Streamlining the Process to Archive a Closed VAMC Facility

[stefaniefgray]

User Story or Problem Statement

As a VAMC editor who has had a facility within my system shut down, I am a bit overwhelmed by the steps involved in the facility archival process.

The current process listed in the Knowledge Base article "How to archive a closed facility" is tailored to VAMC editors whose closed facility has not yet been reported to VAST.

However, if I've already been informed that my facility was removed from VAST / the Facilities API (typically through Help Desk correspondence after the facility was reported as "Removed From Source" within the Flagged Content listing), then the rest of the steps seem like a lengthy wall of text, and I'm unsure why I need to do anything else on my end.

I would like this process to be streamlined for maximum efficiency to cut down on the amount of steps that VAMC editors need to perform on their end, and to reduce back-and-forth comms between VAMC editors, the CMS Helpdesk, and the Facilities engineering team.

Description or Additional Context

See current article: https://prod.cms.va.gov/help/vamc/about-locations-content-for-vamcs/how-to-archive-a-closed-facility

Ideas for streamlining this process:

Steps that can likely be completed by the Facilities engineers / Drupal admins:

• Archiving the homepage itself once it has been removed from VAST
• Archiving all linked VAMC Facility Health Services nodes

Steps that can likely be removed altogether:

• Saving the facility’s “Prepare For Your Visit” text and copying and pasting it into a Notepad file – VAMC editors can view archived nodes for later reference.

Proposed draft written by @stefaniefgray after Flagged Facilities check-in on 11/15/23: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ln_kZ7qdgfl0VlNm2kXKMxTb7tEdKjCOHGTJk0toyHQ/edit?usp=sharing

Steps for Implementation

• Proposed draft is reviewed/edited by Facilities team
• Proposed steps for streamlining (see above) are reviewed by Facilities team
• Steps for streamlining are added to template for VAMC facility closures
• Existing Knowledge Base article is updated from approved draft

Acceptance Criteria

• Knowledge Base article is streamlined to assist VAMC editors whether or not the closed facility has been reported to VAST
• Steps involved are streamlined for both the VAMC editors as well as the Facilities team

Team

Please check the team(s) that will do this work.

• CMS Team
• Public Websites
• Facilities
• Accelerated Publishing

[stefaniefgray]

Proposed draft:

How to Archive a Closed Facility

What do you do when a facility is permanently closed or has been replaced with a new facility altogether? Here is the process for making sure that a facility is fully removed from your VAMC System:

Steps to Archive a Closed Facility

Background: Outside databases such as the Lighthouse API and VAST provide information about each facility across multiple VA.gov sites/programs/apps. In turn, it’s important that closed facilities are first archived within these databases before they are archived from the site itself.

Archiving the facility homepage before it has been removed from VAST may create broken links across VA.gov, and inconvenience site visitors who have had the facility homepage bookmarked.

Step 1: Inform VAST that the facility has closed

• If the CMS Helpdesk has reached out to you and informed you that this facility was already removed from VAST – great! Proceed to Step 2. Otherwise, please continue reading.
• For information on how to contact your VAST administrator, please see the article How do I update my VAMC Facility's Basic Location Data?
  Please also ask your VAST administrator to inform you as soon as the facility is archived on their end.

Step 2: Update the facility’s Operating Status to reflect its current state

• For more information about how to update a VAMC facility operating status, please see the Knowledge Base article titled "How to Edit a VAMC Facility Operating Status."

Step 3: Update the facility introduction

• The introduction is the first text seen on the page, so editing this section will allow Veterans who have directly bookmarked the facility homepage to see the new status right away.

Step 4: Contact the VA Drupal CMS Support team for next steps

• Once your VAST administrator has verified that the facility has been removed from VAST, please reach out to the VA Drupal CMS Support team by emailing [email protected] or via the contact form linked within the Knowledge Base.
• You will hear back from the VA Drupal CMS Support team once all facility archival steps have been completed.
• Once the process is complete, the URL for the closed facility’s homepage will redirect to your VAMC system’s “Locations” page.

[stefaniefgray]

cc: @jilladams @mmiddaugh @omahane @xiongjaneg