Info Centers

Definition of an Info Center

Info centers are hub pages for services. These hub pages are geared towards our primary, target audience and are service-oriented. We promote the creation of info centers for services and discourage creating info centers about the technology behind services or about the teams who manage the services.

  • Only web administrators have access to create or delete info centers. Please complete the Request an Info Center form or contact a web administrator if you need one created or removed. 
  • Info centers are set to expire on a yearly (or sooner) basis as determined by the owner. Upon expiration, email notifications will be sent to the assigned email address, which is managed by web administrators.

 

Guidelines for Editing Info Centers

Step 1: Login to edit content

  1. Login to https://its.uiowa.edu/user with your HawkID and password.
  2. Find the info center you wish to edit by using the main navigation or searching for it.
  3. Select “New Draft” or “Edit Draft” if the info center is already in a draft state.

Step 2: Review and edit all of the Info Centers fields

The most commonly used fields include:

  1. Summary – (located under the Overview tab) Provide a brief (under 250 character) summary description of the service. The summary is important because it is programmatically added to the catalog listing of services. In many cases, the summary and description can be the same.
  2. Description  – (located under the Overview tab) The description should be in language that is understandable to someone new to campus who is not familiar with technology. It should be no more than a few concise sentences. What is the service about? What does it provide? What are the key features?
  3. Contact Info – (located under the Overview tab) Provide a general email or phone number for customers to reach out to about this service. It is ok to leave this field blank. Contact information should go in this field NOT the Getting Help field located under the Support tab or Sign-up Info field.
  4. Status – (located under the Quick Start tab) What is the status of the service? Pilot, production, phase-out, or decommissioned. The majority of the services will have “production” selected.
  5. Available to – (located under the Quick Start tab) Who is the service geared or marketed to? The majority of services will have Students, Faculty, and Staff selected.
  6. Fees – (located under the Quick Start tab) What are the fees for the service?
    1. If none, select “No Charge.” Selecting “No Charge” will display the following sentence: “There is no charge for use of this service.”
    2. If the service does have a fee, select “Other” and fill out the “Additional Fee Information” field with the fee structure. Example info center with fees.
  7. Website  – (located under the Quick Start tab) The website field is reserved for 3rd party login - leave blank if unavailable.
  8. Common Actions – (located under the Quick Start tab) Common actions refer to important links/pages that users of this service might need. Reserve one common action if there is a corresponding page on another website (OTLT, Security, vendor, etc.). The others should be most common actions that are performed for this service

Step 3: Set the next expiration date for review

  1. Content Review  – (located in the left sidebar) If you are satisfied with the content changes you have made (you’ve reviewed content for accuracy, grammar, broken links, etc.), select the checkbox labeled “This content has been reviewed.” Then select a time frame for the next review date or expiration: 365, 180, 60, 30 days or select a custom date within 1 year using the custom calendar. The day selected is when the next expiration email notice will be sent. 
    1. Review log will display the history of content review (date and HawkID), as well as when the next review date will occur.

Step 4: Publish and save

  1. Publishing options – (located in the left sidebar) To complete the process and publish your work, you must select “Published” in the dropdown under “Moderation state” and then press the Save button.

 

Reducing Content Checklist

To help guide you through decisions about content, please consider the following checklist:

  • Does this information exist on another website such as a vendor site?
  • Can it be merged with another page (using the FAQ collapsible feature)?
  • Can this information be removed?
  • Do I want to maintain & review this every 6 months?

Next Steps

Support Articles

If your info center has support articles listed under the “How To and Support” tab, review those articles.

Article number: 
105213
Last updated: 
February 2, 2023
Category: