June 7, 2023 - Updates, priorities of the week
Back to GC Web Priorities Meetings - Réunions des Priorités Web du GC
Meeting information
Agenda
1. Updates
2. Finance demo of web tools
Notes and action items
Digital Transformation Office (DTO) Updates
Sent out a questionnaire to web executives about governance. It is 3-4 questions and should take 5-10 minutes maximum. We encourage you or your directors to fill it out. We would like input by June 13.
Web tools - Finance
Finance publishes the federal budget and mini-budget (Fall Economic Update).
Context
- 2 very big publications
- There’s a critical path with deadlines but the web deadline is often affected
- Often have to publish 1,000+ pages in ENG and FRA in 2 days (work nights to get this done)
- Have to convert from Word to HTML with only 3 publishers, one micro mission, and 2 developers to rotate and help with QA
- Have to cross-link with the GBA and with filters on the homepage to link to the measures
- The final two days also aren’t locked down- so changes still come in
We used to do Word to Dreamweaver and then wrote snippets/scripts/commands. With snippets we had problems with version control.
New Web components guide
- Very similar to the TBS style guide but this one is specific to Finance’s styles
- Examples, sources, notes and text versions
- Can put in the content and then copy and paste the html - no version control issues
Even with the Web Components Guide tables were still difficult so we created a table clean up script.
Table clean up tool
- Get a table in Word, copy it into Dreamweaver and then get the messy HTML code
- Drop HTML into our table cleanup tool
- Add title etc. and the tool spits out an example of the table so it’s easy to see and format
No one does tables the same way, even within the same organization. Complex tables are…complex, so even visually we can’t always understand and have to go back to the Policy group to better understand some formatting decisions.
The table cleanup tool is on GitHub. We want to extend it and make it generic enough for other departments to use. It should work with all browsers.
We are collecting feedback on how we can improve the tool:
We’re currently working with ISC because they’re very strict with their tables. We’re trying to refine because in 2-3 years from now we want to be able to do Word to an html editor that then exports to html.
We would love to chat with other departments to brainstorm how to scope for complex tables. Message (Bob) Itthiphol Piromnam if you want to chat.
Other tools
- tool that automates On this page pattern by automatically creating a list based on h2s
- Anchors away tool that looks for all the headings on the page and adds anchors
- table of contents tool that builds the ToC based on all the headings
- footnote generator that can generate 100+ footnotes in seconds
- Grab all your code from Dreamweaver, paste it into the footnote generator tool and click generate and all your footnotes show us
- Footnote generator tool on GitHub
Header guidance - DTO
Presentation - Peter Smith
We’re updating the header guidance in the design system. Most of this update is cosmetic. Patterns use the same content model as the footer.
Guidance for each component includes:
- what needs to be included based on page type
- what to avoid
- content and design specifications
- policy rationale and research
Key changes
- flag has to be red
- search box can be contextualized at the institution level
- theme and topic menu guidance criteria for when you can start removing the theme and topic menu from your header
These changes are part of the transitional strategy coming out of the wayfinding project. This is the next step in that strategy. A few months from now we will have a simplified layered theme page.
Must have:
- implemented the 2023 global footer
- added a contextual sign in button where it’s relevant to the content
- verified the menu regularly receives less than 1% of clicks
The menu continues to be mandatory on theme and topic pages.
Next steps
- Familiarize yourself with the header guidance
- Gather baseline analytics
- Make changes to reduce menu use
- Monitor analytics to see impact of changes
- Once menu use has dropped below 1% within a section of your site, plan for menu removal
If institutions are adopting the Canada.ca design for the first time there is no need to adopt the theme and topic menu.
Discussion
We can do a walkthrough of how to do the analytics in an upcoming GCWP meeting.
If you come across pages where the analytics are low on the menu and the page, it might be time to get rid of the page entirely.
The transitional approach may mean things look a little inconsistent to people who are on Canada.ca pages all the time but we found in our research that the menu gets skipped almost all the time. People go right into the content. People are using the breadcrumbs and the search a lot more than the menu. By only doing it on pages where less than 1% of visitors are using the menu, the inconsistency will hardly be noticed because the menu is already being ignored. We will monitor as we go on this.
It’s not easy to remove the menu in AEM as a content author so you should file a ticket with Principal Publisher.
If menu usage is high, find out why they’re using it and see if there is a way to provide access to the key tasks within the body of the page. We will make an executive decision eventually to remove the menu everywhere.
Roundtable
CRA-UX - if anyone is looking for a UX research/design student for the summer, please let me know (Kim Griffin) - I have a reference for anyone looking
ECCC - Air Quality Health Index added to ENR theme "Most Requested" for ease of access
Public Safety (PJE Theme)
- Wildfires, continue to action update requests, waiting on a request for assistance (RFA) for Quebec and work is ongoing on a new sub-page for the donation matching in AN, NWT and NS
- Firearms - no updates
Health Canada: IS-03 / IS-04 process open to the public if anyone wants to share with colleagues/friends/family
