COVID status messaging from Sitewide Facilities

[dsinla]

What does your team need support for? Check all that apply.

• [ ] Launching one or more new unauthenticated (static) VA.gov pages
• [x] Making revisions to one or more existing unauthenticated (static) VA.gov page
• [ ] Launching a new online form, app, or tool on VA.gov
• [ ] Making revisions to an existing online form, app, or tool on VA.gov
• [x] Something else (please add details in the next question)

What do you need help with?

• [x] Content support
• [x] IA support

Please describe your need and provide any additional documents and/or links that will help us help you. If we need to add a react widget to a page, be sure to provide the code here.

Description

The current (as of 8/16/2022) specialized COVID status was not successful because the nationalized policy did not account for the operational reality at each location. The status of High/Medium/Low and the associated policies did not provide enough flexibility and granularity. The specialized COVID status will be retired, and instead VAMC editors will be asked to use the Facility Status to convey any critical information to visitors in preparing for their visit to a facility.

Editors will be asked to chose from a more granular and flexible set of pre-established COVID policy statements. This ask is for the Content team to start working on crafting the nationalized COVID policy statements.

Will this new product be released incrementally (for instance 25% of users initially)?

• [ ] Yes
• [x] No

Note: If you checked yes, we'll reach out to discuss details about the content in the react widget.

When do you expect to launch your product to 100% of users?

Please provide an estimated date so our team can create other relevant tickets.

10/15/2022 (?) Within two months? Very much a guess, we're not quite sure what we're building yet

Supporting artifacts

Please provide supporting artifacts as available.

• Link to product outline:
• Link to or attach user flows:
• Link to prototype or mockups:
• Link to any epics/issues that may be helpful:
• COVID Facility Status Topline Readout
• Research Plan for COVID Facility Operating Status
• Conversation Guide for COVID Facility Operating Status

Will this work be going through the Collaboration Cycle?

• [ ] Yes
• [x] No

When does this work need to be done?

• Estimated launch date: Design is starting Sprint 66 - Aug 29. It will take some time to design and implement. Estimating early October?
• Estimated staging review date: Late Sept
• Content and IA work needed by: Mid Sept

Do you plan to bring this to an upcoming content office hours session?

• [ ] Yes, benefit content office hours (Thursdays, 3:00 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. ET)
• [ ] Yes, health content office hours (Thursdays, 11:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. ET)
• [ ] Yes, unauth office hours (Mondays, 11:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. ET)
• [x] No, but I'd like to schedule time to talk about this request
• [ ] No, let's work asynchronously and meet if needed

Note: If we think this work would benefit from a collaborative session with you, we may ask you to bring it to office hours or set up a separate time to meet.

About your team

• Team name: Sitewide Facilities
• OCTO-DE product owner: Dave Conlon
• Product manager: David Shannon
• Designer: Dave Pickett/Aslan French
• FE engineer: Max Antonucci/John Woolschlager
• Product/team Slack channel: #sitewide-facilities

Next steps

Once you’ve submitted this ticket, please post a link to this issue in the #sitewide-content-ia Slack channel and tag Randi Hecht.

If you also need engineering support from the Public Websites team, fill out their intake request form.

If you need a page/URL redirected, a URL changed or a vanity URL set up, please submit a Redirect, URL change, or vanity URL request

[dsinla]

Additional Note: The current plan is to leverage the existing Facility Status field to convey COVID status. As you craft standardized messaging, be aware that the Facility Status field is limited to 130 300 (correction) characters and supports only plain text.

[laurwill]

Hi @dsinla , we had a couple questions as we're getting started on this content:

• Does the 130 character limit apply only to the status itself like "COVID-19 health protection level: High," and not to the bullets describing the level?
• Are you planning to have facilities choose a status and then choose from several pre-set bullet options in Drupal? Or will facilities be inputting the suggested text themselves, with the ability to change and customize parts of that text?

Thank you!

[dsinla]

@laurwill We may have some new info that could change how we're approaching this. I should have an answer for you in a day or two - by Thurs 25. Thanks!

[dsinla]

@laurwill I have a revision for you. We're asking the Content team to develop content guidelines and examples, rather than explicit cut-and-paste content. Something along the lines of When authoring your COVID policy, you must account for these 3 or 4 areas. Here are some examples Some editors may choose to copy and paste, but there also must be capacity for editors to enter their own text. So yes, you're providing suggested text, and editors can customize/author their own (which should still meet the guidelines you provide) And my apologies, I had the character limit wrong, it's 300 characters total, and it only supports plaintext. There will be no bullets/additional text.

[laurwill]

Hello @dsinla , Updating here based on our conversation last week (thanks again for meeting!):

• As we chatted, an audit of existing covid-related facility status messages could be helpful, but we'd need more time to do this. So for now, what if do this work in 2 phases: initial version based on the info we have now, and a revised version after we can fit in some more research?
• For timing, this week is a bit crunched for our team — we'll start on drafting the examples this week, but we may need to continue this work into the following week.
• And just flagging that since this content is COVID related, it will also need to go through clinical leader review.

Let me know if you have any concerns about this plan — and when your team decides on a final field/format for this messaging, we can adjust again as needed. Thanks!

[dsinla]

@laurwill Thanks for the feedback -I'll circle Dave C in and get back to you. @davidconlon can we discuss in our sync tomorrow? Let me know how this aligns with your expectations/timeline.

[davidconlon]

@laurwill couple things:

• @DanielleThierryUSDSVA wrote the original messages. No audit is necessary. We're looking for a framework.
• We are limited to plain text 300 characters. No HTML, no bullets, no links, etc.

We're looking to provide guidance to the field and examples of what to include in the messages and examples of what "good messages" (relatively speaking) look like.

[laurwill]

Thanks for the updates @davidconlon and @dsinla! We've drafted some example messages for the 4 categories (masks, visitors, screening, and appointments). If these align with what you're looking for, we can send them over to NCP for review.

How to update your VA health facility COVID-19 status.docx

And a couple notes here:

• We haven't mentioned physical distancing, since it's not as critical for Veterans to know about this policy before they arrive and we're trying to keep within character count.
• We haven't included a header or other introductory phrase to indicate that these are COVID-19 policies, because we weren't sure if there would be a new COVID-specific header for this field. Can you confirm if these messages will appear under "Facility notice" or something more COVID-specific?

Let me know if you'd like to discuss anything!

[davidconlon]

Thanks @laurwill There will not be a specific COVID header because the same area will be used for the most important Veteran-facing emergency. e.g. in the case of Puerto Rico, they would be talking about hurricane closures rather than COVID.

[laurwill]

Hi @davidconlon , thanks for confirming this! I've added a step for editors to write "COVID-19 safety:" at the beginning of the message, since the field label won't include this context. How.to.update.your.VA.health.facility.COVID-19.status.docx

[dsinla]

The content was sent to the COVID Joint Task Force for review https://dsva.slack.com/archives/C01K37HRUAH/p1663682584781209?thread_ts=1663640540.038609&cid=C01K37HRUAH

[laurwill]

Hi @dsinla , Just confirming here: Are the "COVID-19 health protection levels" going away entirely when these new facility status messages go live?

[laurwill]

Hi @davidconlon @dsinla , Noting that Danielle shared the messages with VHA digital media, VHA comms, and NCP for awareness and will reach out if there are any questions/concerns.

[laurwill]

Hi @dsinla , Just checking on timing for the new COVID status messaging rollout — our content team has a ticket to update related content on the covid FAQ page, so want to align our updates with yours. Thank you!