During alpha we learnt that when the School Places Analysis team creates a free school project record the project is assigned to a delivery officer (DO) in Regions Group.
After speaking with our subject matter experts, we learnt that team leaders (TLs) assign projects to DOs. This is consistent with other Regional Services Division (RSD) products.
Which team leader to email
We needed a way for the SPA team to state who they want to send an email notification to.
The ideal design would be an autocomplete text input where SPA can search for a TL - similar to the Department's select a school pattern. However, we just used a text input for now so that we can create a minimum viable product (MVP) for testing.
Sending the email
Once SPA create the project, this will send an email to the email address they entered during the Create journey.
Other RSD teams explored using GOV.UK Notify to send emails to users. Complete conversions, transfers and changes had a Notify template that would best suit our needs.
Hyperlinking URLs
Although best practice says to include the full URL in user emails, we decided to hyperlink the phrase 'View the project' so that TLs could easily visit the project and assign it to someone.
TLs are internal-facing users, not members of the public. We believe they are more likely to trust hyperlinks in emails compared to the public.
Free Schools Store currently sends emails about free school projects, so we believe TLs would expect to receive emails about the new product.
We also hyperlinked the SPA team's email address so that TLs could easily email them if they have any questions about the project.
Next steps
- Understand how well the 'email a TL' journey works for the SPA team.
- Test the email notification user experience with TLs.