[CAIA Intake] BTSSS: Travel Pay Status on VA.gov

[ayush-chak]

Content, accessibility, information architecture (CAIA) new initiative collaboration request

Use this ticket to request collaboration on a new initiative with the sitewide content, accessibility, and information architecture (CAIA) shared services team. Feel free to delete instructions and unselected options from the ticket to make it easier to scan.

NOTE FROM TEAM: We are looking to add an entry point and were directed here - would love help understanding if we're at the right place! (Further context is here)[https://dsva.slack.com/archives/C01K37HRUAH/p1731084693531749]

Your team

• Product name: Travel Pay Status Page on VA.gov
• Team name: BTSSS (VA Travel Pay)
• OCTO product owner: Kristen McConnell; Mark Dewey
• Product manager: Ayush Chakravarty
• UX Team: Micah Taylor, Cara Frissell
• Slack channel: #beneficiary-travel-team

CAIA specialists involved

Filled out by CAIA

• IA:
• Content:
• Accessibility:

Your Initiative

Which of these descriptions best fits the work we’ll partner on?

Select all that apply.

• Digitizing a new form
• Creating a new digital tool
• Updating an existing form or tool
• Translating a form or tool into Spanish
• Adding new unauthenticated content to VA.gov
• Updating existing unauthenticated content on VA.gov
• Something else: Adding a new entry point to the travel pay status page

What's the nature of your initiative and desired outcomes?

Hoping to make this link viewable by Veterans as we roll out to enable them to view travel claim status without having to log into the BTSSS portal.

We're hoping to, at our PO's request, get a link added to this page

Supporting artifacts

Here's the current status page: https://staging.va.gov/my-health/travel-claim-status

Collaboration timeframe

Note: We work on nearly every OCTO product and manage all unauthenticated content on VA.gov, so we will need to prioritize intake requests based on overall workload and VA and OCTO priorities.

Is this work tied to a Congressional mandate, change in law or policy, or upcoming event with a specific deadline?

• Yes
• No
• I’m not sure

Where are you at in your timeline?

This is likely a blocker from VTP to greenlight our rollout, so this remains our last step.

Will you release this new product incrementally (for example, release to 25% of users to start)?

• Yes
• No

Note: For an incremental launch, we use React widgets to display dynamic content. We'll need at least 2 weeks of extra time to coordinate the content for this and work with your engineer. Learn more about our process for dynamic content. If your launch plans change, notify CAIA of the change as soon as possible so we can talk about how that will impact the timeline.

If you are releasing incrementally:

• What dates do you anticipate starting and ending your incremental launch? Enter dates
• What is the name of your engineer who will build the React widget? Name

Collaboration cycle

Which phases of the collaboration cycle have you completed?

Select all that apply.

• Design intent
• Midpoint review
• Staging
• None. This initiative isn’t going through the collaboration cycle.

Collaboration cycle ticket

If you’re going through the collaboration cycle, provide a link to your Collaboration Cycle Request:

• Hyperlinked Ticket Number: (BTSSS Travel Pay)[https://app.zenhub.com/workspaces/beneficiary-travel-btsss-65147e21930cd900223d8e64/issues/gh/department-of-veterans-affairs/va.gov-team/79471]

Next steps

• Review the remaining next steps in the VFS team tasks section here.
• If you also need engineering support from the public websites team, fill out their intake request form as well: Open a public websites intake request
• If you're requesting a page/URL redirect, a URL change, or a vanity URL, submit an additional request for this work: Open a redirect, URL change, or vanity URL request
• If you're creating an experimental design, also contact the design system team: Read more about experimental designs
  Suggest an addition or update to the design system team
• If you're requesting a11y support for usability research, submit a research support request next: Open an a11y research support request
• If you are requesting content support, please share your content source of truth (preferably as a SharePoint document).
• Please don't close this intake when work is complete - CAIA will close and track

[NaomiPMC]

@aprocik1 to look into this for next refinement meeting.

[aprocik1]

@laurwill and @sterkenburgsara are working on this together. I'm moving this ticket to in refinement for now.

[laurwill]

@carafrissell1 could you drop a screenshot of the current content an authenticated user sees on this page? Then I can pass back content for the update. Thank you!

[carafrissell1]

Sorry for the 2 screenshots - it's a long page, but this is what a user sees when they are logged on this page.

[ayush-chak]

@sterkenburgsara, @carafrissell1, @laurwill - let's consolidate all discussion to this ticket (so that wires aren't getting crossed - didn't realize we had two tickets in process, my mistake). Thanks!

[carafrissell1]

Hey @laurwill @sterkenburgsara @micahtaylor @ayush-chak wanted to confirm/update 2 things:

1. My understanding is that our team (the Beneficiary Travel team) owns the widget on this page. Laura and Sara, can you confirm/correct that understanding?
2. @micahtaylor is working on what our team thinks the VA travel reimbursement page should look like given the addition of the entry point to the Status page on VA.gov. He will post a link to a Mural/Figma when it's ready so that @laurwill and @sterkenburgsara can provide feedback.

[laurwill]

Hi @carafrissell1 ,

1. I'll let Sara answer that one. It's either Beneficiary Travel or Cartography, eh?
2. I mocked this up for you in Drupal, but lmk if this isn't what you were thinking — I'm going back and forth on how to word the links. Should the second link say "Check your claim status here on VA.gov" to contrast with the BTSSS link? This is an unusual situation, so open to suggestions!
   

[micahtaylor]

Here is the Figma frame that has the addition of @laurwill suggestions. Feel free to leave comments or let me know if you need access or want edit access.
cc @ayush-chak

[sterkenburgsara]

I do not believe cartography thinks that we own the sign in widgets for this page. But you can discuss with @wesrowe if you have questions about that, @ayush-chak

…

On Fri, Nov 22, 2024 at 09:49 Micah Taylor ***@***.***> wrote: Here <https://www.figma.com/design/RJ6OVm0MWD2WprVfO7E3lp/Travel-reimbursement-status-page?node-id=4870-8307&t=5h6V8S1QzP9IpXHt-4> is the Figma frame that has the addition of @laurwill <https://github.com/laurwill> suggestions. Feel free to leave comments or let me know if you need access or want edit access. cc @ayush-chak <https://github.com/ayush-chak> — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#96858 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/A3NULPBZIMS546AVEIVJA5D2B5G7HAVCNFSM6AAAAABRSSKZNKVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDIOJUGA3DSOJXGY> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.*** .com>

[ayush-chak]

Hi @sterkenburgsara / @laurwill (sorry, not sure whom this question goes to) - could you explain again how the unauth page might be blocked? Our understanding is that since the widget already exists, we should be able just make a few changes on the widget itself?

In addition, we were wondering if you would be open to removing the "You can file a claim online through the Beneficiary Travel Self Service System (BTSSS)" from the Drupal content so that we can include it in our react widget (basically, we would then be able to change that as the Travel Pay experience changes. As you can probably tell, it's already a slightly confusing experience: the widget currently requires users to "log in to file a claim" - but the authenticated page then links them out to the BTSSS portal, where they would have to log in one more time separately.)

[laurwill]

Hi @ayush-chak , I like that approach! So the widget content would include this whole section going forward, for unauth and auth:

As far as the unauth page being blocked, I'm not sure what that means — are you talking about the need to update the sign-in alert to use the new standardized component? I don't think we have any work needed on the unauthenticated content that lives in Drupal.

[sterkenburgsara]

Maybe this isn’t blocked! I was referring to the new sign-in widgets that are being built now by identity and VADS teams. Defer to Laura!

…

On Tue, Nov 26, 2024 at 11:55 laurwill ***@***.***> wrote: Hi @ayush-chak <https://github.com/ayush-chak> , I like that approach! So the widget content would include this whole section going forward, for unauth and auth: image.png (view on web) <https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/0176e076-32c1-4f48-8f0e-17af06659e39> image.png (view on web) <https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/7acab4fb-4967-4e8b-8b27-88ccb6ea8dae> As far as the unauth page being blocked, I'm not sure what that means — are you talking about the need to update the sign-in alert to use the new standardized component? I don't think we have any work needed on the unauthenticated content that lives in Drupal. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#96858 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/A3NULPGKTLVQZ76PJMPWV3D2CSY2XAVCNFSM6AAAAABRSSKZNKVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDKMBRGU4TINJRGU> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.*** .com>

[liztownd]

@laurwill Not sure if you're the person to tag on this, but we would like to update the URL for the travel pay experience before rolling out so that future changes / adding features won't impact the end user and will reduce additional complexity for our team.

Our current URL/entry point is va.gov/my-health/travel-claim-status, however as we add features, the "status" part of the url is misleading. We need to update the base URL to the more generic va.gov/my-health/travel-pay; from there we can add specific child routes to the feature application.

Since the application is not yet in production, I'm not sure if we need to go through the whole "request a redirect" step, since we're not going to be redirecting, just updating whole-cloth at this point. There is an engineering ticket for completing the work on our end, not sure if anything needs to happen on the sitewide/Drupal team or if it's all us updating things in the content-build and vets-website repos.

[ayush-chak]

@laurwill hello! wondering if you are comfortable going ahead and removing the line that says "You can file a claim online through the Beneficiary Travel Self-Service System (BTSSS)" in Drupal? We would include it in our widget and then just update the text when more features are available on VA.gov. Would that be okay?

Before and after screenshots of the widget are in the PR below if you want a point of reference:
department-of-veterans-affairs/vets-website#33436

Thanks!

[laurwill]

Hi @ayush-chak , sorry for the delay, and thanks for the link to the PR. We're all set to remove that line on our end, we just need to coordinate publishing so that your updates to the widget go live around the same time. Do you have a date in mind?

[liztownd]

The PR to update the widget is currently under review by Platform. Platform has a wait time of 3 days to approve, so hopefully by the end of the week (the 3-day period is up Wednesday 12/18, in the afternoon) we'll be ready to merge the change on our end. What is your timeline for the static content change @laurwill? How much lead time do you need? (We don't have to push the button right away if you think it'll take longer on your end.)

[liztownd]

@laurwill Good news! The Widget PR has been approved and can go in any time you're ready. Just let us know what your timeline is for updating the static content and I'll push the button to merge it! cc: @ayush-chak

[ayush-chak]

@laurwill we would be so grateful if you're able to remove the static content by tonight/tomorrow so that we can demo this final change that some of our stakeholders would require to approve the MVP rollout. Please let us know if you have any questions here or anything else you need from our end!

[laurwill]

Done! Update to remove that line of text is published and should be live around same time as the 1pm daily deploy with the widget changes. We'll keep this ticket open to track a second round of page updates for the planned launch on 1/9.

[laurwill]

@ayush-chak are you still planning to launch tomorrow 1/9?