Services
Contents:
Introduction
Provides the pages and navigation for presenting the Services provided by Local Government. A part of the LocalGovDrupal distribution.
Content types:
- Service Landing Page - the top level section for each service.
- Service Sub-landing Page - detail and links to specific pages within a service.
- Service Page - the basic page that can be placed in a service, and on a Service Sub-landing Page.
- Service Status - an optional additional type for providing updates about a the status of a service.
Other content types in the LocalGovDrupal distribution can also optionally be linked into service sections and referenced from Sub-landing Pages.
Examples in the wild
- LocalGov Drupal demo: Adult health and social care
- Croydon: Adult health and social care
- Lambeth: Bins and recycling
- Brighton & Hove: Rubbish, recycling and streets
How to: Creating Service pages
Service Landing Page
When to use a Service Landing Page
Use a Service Landing Page for the homepage of a section. For example:
Image caption: A screenshot of Croydon's Children, young people and families Service Landing Page, showing the title, an introductory paragraph, two common task links and a list of links to Service Pages and Service Sub-landing Pages, each displayed with a title and summary. Source: Croydon.
The Service Landing Page will be linked to from the homepage of the website.
Provide a summary
Your summary should provide more information than what the title suggests. It should include what a user can do and find out in the section. Read the guidance on summaries.
Example:
Title: Rubbish and recycling
Summary: Household recycling and rubbish collection service and collection times, what you can recycle, how to report a problem, and street cleaning.
Using Common Tasks on landing page
Common task links allow quick access to high priority tasks within a section.
Engage with the service team to understand what the top tasks are within a section and use analytics to see what pages users engage with most. Monitor this over time and change it according to users' needs.
Tasks can be tagged as either "Action" or "Information" - these may display differently depending on how your theme is set up.
Image caption: in the screenshot from the LGD demo site, the action links have a green background and the information links have a blue background.
Service Sub-landing Pages
When to use a Service Sub-landing Page
Service Sub-landing Pages are index pages that link out to other pages. They usually sit a level below a Service Landing Page. Think of them as chapters of a book, giving the user the option to browse everything in that section.
You can use them to link to:
- Step-by-step Pages
- Guide Pages
- Service Pages
- Sub-site Pages
They automatically pull in the title and the summary of the page they're linking to.
Examples:
Image description: Lambeth Council's Births Service Sub-landing Page. They show the title, summary and the sub-pages, without a summary.
Service Pages
When to use a Service Page
Service Pages are the most commonly used type of page, they're useful if you're creating content that:
- addresses one user need or task
- is relatively brief
- can fit on one single page
- links out to an online form
If the page requires more guidance or information you will need to consider using either:
- Guide Pages – if there's more content that's relevant to the user completing the task, but it doesn't follow a strict process, for example types of animal welfare licences
- Step-by-step Pages – if the guidance follows a sequential process, for example Registering a death: Step-by-step
Examples
- Correcting a death registration (Croydon)
- Claim a refund (Lambeth)
- How to use a wheelie bin (Brighton & Hove)
Image description: Brighton and Hove Council's How to use a wheelie bin Service Page, showing a title, summary, a common task link, then text with headings and related links in the sidebar.
Adding a Task button to a Service Page
You can add a task button at the top of a Service Page by adding a link to the 'Task buttons' section of the Service Page editor.
Examples
Related links and Related topics
The sidebar can show Related links and Related topics, which you can add in the 'Related content' section of the Service Page editor.
The related topics can be suppressed by checking the 'Hide the related topics panel' checkbox in the same section.
Service Status
Service Status allow you to give updates about the status of the relevant service. These appear on the Service Landing Page if the 'Show on landing page' checkbox is checked in the Service Status editor.
Source: Brighton
A list of Service Statuses also appears on the URL service-path/update:
Source: Brighton
When to use a Service Status
Publish a Service Status when you want to tell your citizens about a significant impact to the service.
You can choose one of 3 categories to assign to a Service Status
- Limited service
- Revised service
- Normal service
Options for where the Service Status may be displayed
You can choose to display Service Statuses on the relevant Service Landing Page, and / or the overall Status list by checking / unchecking the appropriate checkbox.
This Status list exists on the URL /service-status.
