QA considerations

[mmesarch1]

HI,
Between the WDN meeting last week and the CAS web group meeting this week there seems to be "customer service" issues with the QA process that need to be addressed.

Content Area failures - there have been several people who sites have been failed because of content area concerns. I went back and reviewed the style book and there are no actual requirements related to the content area, only suggested best practices and resources. So no one should be failing website approval because of the content area. Either the style book needs to be updated to include the common threads that have been presented or we could remove the Content Area in the QA process all together.

For the time being it might be a good practice to place any content area suggestions in the final comment box of the QA form so that they are "pulled" away from the actual passing/failing comments.

A second issue that has been voiced many times is the inability of the web person to interact with the QA team. There is no mechanism for them to respond to the email that the QA report generates. Or am I wrong about this? Could there somehow be an email address/account set up that would allow the person to send questions/response back to the Q/A teams?

[rcrisler1]

HI,
Between the WDN meeting last week and the CAS web group meeting this week there seems to be "customer service" issues with the QA process that need to be addressed.

Content Area failures - there have been several people who sites have been failed because of content area concerns. I went back and reviewed the style book and there are no actual requirements related to the content area, only suggested best practices and resources. So no one should be failing website approval because of the content area. Either the style book needs to be updated to include the common threads that have been presented or we could remove the Content Area in the QA process all together.

For the time being it might be a good practice to place any content area suggestions in the final comment box of the QA form so that they are "pulled" away from the actual passing/failing comments.

A second issue that has been voiced many times is the inability of the web person to interact with the QA team. There is no mechanism for them to respond to the email that the QA report generates. Or am I wrong about this? Could there somehow be an email address/account set up that would allow the person to send questions/response back to the Q/A teams?

On the first issues, no, content areas should not fail if the issues are aesthetic. BUT if there are things in the content area, like strange character rendering that we saw in some recent pages, or stylesheet overrides that cause failures in text contrast, etc., it's appropriate to note those things in that area.

The second issue is that the QA team is an ad-hoc, volunteer group. Each site review has 2-3 WDN members. Site reviews involve discussion among group members that is better done in person that online. And because some UNL personnel have volunteered significant hours to this effort (shout out, particularly, to CBA), it's not really fair to their organization to make QA an open-ended commitment that can invade other parts of their week. WDN QA meets once a week, Fridays at 2pm in 17 Wick. WDN members are requested to be part of this effort. The best thing to do is to attend. Attend if you've submitted a site, attend if not, to help evaluate other sites.