Canada.ca warnings and service disruptions - Alertes et perturbations de service Canada.ca

Guidance for alerting Canada.ca visitors

Proposed approach - contextual alerts

• Use contextual alert patterns:
  • Apply at impacted points of service delivery, such as service initiation pages, contact pages, etc.
  • Limit application beyond service delivery points to avoid “alert fatigue”

• Alert content should:
  • Explain why service is disrupted or warning is required
  • Describe the impact on the user
  • Be tailored to the page on which it appears
  • Include a single link to where updates are available

Alerts and regular in-page content

Don’t use alerts as regular content - rather they are meant to draw attention to changes in regular content, in two ways:

• a change to the content of the page on which the alert appears - in this case place the alert next to the updated content
• a change that has been made elsewhere, such as new information being published - in this case, link to the new information from within the alert

Alerts: do’s and dont’s

Do:

• Use alerts on a temporary basis - retain only for days or weeks
• Place the alert at the point of service/task
• Save alerts for significant situations that impact most users:
  • On the Canada.ca home page, only use when > 50% of the population is affected
  • On institutional landing pages, only use when > 40% of users are impacted

Don’t:

• Have too many alerts - limit the number of alerts on each page and the number of alerts used across pages- ideally 1, maximum 2
• Use them to ‘highlight’ permanent content

Multiple alerts about the same issue/situation

• When using a number of alerts at different points about the same issue or situation, create a page summarizing current service disruptions across the organization, & link to it from the relevant alerts

• For this page, use the basic page layout pattern

• Page content should:
  • Summarize affected services in plain language
  • Explain the impact on the users of affected services
  • Be updated as soon as new information arises

Code and samples

More information about contextual alerts can be found in the Canada.ca design system.

Code: <section class="alert alert-warning">

Service disruption

This service is affected by the outbreak of coronavirus (COVID-19).

<a href="link to departmental service status page">Check service status</a>

</section>

Alert samples (need link)