Morpht is a service provider on the GovCMS Drupal Services Panel (DSP). We have a deep commitment to the platform and over the years have worked on a number of “Convivial for GovCMS” starter sites to best support new site builds. These starter sites have been used across many agencies and have been refined and updated over time.
Initially, we provided flavours for the Australian Government Design System (AuDS) and Bootstrap 5. These two flavours were suitable for clients with different needs - those who needed to adopt the AuDS as recommended by the DTA and those who wanted a more independent design. Eventually, the AuDS became unsupported, leaving government agencies with no requirement to follow a specific design system. This opened the way for a renewed focus on the Bootstrap version of Convivial for GovCMS. Morpht has therefore concentrated development efforts on the Bootstrap flavour for Convivial for GovCMS.
Updates
Personalisation with Convivial Profiler
The Convivial Profiler personalisation engine has been updated to be more capable and helpful out of the box. The system is not focused on the key concepts of audiences, topics, stages and intents.
We have found these patterns to be helpful across a range of sites and now offer them out of the box.
- The next best step CTA
- Audiences tasks
- Stage tasks
- Topic news
Content recommendations with Recombee
Recombee is a personalisation engine. Morpht has developed a way to synchronise the Drupal content with the Recombee backend, without the need for a new module such as Search API Recombee. This has opened the way for Recombee to be used on GovCMS SaaS without the need for a new module. Two new components have been build, Recombee Scenario and Recombee Search, allowing for easy integration of recommendations into the site.
We have found the following patterns to be helpful:
- Top picks
- Trending now
- Recently added
- Recently viewed
- Related
- Search
Matomo analytics
The uplift in personalisation efforts has led to a more standardised user profile based on common properties. These properties allow for page views to be tracked along with a number of dimensions.
The user profile supports the following properties for a user
- type
- audience
- topic
- stage
- intent
- experience
Dimension tracking is very beneficial in an analytics system like Matomo.
- What are the most common audiences, topics, stages and types?
- What are the most popular content items for each audience, topic and stage.
Quick exit
On certain sites, it is important to offer users the ability to quickly exit a site so that the browser history is not obvious. We have developed a Quick exit component which can be configured to take the user to a configurable location.
Search improvements
Over time the Morpht recipe for delivering good search results has evolved. We have focussed on indexing the right content, boosting on type and date and ensuring that cross-cutting indexes work effectively. The search configuration has therefore been tightened up for a better starting point.
Resource (content type)
In the past, we have kept the content model as lean as possible. However, over time we have observed that the Resource content type is very common on government sites. We have therefore added it as an out-of-the-box feature.
Decision Flow (component)
The Decision Flow component provides a simple way to add interactive questions and answers which guide a user through a complex decision-making process. This kind of component is helpful for agencies who may have regulations or legislation which needs to be stepped through.
The Decision Flow component has been integrated with our personalisation engine. When a user reaches a “outcome” that can result in the user profile picking that information up and using it to devise the next best step for the user to take. For example, a personalised CTA promotion could be served to a user when they complete the decision flow.
iFrame (component)
It is common for agencies to want to incorporate content from other systems such as BowerBI and others. This is becoming an increasingly popular requirement on government sites as agencies look to share internal insights based on data and analysis. We have therefore developed a simple iFrame component which allows for the easy integration of such material.
Frontend end theme improvements
One of the design goals of Convivial for GovCMS (Bootstrap) is to be as non-opinionated as possible when it comes to the look and feel of the theme. We have attempted to keep the design professional and tight, without making strong design decisions in any one direction. We have therefore stayed fairly close to a Bootstrap look and feel. This allows for custom theme implementations to be made depending on the needs of the individual site.
The theme has however received a number of improvements, making it more flexible and resilient:
- More consistent use of colour palettes
- Simplified and cleaner patterns in the backend
- A more advanced configuration interface to support Recombeer, Convivial profiler, and Matomo.
Backend theme improvements
Recent developments in Drupal have led to the Gin theme gaining increased prominence. It is where the bulk of development and innovation and development is taking place for Experience Builder. Soon it will be the default option and so it makes sense for us to switch from Claro to Gin for the backend theme. We have taken an incremental approach here as not all features are available in GovCMS SaaS, however, the backend theme is now working well on Gin.
Privacy settings
Government websites in Australia typically do not include privacy settings widgets or popups collecting cookie preferences. Most sites include a privacy statement in the footer to cover the legal requirements. However, with the development of the modern web, users have had an increased interest in protecting their privacy and in knowing how their data is being used. Morpht has therefore developed a configurable privacy settings widget which allows users to opt out of certain services which are running on the site.
It is important to note that services such as Matomo, Recombee and Convivial Profiler are all GDPR compliant and do not share data with third parties or record personally identifiable information.
Nonetheless, the Privacy settings widget allows for the use of these services to be configured by the user should they not want the behaviour to be tracked.
Fixes
Better permissions and access control
Convivial for GovCMS (Bootstrap) initially took a bare-bones approach to roles and permissions, choosing to follow the out-of-the-box settings from the initial install of GovCMS. The initial roles were for editor, approver and administrator. These roles have now been extended to include:
- Manager - Manage users
- Webform manager - Create webforms
- Submission viewer - View webform submissions
- Structure - Edit content for taxonomy, blocks and advanced components.
Accessibility
A large effort went into improving our accessibility posture. This has always been important to us at Morpht for all of our builds. However, achieving a high compliance level for accessibility does require a lot of attention to detail.
In this uplift we have
- Improved the consistency of colour palettes so that there is good contrast in edge-case situations
- Fixed navigation menu headings so that the heading structure is solid.
- Tweaked styles so the click targets are good on mobile
- Tightened up our use of ARIA tags where needed.
We have now squashed out the vast majority of issues and are close to achieving AAA compliance across the site, with a commitment to achieving AA.
Why Convivial for GovCMS (Bootstrap)
Convivial for GovCMS (Bootstrap) is a first-class starting point for government websites. It incorporates best practice solutions for a wide range of government use cases. There is a very strong focus on compliance around security, accessibility, privacy and responsiveness. As a platform it is future-looking, incorporating advanced DXP features such as personalisation and recommendations.
It is important to note that it is a starting point for site builds. Based on the needs of the site, new content types and components can be added to handle the specific needs of the domain. The theme is non-opinionated and can be used to deliver a wide range of designs, suitable for custom branding which may be required.
Morpht is a supplier on the Drupal Service panel, offering DXP services as well as Drupal site development. If you would like a demo of Convivial for GovCMS (Bootstrap), please use the Contact form to get in touch.
