MoJ O2 Transition Project – Ministry of Justice
Academies Financial Reporting Division – Department for Education
Money Claims Service Line – HM Courts & Tribunals Service
HR and Organisational Development – Calderdale Council
Family & Civil Service Line – HM Courts & Tribunals Service
Electronic Patient Discharge Questionnaire – Public Health England
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
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
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.
Letters is now a mature enough feature that we should:
- be raising awareness amongst our users that it’s a thing we offer
- not have letters be a surprise to anyone creating a Notify account for
the first time
Shouldn’t be merged until:
- [ ] https://github.com/alphagov/notifications-api/pull/1600
* ESFA IDAMS – Department for Education
* SRFT Care Call – Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust
* Data Statistics – Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government
* Home Office Atlas – Home Office
* Bracknell Forest Council - Waste & Recycling – Bracknell Forest Council
It’s ‘per month’ – ‘a month’ is a colloquialism.
Large numbers should be chunked using commas; ‘20,000’ already is, this commit makes ‘1000’ consistent.
Users can choose whether to have these features on or off now. And
a platform admin can still use the same controls to switch the features
on or off on behalf of a user. There’s no need for the separate buttons.
Our support ticket analysis shows that the most common action request
after going live is turning on letters.
We just do this for any team that requests it – there’s no gatekeeping.
So we should just allow people to make the change themselves.
This will be a better experience for our users, and less work for us.
The design of the page replicates roughly what we have for international
text messaging.
One of the things that came out of the support analysis was that people
were asking how much inbound SMS costs. There wasn’t a significant
volume of these requests, but the fix seems low-effort and
non-disruptive enough that we should do it.
Content by Thom.
We’ve seen people come back to this page once signed in and be confused what it’s for and how they get back to Notify.
The best way to avoid confusion is (we think) getting people to close this tab.
