.
>
> In the abstract, the problem we’re trying to solve is, given a point outside an area, what is the minimum distance to a point within that area. So, for example, if a crow was somewhere in Cardiff, what’s the shortest distance it would have to fly to reach somewhere in the Bristol local authority district?
>
> We’ve noticed some problems with the data that means our calculations would be wrong. We’ve noticed this around Torquay, Norwich and Bristol. Here are some screenshots of Bristol, from the generalised and full resolution boundaries:
>
> The artefacts I’ve highlighted are closer to Cardiff than any actual part of the land area of Bristol. They are either:
> - in the sea
> - land that’s part of North Somerset
>
> I suspect that this is being caused by the process of clipping the actual region of Bristol (which, unusually, extends into the water) to the mean high water line.
>
> I’ve worked around this by filtering out any polygons that are smaller than ~7,500m². It’s a bit hacky because parts of the Scilly Isles start disappearing. That’s not a problem for what I’m working on, but it would be nice to not need the hack.
>
> So my questions would be:
>
> - Is there a better way to remove these artefacts than filtering by area?
> - Is there a plan to remove these artefacts from the data in future releases?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Chris
They emailed back to say:
> Hi Chris
>
> Thank you for your enquiry.
>
> We have completed the amendments to the LAD MAY 2020 BFC and BGC boundaries as mentioned so you should be able to download them from the portal now.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Kind regards
> [redacted]
This commit brings in the files they’ve updated. We still have to do
some filtering (but now at a higher resolution) because they haven’t
fixed Norwich yet. I’ll email them separately about that.
We’ve had some feedback from user research that difference between
‘will get alert’ and ‘likely to get alert’ is not clear, and it’s hard
to tell if the latter is inclusive of the former. This leads people to
question the validity of these numbers, which is important, because an
the estimate should give you some idea of the impact of what you’re
about to do.
This commit reformats the number as a range, for example 1,000 to 2,000
phones.
If the range is small, eg 40,000,000 to 40,800,000 then this suggests
a false level of accuracy. So instead we just give one number and say
it’s an estimate, eg ‘40,000,000 phones estimated’
We want it to be very clear whether you’re in live or training mode
because:
- you may be switching back and forth between them
- doing something in live mode when you think you’re in training mode
would have… consequences
By adding a label next to the service name you’ll will have some
indication, on every page, which mode you are in.
Style of the label is based on the ‘Tag’ component from the Design
System:
https://design-system.service.gov.uk/components/tag/#showing-multiple-statuses
we want to keep track of all broadcast services across govt easily. As
such, when broadcasting is enabled for a service, we've decided we're
going to add the service to a special broadcasting organisation.
This organisation is defined in the config file. It's hard coded for
production, if you want to test locally, you should set
BROADCAST_ORGANISATION_ID in your local environment.
If you’re adding another area to your broadcast it’s likely to be close
to one of the areas you’ve already added.
But we make you start by choosing a library, then you have to find the
local authority again from the long list. This is clunky, and it
interrupts the task the user is trying to complete.
We thought about redirecting you somewhere deep into the hierarchy,
perhaps by sending you to either:
- the parent of the last area you’d chosen
- the common ancestor of all the areas you’d chosen
This approach would however mean you’d need a way to navigate back up
the hierarchy if we’d dropped you in the wrong place. And we don’t have
a pattern for that at the moment.
So instead this commit adds some ‘shortcuts’ to the chose library page,
giving you a choice of all the parents of the areas you’ve currently
selected. In most cases this will be one (unitary authority) or two
(county and district) choices, but it will scale to adding areas from
multiple different authorities.
It does mean an extra click compared to the redirect approach, but this
is still fewer, easier clicks compared to now.
This meant a couple of under-the-hood changes:
- making `BroadcastArea`s hashable so it’s possible to do
`set([BroadcastArea(…), BroadcastArea(…), BroadcastArea(…)])`
- making `BroadcastArea`s aware of which library they live in, so we can
link to the correct _Choose area_ page
We can drop use of the old key as we no longer need to read data from
the old key. Either data exists in the new key and we read it from there
or data doesn't exist in the new key and we go to the API to get it and
then set it in redis.
Note, the previous commit is important because it means we aren't at
risk of when this commit is being deployed out, of us getting stale data
from the old key.
We want to change cache keys for templates and broadcasts to include
their service ID. So cache keys should change from
`template-{template_id}-versions` to
`service-{service_id}-template-{template_id}-versions`.
The first step of this which needs to be deployed as a change first is
to delete both keys when updating service templates (even if they key is
not yet set). This means that when we release code in the next PR to
start setting the new key, we won't run into a case where either the old
or the new key can remain set with stale data.
previously the back link went to choosing a library.
Now, if you view a district from a county, go back to the county page.
Otherwise, go back to the top level of the library.
For a training broadcast the user doesn’t get that immediate feedback
that something has happened, like they would with a real alert, or even
sending themselves a text message.
This commit adds another tour-style page which will interrupt their
journey and hopefully reinforce the message we’ve given them earlier in
the tour.
We’re adding this because we’ve found in research that users don’t have
a good grasp of the consequences and severity of emergency alerts,
versus regular text messages.
At the moment there are some areas which have:
- a `count_of_phones` value of `None`
- no sub-areas
This is wrong, but until we fix the data the phone counting code needs
to handle this.
This commit:
- adds the `or 0` in the right place (where it will catch these areas
with missing data)
- adds a test which checks these areas, and compares them to other kinds
of areas
This is a better name for the module because it’s:
- not just constants, there’s a method in here now
- only stuff to do with populations, not other kinds of constants
We need to give people a better feel for the consequences of
broadcasting an alert. We’ve seen in research that some users will
assume it is subscription based, or opt-in, rather than going to every
phone in the area.
I reckon that the most effective way to communicate this is to put some
numbers next to the areas, to give people an idea of how many people
will get alerted.
We can estimate how many phones are in an area by:
- taking the population of all electoral wards in that area
- multiplying it by the percentage of people who own an internet
connected phone[1]
The Office for National Statistics publish both these datasets.
The number of people who own an intenet connected phone varies a lot by
age. Since the population data for each ward is broken down by age we
can factor this in. Simplified, the calculation looks like this:
- take the _Abbey_ ward of _Barking and Dagenham_
- in this ward there are 26 people aged 80
- 40% of people over 65 have an internet-connected phone
- therefore 10 of these 80-year-olds would be likely to receive a
broadcast
- (repeat for all other ages)
These numbers won’t be exact, but should be enough to give people a feel
for the severity of what they’re about to do. We can see if they acheive
this aim in user research.
1. This is a proxy for the number of people who are likely to have a 4G
capable phone, because only 4G capable phones will be receiving
broadcasts to begin with
If a service doesn’t have permission to send international letters but
someone tries to upload a letter with a valid international address we
just tell them that the last line must be a UK postcode.
This is a bit opaque and:
- suggests that we’re not recognising at all that it’s not a UK letter
- doesn’t explain why it must be a UK postcode
This commit adds a new, error message which tells users why their letter
can’t be sent. And hopefully will give them a better idea of how to
resolve the problem, if they really do need to be able to send
international letters.