Australian Office of Financial Management (AOFM)

The Australian Office of Financial Management (AOFM) manages the Australian Government’s borrowing needs (debt management) and ensures that there is enough money in its bank account (the Official Public Account) to meet its payment obligations at all times (cash management).

The approach

During the initial project discovery, Morpht discovered that there were five significant tasks to be performed for the launch of this project. In addition to requiring a fresh, new design, content was to be migrated from a legacy WordPress system into the GovCMS platform. Next, a scheduler needed to be set up allowing for content on the system to be published at a specified time and date. The system also needed to be integrated with the Mailchimp marketing platform. This meant creating a means for users to subscribe to AOFM's newsletter from the site, as well sending the content of specified pages through Mailchimp to subscribers. Finally, the scheduler needed to be integrated with the email functionality so that notification through Mailchimp would happen concurrently to content being published.

Design

The site is based on the Australian Government Design System which has been customised to accommodate the branding requirements of the AOFM. The site needed to be authoritative, accessible and clear int the way it communicated important data.

During the design phase Morpht worked with the client to define a style guide which encapsulated colours, typography, textures and tone. These aspects were then configured into the theme. The colours and typography were mapped directly into variable contained within the Design System. The textures and additional colours were configured so that editors were easily able to access them as they were building the content in the site.

The design phase also focussed on how to display important widgets which displayed crucial information such as the calendar of releases and the AGS on issue.

Migration

Migration began with a full-audit of the legacy contents to be migrated. A mapping was made between the legacy content and the new content, as well as a mapping of hierarchies, menus, and any redirects that existed on the new site. This was done to ensure that the content would be fully integrated with the GovCMS platform after migration.

Scheduler

The next challenge Morpht faced was creating the functionality to allow for content editors to set content to be published at a specific date and time. The GovCMS platform did not allow this at the time of development, though it is on the roadmap of functionality to come. To create this functionality, Morpht set up a background process to publish any content at the time specified by content editors. We then integrated a 'scheduled' state into the workflow, allowing content editors to schedule the content to be published at a specified date and time. This system now allows AOFM to schedule various content for publishing, something they do with regularity.

Mailchimp integration

Mailchimp is a marketing service, allowing for the sending of emails for marketing campaigns to lists of subscribers. It's a complex, powerful system that allows integration from third party websites. AOFM's legacy website allowed for the sending of emails to their subscriber list directly through the platform, however, it was determined that Mailchimp would be used to manage the subscriber list with the new system, opening up the strength and features of the Mailchimp platform.

Morpht first created a newsletter signup block on the site, allowing users to subscribe to the newsletter. At the time of subscription, users can also select preferences. AOFM is then able to send out newsletters specifically to targeted groups, allowing for more effective communication between AOFM and their users.

When creating content on the site, content editors are able to check a box to have content emailed to subscribers upon publishing, with the option to specify which interest groups the mail should be sent to. Mailchimp APIs were used to push out the notifications at precisely the right time to ensure that the publishing of content and the email notification of that content happened concurrently.

The outcome

Working on a strict schedule, Morpht was able to deliver the project on time, according to the project specifications. AOFM was provided with a website built on GovCMS and Convivial, Morpht's custom GovCMS distribution. This migration allows for AOFM to create visual, dynamic content within the platform with no programming knowledge whatsoever. The scheduler was built and integrated into the system, publishing content and sending emails as set by content editors, providing AOFM the ability to send targeted marketing emails, and automating their business needs.

Visit Australian Office of Financial Management