This commit refines which information we show on each page.
Specifically we’re
- adding some wording (‘at exactly the same time’) to try to communicate
the immediacy
- giving the ‘loud noises’ message it’s own screen to really draw
attention to it
- moving the ‘no phone numbers bit’ later in the journey, and
experimenting with explaining why that is, to make it clearer how it’s
different to a text message
We’ve shown the broadcast tour to a few users now. We’ve learned what
concepts about broadcasting are and aren’t getting through.
So what we’re emphasising here is:
- the thing that appears on the phone (the ‘emergency alert’) not the
technology (a ‘broadcast’)
- how it’s different to other channels of messaging, eg text
We’ve generally spent a lot more time on the content and illustrations
this time around, so overall it’s should be clearer and shorter.
This also expands the communication of training mode into the header,
so it’s visible on every page (we can add another one for ‘live’
services later on).
We want to let users learn the system by trying it out. At the moment
they can’t explore it fully by themselves because they’re blocked at
the point of approving the broadcast, unless they involve in another
member of their team. Having to involve another person is friction that
will discourage people from exploring.
So this adds a button that lets people approve their own broadcasts in
trial mode, with some rough-and-ready content that explains training
mode and how it would be different to trial mode.
Messages awaiting approval don’t have an end time – it’s set
automatically once the message is approved.
We need to revisit the content on this page, but this is just a fix so
that the page doesn’t `500`.
error pages
The skiplink in those pages is in the error summary
at the top. In this case, it seems redundant
because:
- it jumps to a section of the page just below it
- the section it would jump to is the only error
on the page
Because of this, and because The Digital
Accessibility Centre (DAC) reported that the
skiplinks in these pages may not be needed, we
decided to remove it.
This commit also adds a prefix to the table caption to
indicate that it only contains the errors from the
CSV, not the rest of its contents.
Since we added the end time picker:
- we have discovered that broadcasts can’t be longer than 24h
- we have observed that most users confuse picking the end time for
scheduling the message, or don’t understand exactly what it means for
the broadcast to ‘end’
- we’ve developed the concept of ‘training mode’, which you should be
going through before sending a real broadcast
We also think that, for most scenarios, you won’t necessarily know when
a broadcast should end at the time of starting it because the cause of
the danger is not within your control. So giving you control of the
end time before the broadcast has even been approved is a confusing
distraction.
Having to pick a time at all also makes the whole process feel more
planned and less immediate. Whereas in reality all the phones in the
area will be getting the message in seconds. It’s only people coming
into the area later to whom the ‘ongoing’ aspect of the broadcast
applies.
The best place to explain what’s happening with the phones is at the
approval stage and once you’ve sent your first (training mode)
broadcast. It’s easier to explain what’s happened if it’s in direct
response to something you’ve just done.
Later on we should add some kind of email reminder after 12 hours to
make sure you still want the broadcast live, again after 18 hours, etc.
We could let you schedule an end time once the broadcast is live, but
don’t think there’s a strong need. Knowing enough that you want to
cancel is one thing, but knowing enough to want to cancel but wanting to
wait a bit… nah.
This shows the green banner with a tick when cancelling a user's
invitation to a service or organisation. The accessibility audit noted
that 'When cancelling an invite a new page loads, however, there is no
immediate indication that the invite has been cancelled.'
In order to display the invited user's email address as part of the
flash message, this adds new methods to the api clients for invites to get
a single invite.
sms sender, email reply to, letter contact blocks.
These are all cached within template, under `template.reply_to` - if the
template doesnt have a specific default, then that field stores the
service default. So when service default changes, we need to clear the
template cache so that it is updated to reflect that.
We already use this pattern for deleting the template cache for a bunch
of templates in `template_folder_api_client.move_to_folder`
Since broadcast services can only have one type of template we probably
don’t need to disambiguate what kind of template you’re creating.
And you’ve just come from a page where the button says ‘New template’,
without the choice of radios after, so it’s nice for the page title to
match that.
It’s been superceded by the ‘Local’ library (formerly ‘Electoral wards
in the United Kingdom’).
The latter is better because:
- it’s covers all 4 nations, not just England and Wales
- it has electoral wards as well as local authorities which group them,
so there’s more flexibility when choosing an area to broadcast to
We’ve observed people using ‘national’ and ‘local’ during user research.
It has less tongue-twisting ambiguity than county vs country.
But we think that maybe just getting rid of ‘counties’ is enough to
disambiguate them. So this commit just takes the ‘local’ concept.
This commit also gives the libraries and areas new IDs, which means if
we want to rename them in the future it won’t be a breaking change.
Broadcasting is not a precise technology, because:
- cell towers are directional
- their range varies depending on whether they are 2, 3, 4, or 5G
(the higher the bandwidth the shorter the range)
- in urban areas the towers are more densely packed, so a phone is
likely to have a greater choice of tower to connect to, and will
favour a closer one (which has a stronger signal)
- topography and even weather can affect the range of a tower
So it’s good for us to visually indicate that the broadcast is not as
precise as the boundaries of the area, because it gives the person
sending the message an indication of how the technology works.
At the same time we have a restriction on the number of polygons we
think and area can have, so we’ve done some work to make versions of
polygons which are simplified and buffered (see
https://github.com/alphagov/notifications-utils/pull/769 for context).
Serendipitously, the simplified and buffered polygons are larger and
smoother than the detailed polygons we’ve got from the GeoJSON files. So
they naturally give the impression of covering an area which is wider
and less precise.
So this commit takes those simple polygons and uses them to render the
blue fill. This makes the blue fill extend outside the black stroke,
which is still using the detailed polygons direct from the GeoJSON.
It made for a good early demo to show how we could have different
libraries, but we’d don’t think there’s a strong user need for being
able to broadcast to a region of England.
Regions also have the problem that:
- they are ambiguous – both England and Scotland have a region called
‘South east’
- Northern Ireland doesn’t have formal regions
This commit removes the regions library.
If a library has lots of items then the first 3 should be shown, with
a count of how many more there are, for a total of 4 list items:
> a, b, c, and 23 more
If the library only has 4 items then all 4 should be shown, with
consistent use of conjunction and Oxford comma[1]:
> a, b, c, and d
This keeps the lengths of the examples nice and consistent.
1. We use an Oxford comma because it helps disambiguate when an area
itself has a comma or ‘and’ in it, for example ‘Armagh City, Banbridge
and Craigavon’
When you click through to the page for a library you see the available
areas in alphabetical order. The examples given for each library should
match this.
The given examples should match the choices offered when you visit the
next page. The choices offered on the next page are either the areas
(when a library is not grouped) or the groups (when a library is
grouped).
This commit makes the examples match the choices by excluding sub-areas,
ie those that have a grouping ID.
Changes those fields in the following forms:
- FreeSMSAllowance
- ProviderForm
- ProviderRatioForm
- ServiceDataRetentionEditForm
Includes changes to templates that use this form
and associated tests.
Changes those fields in the following forms:
- DateFilterForm
- RequiredDateFilterForm
Includes changes to templates that use this form
and associated tests.
Changes its StringFields to GovukTextInputFields.
This change also affects NewOrganisationForm,
which inherits from RenameOrganisationForm.
Also includes changes to templates that use this
form and associated tests.
Makes it inherit from GovukTextInputField.
Changes to govuk_field_widget to allow the value
attribute to be set by passing a value keyword
argument to the __call__ method.
Includes changes to templates that use this form
and associated tests.
We had two identical callback form classes. One for delivery callbacks
and one for inbound sms callbacks. Since they did not differ I consolidated
them into one CallbackForm class that they both inherited from previously.
I also substituted field classes for this form with new fields
that cooperate with gov uk frontend.
ListEntry component uses FieldList field to group
textboxes. Textboxes can be text inputs, email fields
or international phone number fields. This converts
all field-lists to use:
- GovukTextInputField
- GovukEmailField
- InternationalPhoneNumber
Affects these forms:
- OrganisationDomainsForm
- GuestList
Also changes to related Javascript:
Update list-entry JS tests to match new HTML
Updates the HTML the JS operates on in the test
(a fixture representing the HTML in the page on
load) to match the new GOVUK Frontend we are
generating.
Make list-entry JS work with GOVUK Frontend HTML
The existing list-entry JS did a few things that
clashed with how the new HTML works:
- added a 'input-' prefix to the id attributes
of all text-inputs
- did not make its name and id attributes values
match
The new HTML has id and name attributes that
match so these changes remove the prefix for id
attributes and makes them match the name
attribute.
To understand these changes, it is useful to
know how the values for id and name attributes are
generated:
1. the id attribute for the component element is
stored
2. the 'list-entry-' prefix is removed and the
remainder is used to generate ids
For example, if the component's id is
'list-entry-domains', the id will be 'domains-1',
where the text-input is the first one.
This also adds some logic to the HoganJS template
to make the value attribute optional, so it is
only added if it has a non-null value. This
matches the behaviour of the text-input component
used in the new list-entry component.
Also change whitelist references to guestlist in tests
- we forgot to do it earlier, when we moved from calling this
feature whitelist to calling it guestlist.
Changes its:
- StringFields to GovukTextInputFields
- EmailFields to GovukEmailFields
Includes changes to templates that use this form
and associated tests.