Thoughts on redirecting users to other services

[Jon Kristensen]

Hi!

A council just got in touch with us asking us to redirect reporting in one category from FixaMinGata to their web site.

I feel that would go against the user and the wider community. Reasons why users could prefer to use FixaMinGata include ease of reporting, the availability of open data/statistics, and having all reported issues be available through one interface.

Does anyone have any thoughts on how to handle requests from councils to redirect certain categories to other services?

I mentioned that we could add extra details/fields to the reports or that we could customize the recipients, but that didn't convince the council.

The council in question is kind of a “Pro” user of FixaMinGata (they are paying members).

Thanks for any insights you may be able offer!

All the best,

Jon

[Matthew Somerville]

Hi,

Whilst I certainly agree that using the site is better for all the reasons you state, I'm also aware that this might not always be possible. In order to still encourage other parts of councils to use the service - and perhaps come more on board in future - using their existing systems which may have things already set up, may be the best way forward, in preference to them refusing to allow reports in that category at all, or at worst the whole service. Perhaps it's an opportunity to then talk about how reports from FixaMinGata could integrate directly into whatever system their web site sends the data into.

The FixMyStreet admin interface lets you stop reporting and show a message if a particular category is selected, or if a particular answer is given to an extra question, both of which would help do what you suggest. We do use this ourselves on fixmystreet.com in a number of places for this kind of situation.

ATB,

Matthew

[Jon Kristensen]

Thanks for these helpful insights!

Should “Disable form when this category is selected” and “Message to show when form is disabled (HTML permitted)” be the way to disable the category and displaying a message? Because no message shows up when I make these settings. I seem to be getting an extra kind of empty step after choosing the category, though. 🤔 I've attached a screenshot.

All the best,

Jon

[Matthew Somerville]

Hi,

Yes, that's what should be used to trigger it. It's possible this hasn't been used elsewhere and it's not set up properly for general use. If you add version('/cobrands/fixmystreet/assets.js'), to inside the scripts.push() in your footer_extra_js.html, I wonder if that makes a difference - it might be that the code assumes that file is present in order to work, but we should look at factoring it out if so.

ATB,
Matthew

[Jon Kristensen]

Good morning!

Thanks for this!

I can confirm that importing assets.js from footer_extra_js.html fixed the problem.

Should I create an issue for this on GitHub?

Have a nice week ahead! 😊

All the best,

Jon