Business intake form for [Benefits Dependent Experience Team: Annual Dependent Verification Email]

[steele-lm]

Your Details

1. Name: Laura Steele ​
2. Business Line: Benefits and Claims: Dependent Experience (ex., claims, health, etc.) ​

   Notification Details

3. Notification type: Email (email, text/SMS, or both) ​
4. Please describe your use case. An annual email to Veterans with dependents on their benefits prompting the Veteran to review and update their dependent information on VA.gov. Currently, Veterans receive a letter in the mail every 8 years requiring them to review their dependent information. This infrequent notification often means that dependent information is outdated and causes over (or under) payments. ​
5. What actions can the user take based on the notification they receive? Log in to view/change their dependents on VA.org. ​
6. What is the desired business outcome? (ex., fewer skipped appointments, less call center volume, etc.) Reduce benefit overpayments by prompting Veterans to more frequently review and update their dependent information. ​
7. What system will kick off the notification? Please note the system should be inside the VA or have an ATO. (ex., BVA hearing reminders are kicked off from Caseflow) Unsure, TBD (VBMS?). ​
8. What will trigger the notification? (ex., clicking submit, status updates for claims, appointment reminders, new services available) Yearly timer (January) for Veterans with dependents on their benefits.
   • If the Veteran does not respond to the initial email, can we re-send the same email with a different subject line (e.g. Reminder...) 30 days later? ​
9. Provide sample content per notification type, if you have it. Here is our content source of truth for the email. ​
10. Has a Privacy Officer (PO) seen and approved the content? If not, do you know who your PO is? (ex., PO has seen the content but it is not approved) No, and I do not know who our PO is. The only PII within the email is the Veteran's name. ​
11. Would you prefer to provide contact information for the recipients or would you rather VA Notify look this up for you by Veteran ID? If by ID, please let us know what identifier is used in your system. (ex., VAPROFILEID, PID, BIRLS, ICN, etc.) We are working with our OCTO product lead (Emily Theis) to submit a PA&I data request to pull a list of Veterans with dependents on their benefits.
    • Is there a better way to automate pulling this information on an annual basis? ​
12. Do you currently capture communication preferences related to this notification? If so, please describe. (ex., opt in for claim status updates via email or text) No. ​
13. What is the anticipated volume of notifications per day, week, month? Annual: TBD (thousands) ​
14. When does this notification need to be in production? February/March 2024

[mjones-oddball]

Hi @steele-lm VA Notify will be kicking off onboarding activities for new notifications after the New Year. Can you please provide a few days/times the week of 1/8 for a 30 minute kickoff meeting?

In the meantime please feel free to review our playbook and ask any questions you may have here!

[steele-lm]

@mjones-oddball Thanks! January 10 or 11 after 1:30 ET both work for my team.

[mjones-oddball]

@steele-lm invite sent for January 10 at 3 pm ET. Please fwd to your team as needed.

[mjones-oddball]

@steele-lm Summary post-call today:

Actions Needed:

• Provide a list of individuals (va.gov email addresses) for those who should have access to the Self Service Portal where you'll be managing notification templates.
• List a technical POC (va.gov email address) whom you'd like to receive the api key(s). This will be sent via encrypted email.
• Define the va.gov link(s) you'll want to track within your emails and we will submit a request to Analytics to ensure they are tracked on the Domo Dashboard if they aren't already.
• Determine if you'd like to set up a custom reply-to VA Mailbox (or utilize one you already have). This is configurable on your email templates. Though recipients aren't meant to reply to emails, they sometimes do and this information can be useful in understanding pain points.

Reference Items Discussed:

• VA Notify's Domo Dashboard: https://va-gov.domo.com/page/2040841289
• Domo Access Request: https://depo-platform-documentation.scrollhelp.site/analytics-monitoring/analytics-customer-support-guide#Analyticscustomersupportguide-2.RequestaccesstoDomo
• VA Notify's DSVA Slack Channel: #va-notify-public
• Our Playbook
• API Docs (Must be on VA Network)

What to expect from now until launch?

• @GitSamJennings will set up your portal access with the list you provide.
• @k-macmillan will provide API keys for Staging and Prod to your technical POC and can answer any API questions that arise
• You can create notification templates and begin testing in Staging
• Your technical team can work with Kyle to set up delivery status callbacks by providing a webhook url that utilizes a long lived bearer token.
• When you're ready for your limited launch or A/B testing, you can promote your template(s) to Production in the portal and trigger the emails.
• From there you can review your KPIs and make changes to templates as needed.

[mjones-oddball]

@GitSamJennings See onboarding details provided by Laura below:

1. List of individuals that need access to the self-service portal:
   • ajia.wallace@va.gov (designer)
   • dakota.larson@va.gov (front end)
   • SEAN.MIDGLEY3@va.gov (front end)
   • zachary.youngren@va.gov (front end)
   • laura.steele1@va.gov (product manager)
2. Technical POC: Thomas Blackwell, thomas.blackwell2@va.gov
3. URL to track: https://www.va.gov/view-change-dependents/
4. Custom reply-to box: We would like to explore this option. We'll sync with our VBA SME to see if there is an existing mailbox we could leverage and who would monitor it.

@k-macmillan once Sam has created the services in Staging and Prod she'll let you know so you can create the API keys and send to Thomas.

[GitSamJennings]

@k-macmillan @steele-lm I created the service, Benefits Dependent Experience, in both Staging and Production. All folks should have edit access in Staging and Viewer access in Production. Please let me know, if you have any questions.

[mjones-oddball]

Hi @steele-lm just checking in to see how this work is going.

[steele-lm]

@mjones-oddball The project scope has increased to include a mechanism on VA.gov to capture a "no changes to dependents" answer and auto-submit an 0538 form to the VA. @ajialeilani has a final set of designs that we will be user-testing over the next few months before proceeding with implementation. Overall, I don't anticipate this email will move forward until last this year or early next year. Thanks for checking in!