What We Can Help With - Platform Content
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The Platform Content Team handles all Platform website documentation. As owners of the Platform website, we provide the support that ensures website documents are easily findable, error-free, and written in plain language, so that VFS team members can build with confidence.
This page outlines what the Platform Content Team can and cannot assist VFS Teams with.
Note: The Content, Accessibility and Information Architecture (CAIA) Team manages all content on VA.gov.
Access and permissions
Access and permissions
We do not grant access or permissions to any applications.
Content review
Platform website content review
Checks Platform website for the following, all verified by a subject matter expert (SME):
Accuracy of information
Relevance of information
Missing information
Content that needs to be archived/retired or replaced
We do not review the following:
GitHub docs
Accessibility-related content on the Platform website (the CAIA Team can provide assistance for content on VA.gov)
Content strategy
Content strategy
Conduct planning, research, and organization for future Platform website updates, improvements, and enhancements, so that VFS team members have the most relevant and timely information they need to build on Va.gov.
We do not provide content strategy for the following:
Content located on VA.gov
Continual optimization
Continual optimization
Conduct annual survey of VFS team members to gauge user engagement with Platform website and optimize user experience
Crucial information
Crucial information
VFS Teams can count on the Platform Content team to provide crucial up-to-date information on the Platform website regarding:
incident responses
deployment times
testing
tools
We do not provide updates on the following:
outages
live incidents
We do not publish information on VA.gov
Date stamping
Date stamping
By requiring page authors and contributors to add today’s date at the top of each page, we can ensure VFS teams receive the most current information so they can build with confidence.
Information architecture (IA)
IA
Provide documentation in a structured and searchable IA, so that VFS Team members can quickly locate the information they're looking for.
Build, refine, and update Platform website IA
We do not provide guidance on IA for the VA.gov website. (the CAIA Team can provide assistance)
Platform website deployment/publishing
Website deployment/publishing
Through the Platform website deployment process, we publish new and edited pages Monday-Thursday by 5pm ET.
This scheduled process ensures VFS teams have access to the most current information, so they can build with speed and agility.
Platform website orientation
Platform website orientation for VFS Teams and new team members.
View the Platform website orientation video.
Search function
Search functions
Search bar, allows our site visitors to search for content no matter where they are in the site.
Search results are displayed via a quick search option and on a dedicated search results page.
Search ranking
Highest weight on exact search matches - especially in title
Pages with the exact search term in the title are ranked highest in the search results page. They come before pages that contain the exact search term only in the article body. A hit in the title is weighted 3x more relevant than a hit in the body.
If you want a specific page of your help center to appear on the top of the search results page, we recommend you include its key words in the title.
Fuzzy search
The Platform website uses a fuzzy search feature to display pages that contain words that are similar to the entered search term. These fuzzy results appear in the search results only after exact matches.
We use the so-called Levenshtein distance to display terms that would only require only a few character edits to turn into your entered search term (Example: Turning ‘test’ into ‘text’ only requires changing the ‘s’ to 'x').
OR search
If you enter more than one search term, it will return all pages that contain any of the entered search terms. That means the search results will also include pages that contain only one of the entered search terms.
The following search features are not currently supported:
Quoted search. Viewport search ignores any quotes (““) and treats the quoted phrase as separate words. Multi-word queries are generally not supported.
Partial search. When typing in a term into search, pages that contain that term as a substring do not show up - only exact matches. Example: a page with term “rescheduled” doesn’t up when searching for “schedule”)
Support
Provide direct support to VFS team members through various outlets:
Slack inquiries received via #platform-content channel
Answering feedback via our website footer:
Support inquiries received through the Slack #vfs-platform-support channel
Deprecating GitHub docs as needed
Release change announcements as needed
We do not provide support for content located on VA.gov.
VA.gov content
VA.gov content
We do not manage content on the VA.gov website. The CAIA Team is responsible for managing that content, including the following:
Content, accessibility, and information architecture guidance for product teams
Management of unauthenticated content and IA on VA.gov
Content style guide for VA.gov
Writing guidance for all Platform website content
Writing
We provide guidance so VFS teams contributing to documentation have a standard to go by
All content on Platform website is optimized to help VFS Teams easily consume it, in order to develop with confidence:
Written using active voice
Written using plain language
Use of graphics, alt+text, and videos where available
We do not identify gaps in documentation and/or missing documentation. We are not the Subject matter expert (SME).
We do not provide writing support for content located on the VA.gov website.
Help and feedback
Get help from the Platform Support Team in Slack.
Submit a feature idea to the Platform.