Automatically archive past events after X months

[kevwalsh]

Status

[2024-08-16] [Fran] Although we have another ticket to hide past events from the Frontend, we believe this ticket will still be needed (and need to be edited) in order to keep past events from being returned during searches. To be edited/groomed at a future date.

Background

User Story or Problem Statement

As of February 2022, there were 2210 events on VA.gov managed by the CMS

• 1156 had been added to https://www.va.gov/outreach-and-events/events/
• the rest to VAMCs (on average, 7 events per VAMCs)
• Events may be rolled out in the future to other products, including Vet Center
• About 100 events are being added per month to va.gov
• we expect event calendars will be used more frequently once recurring events are launched, although the number of overall events may not go up because some events will be collapsed together.
• By archiving 1000 events that were older than 6 months, on March 1, the content release sped up by five minutes.

User stories

As a Veteran, i don't want to accidentally happen across past events, which are mostly likely useless to me. (we think)

As an editor, i want my content to go out quickly.

As a content release engineer, i don't want to deal with an infinite number of events.

Affected users and stakeholders

Editors

• VAMC editors
• Outreach hub editors

Business partners

• VEO office that owns the outreach events
• VHA Digital media (VAMC event calendars)

Engineers

• Content release engineers

Content admins

• Those who must manually archive content periodically to prevent bloating of content in the content build.

Veterans / Other Users

• People looking for events, and being confused by seeing past events, or not paying close attention and attempting to attend an event that already happened

Hypothesis

We believe that automatically arching events after 6 months will

1. improve Veteran experience by reducing content clutter on VA.gov
2. prevent the slowdown of content releases
3. reduce content clutter and improve content findability in CMS

We may want to delete really old events, X months/years after they are archived, but that will be considered in a separate initiative. Specific laws (Federal Records Act (44 U.S.C. 31) and corresponding Code of Federal Regulations (CFRs) that we need to comply with).

Acceptance Criteria

Phase 1: Discovery

• [ ] #4214 (8)
• [ ] We've captured the above inputs into a set of ACs for implementation (as a team)
• [ ] #8236
• [ ] We have designed a change management plan as necessary

Phase 2: Design/implementation

• [ ] Event node is automatically archived 6 months after its end date
  • [ ] For recurring events, use the end date of the last event instance
  • [ ] Archive setting can be relatively easily changed (say, moved to 3 months)
  • [ ] How might we provide options for auto-archiving (say, be default), vs allowing events to persist on a case-by-case basis.
  • [ ] How might this relate to other scheduling user stories (like scheduled publishing news releases or stories)
  • [ ] How might notifications fit into this
• [ ] CMS editors understand this setting/policy, and why it exists
  • [ ] UI on /node/add/event form is updated (if deemed necessary)
  • [ ] Knowledge base article for event is updated (if deemed necessary)
  • [ ] Training is updated (if deemed necessary)

Design principles

Veteran-centered

• [ ] Single source of truth: Increase reliability and consistency of content on VA.gov by providing a single source of truth.
• [ ] Accessible, plain language: Provide guardrails and guidelines to ensure content quality.
• [ ] Purposely structured content: Ensure Content API can deliver content whose meaning matches its structure.
• [x] Content lifecycle governance: Produce tools, processes and policies to maintain content quality throughout its lifecycle.

Editor-centered

• [ ] Purpose-driven: Create an opportunity to involve the editor community in VA’s mission and content strategy goals.
• [ ] Efficient: Remove distractions and create clear, straightforward paths to get the job done.
• [x] Approachable: Offer friendly guidance over authoritative instruction.
• [ ] Consistent: Reduce user’s mental load by allowing them to fall back on pattern recognition to complete tasks.
• [ ] Empowering: Provide clear information to help editors make decisions about their work.

Runbook

### CMS Team Please check the team(s) that will do this work. - [ ] `CMS Program` - [ ] `Platform CMS Team` - [ ] `Sitewide CMS Team ` (leave Sitewide unchecked and check the specific team instead) - [x] `⭐️ Content ops` - [ ] `⭐️ CMS experience` - [ ] `⭐️ Offices` - [x] `⭐️ Product support` - [ ] `⭐️ User support`

[jilladams]

Per today's PW Events scrub with Dave, he flagged 3 things:

1. The driver of content build times is not the correct driver -- that's a developer problem, not a veteran problem.
2. There is federal regulation around records preservation that should factor in to path forward on this change. We should not remove pages from the web unless they provide outdated content and are not valuable for historical purposes, if less than 3 yrs old.
3. Then: let veteran experience decide. Now that V2 filters are shipped, we can reference analytics to understand if the hypothesis in ticket bears out ("i don't want to accidentally happen across past events, which are mostly likely useless to me. (we think)")

Per Dave, Iceboxing until we can demo that it's a problem for vets. @EWashb I'm stepping into your lanes here, so if this ticket needs a companion discovery ticket to work out the spelunking for data, I'll leave that to you!

[EWashb]

@jilladams can you keep me updated when you get more info on the problem space? If it does happen to be an issue we would be happy to support PW in getting the data.

[jilladams]

Will do!

Message ID: <department-of-veterans-affairs/va. @.***>

[mmiddaugh]

@jilladams is this still valid? If so, should it belong to Facilities or Public Websites?

[aklausmeier]

@FranECross @mmiddaugh Should this be a fast follow to #9474

[aklausmeier]

@bethpottsVADEPO FYA

[FranECross]

@aklausmeier We were talking about not using content build for Events v3, so I'm not sure this is still needed, since it seems the main impetus was to speed up content build? @mmiddaugh @dsasser Opinions?

[aklausmeier]

@FranECross Depending on direction we go with Events v3 (timing and structure), we should discuss how past events are not only hidden on detail pages but also when searching, the auto archive would solve for this regardless of infrastructure and we could revise this ticket as needed. I think the need is there regardless of content build.