Notification centre

Message centre deep dive
Q4 2021-22 Discovery
Profile Team Showcase - Digital Trade Initiatives, TFTM
July 18th, Q1 2022-23

Department of Agriculture,
Water and the Environment
Busting congestion for
agricultural exporters 18 November, 2021 2
a Message centre summary
c Discovery key findings
b Hypotheses

agricultural exporters 14 July, 2022 3
Do you need to
message to your
users?
The Message Centre is a capability offered to
Export Service teams with messaging needs.
Key features
- sends a message as an email to the user, and to a
secure centre
- is a simple API sister teams can access via a
RESTful API accessible from any service backend
- sends a message to users' preferred email
address, which is security and privacy compliant
We are undertaking future discovery for SMS and
user control via preferences.
✉ "
Account
Export Service
✉ ——@—.—
04— ———
"
As a user, I can receive messages as per my preferences settings.
As a TFTM team, I can send users messages from my app
I CAN

A compliant, consistent and modern email service
Message users via email
Your team calls our API and an email is sent to the
address the user set during onboarding.
Work email address
We can't use a personal myGovID email, and
research shows users are uncomfortable using
personal email for work.
Direct path to action
A clear call-to-action means teams can deep link
users to where action and input is required.
Consistent and modern
Emails sent via the API have a consistent treatment
that inspires trust and provides a path to support.
Privacy, legal and security reviewed
In collaboration with legal, we have agreed on
confidentiality, disclaimers, and no-reply features.

A secure centre for all messages
One place to manage communication with DAFF
Research shows users want one place to manage
communications with the department so we
designed a service with prominent and permanent
features:
- when a user is logged in, messages are displayed
via the header
- a badge flags messages as read or unread
- users easily see important messages that require
attention and action
- messages are stored permanently. Even if the user
deletes a message, a record will be available within
the secure, authenticated space.

How it works
1. An app messages a user.
Eg. Your audit report available for
download
or
Your July Cotton industry insights
report is available
2. The app sends a request to a
Machine To Machine (M2M) API
that:
- retrieves user's email address
- stores the message
- manages downstream error states.
3. The message is made available via
the message centre, templated and
sent as an email to the user through
a Digital Foundations API.
4. The user receives the message.
An optional Call To Action (CTA)
directs the user to a
- page in the authenticated space
- page in the unauth space, or
- file download
Eg. Into the CARS/Audits app
Message Centre API (Profile API)
Message origin
S I S T E R
T E A M
S I S T E R
T E A M
P R O F I L E
T E A M
M E S S A G E
S T O R E
#
T E M P L AT I N G
"
A C C O U N T
P R E F E R E N C E S
$
Digital Foundations
Notifications API
S E N D G R I D
S C A L A B I L I T Y
A N D P L AT F O R M
F E AT U R E S
User experience
✉
E M A I L
Message Centre UI
#
PA G E O R F I L E

Simple APIs for teams
Profile.sendMessage(
user (ID)
subject (text)
content (text)
CTA (hyperlink)
);
A simplified message
centre API.
Fire and forget. Global in-
app visibility with no:
- error state management
- preference parsing
- inconsistency between
teams.

Hypotheses based on user
needs

User needs around communication
Multiple research rounds over the past
year revealed that, regardless of commodity or
role, current communication with DAFF is a key
pain point and barrier to compliance.
What we've heard from exporter
s
- Email is used as a workflow tool and messages
are often missed
- Exporters email multiple areas across DAFF
with no visibility of other messages in the chain
- Lack of clarity as to who is the best contact person.
- Communication gaps, multiple systems,
and contradictory information.

User needs around notifications
Receiving relevant, timely messages from a
trusted source about regulatory changes and
compliance activities makes it easier for exporters
to stay informed and maintain compliance.
What we've heard from Exporter
s
- Exporters find staying up to date with changes
to compliance requirements, challenging.
- Exporters see value in receiving notifications about
status updates, reg changes that may impact their
industry or business, as long as they can
set preferences to meet their needs.

agricultural exporters 14 July, 2022 11
Steel thread hypotheses
Hypothesis 1 (H1) End user value
Personalised, timely and consistent messages help
external users complete tasks and stay informed.
Personalised (1a)
Addressed directly to
the user, based on
important information,
or a specific action the
user needs to take.
Timely (1b)
Delivered when a task in
the subject line needs to
be actioned. Important
information can be
quickly understood.
Consistent (1c)
Service line agnostic
format. A central
location means one
place for users to check
for communication.

agricultural exporters 18 November, 2021
H2 - Internal team value
A centralised capability for TFTM retail teams provides a
low-effort messaging mechanism, and brings users on-
platform and in-context.
H3 - Technical feasibility
TFTM services can programmatically send messages to
users via the offered capability
H4 - Use cases
Validated use cases demonstrate a message centre
within the Export Service is valuable, desirable, and
feasible.
12
Hypotheses for a steel thread
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2017-10-13/women-
farmers-recognised-with-museum-exhibition/9042582
Steel thread hypotheses

Discovery findings

The Notifications API
In the process of using the API, we uncovered
gremlins and gaps in the documentation.
Alongside EI, we can assist with API use and
advice.
Learning applies to H1, H2
Message Centre API (Profile API)
Message origin
S I S T E R
T E A M
S I S T E R
T E A M
P R O F I L E
T E A M
M E S S A G E
S T O R E
#
T E M P L AT I N G
"
A C C O U N T
P R E F E R E N C E S
$
Digital Foundations
Notifications API
S E N D G R I D
S C A L A B I L I T Y
A N D P L AT F O R M
F E AT U R E S
User experience
✉
E M A I L
Message Centre UI
#
PA G E O R F I L E
In Q4, the Profile team expended significant effort
in validating Message Centre's technical feasibility.
Our main focus centred around team-external
dependency - the DF Notifications API. Being the
first consumers of the API, we collaborated closely
with the DF Enterprise Integration (EI) team. A big
thank you for their help and support.

myGovID email addresses
Personal email accounts are… personal.
Users expect work emails to be sent to a work inbox.
myGovID usage and intent
myGovID’s proposition is for Australians to have one
account with government. Access to personal
services is a core part of their offering. What this
means for us:
- many users sign up for myGovID with a personal
email
- myGovID does not accept multiple email addresses.
Set a preferred email address
When a user creates an account, we ask them to add
a preferred email address. They can change this
email at any time on the Preferences page.
We intend to add more user preferences over time.

SendGrid is a third party platform that provides
carriage services for messages, namely email and
SMS. However, its data servers reside outside of
and Australia the government has strict rules
about data sovereignty.
As SendGrid's infrastructure resides overseas, we
must abide by the following rules (Note:
cybersecurity’s assessment was focussed on email
for this iteration)
Personally Identifiable Information (PII)
We cannot send PII via email. Instead, we provide
a call to action that leads to the authenticated
space, which is a safe place for PII.
Official communications Eg. SEC=OFFICIAL
We cannot send ‘Official’ communication via
SendGrid. We can provide basic information, then
send the user to a safe communication channel such
as an unauthenticated space on a government
website.
A potential mitigation
Microsoft offers locally hosted mail services that
would mitigate the data sovereignty issue. This would
mean a refactor within the DF Notifications API.
Further investigation is required:
- are there use cases where PII/OFFICIAL information
within a message provides significant value?
- is the Microsoft solution technically feasible?
Learning applies to H3
SendGrid data sovereignty
constraints
?

Profile and Capability teams have spent significant
effort to co-design an email template that is safe
from a legal and privacy perspective.
Confidentiality
A standard confidentiality clause covers the
recipient and the department.
Required links
The Export Service, DAFF site and privacy policy.
No-reply path
This email incorporates features to ensure users
know they can't reply. This includes:
- a no-reply address
- custom no-reply address headers
- instructional copy.
Path to support
The email contains information about how to get
in touch with us via phone, email, or mail if
people need help.
Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) - Threshold
Assessment
A PIA is required for all external messages. Given
our work on legal alignment, this should now only
be a matter of the message content.
We hope our work has and streamlined this for
subsequent teams.
Legal, private, and secure
email

Future-ready platforms
The whole TFTM program is transitioning between
current and future platforms, and we’re delivering
amid that transition.
One of the challenges was navigating access
to APIs in different environments
.
The Profile app sits in Greenfields, while the
Notifications API lives in the new AP1 environment
not yet deployed
.
Working with the DF team, we found a way
to deliver on our own infrastructure commitments
while simultaneously planning alignment with AP1
when it goes live
.

Growing the design system
We collaborated with the Design System team on
the message centre UI, as there was a need for new
components. Thanks Adham, Adrian and team!
Elements
We created new elements including:
- shading and indicators for state
- treatments for vertically adjacent cards in lists.
These elements will also be applicable more broadly
within the ES.
Patterns
We explored patterns to best represent messages
including an inbox pattern. We decided on a
message centre pattern, which could prove useful
for future use cases.

The messages framework
What did we learn from the messages framework?
Developed by the End to End team, the framework
has given the program a consistent way to think
about messages including:
- structure
- status and storage
- functionality
- types: Eg. Confirmation, Submitted, Received,
Pending, Verified, and Completed
- where and when to send them, what they are -
and are not.
This is recommended reading. Here’s the link.
Learning applies to All
View messages framework

To develop use cases we:
- looked at program roadmaps to identify messaging
dependencies for upcoming quarters
- took insights from workshops and
informal discussions with TFTM teams
.
In addition to our draft use cases, our
findings showed other teams see
the message centre concept as highly valuable.

We will revisit and refine these use cases with teams
as message centre progresses.
Use cases for notifications and messaging

The usual product development learnings…
Profile.Go(
team (experiment)
)return value;
• Hi-fi prototype
• Technical feasibility of
solution validated with
corner cases considered
• Granular front-end and
back-end estimates

Profile
Capability
Enterprise Integrations
Many Digital Foundations
Teams (inc. deployment,
environments, monitoring)
Registrations, Assurance,
Audit
End-to-end
It takes a village
Thank you to everyone in all the teams that have
significantly contributed to this key result so far.

a Message centre summary
c Learnings from discovery
b Product hypotheses

Thank you.
Profile team showcase 18th July 2022

Notification centre

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