Our design team have just started looking at another strand of the new licensing service. For the last few months we’ve been colloquially calling this a ‘dashboard’, but the idea of a simple page of buttons and levers doesn’t do justice to the complexity involved. So from now on: application management.
And before we go too far down the road with it, we’re once again asking for your input.
SPIRE and the Workbasket
Managing applications in SPIRE isn’t a fun-filled task, but it definitely works. It might take a little time to get used to the various processes involved in resuming drafts, cloning previous applications and so on, but everything an exporter needs in relation to previous or current applications can be found in SPIRE’s Workbasket.
Or can it? These are a few of our big questions:
- Can you think of anything you want to be able to do with your licence applications, but that SPIRE currently doesn’t allow?
- Do you need more application status information, or new ways to reply to requests for information?
- Do you need any existing functions to be placed differently so you can more easily access one from the other?
Plucking things out of the air a little there, but there might be some things SPIRE’s developers missed out that we’re at risk of forgetting as well, so let us know where you think the current service is lacking.
Beyond that, what do you dislike about the way SPIRE does work now? If anything’s cumbersome, time-consuming or flat-out annoying, we need to know at this early stage so clear pitfalls are avoided.
We’re not making a replacement for SPIRE that just looks a bit better – we want to make application management less onerous in whatever way we can.
Onto a prototype
Our aim will be to produce a prototype of the new application management functionality in the next couple of months, depending on how other elements of the new service progress.
It’s important to make clear at this stage that our initial development and prototype will focus on the important functions we need to pull across from SPIRE, before we develop anything more advanced. We’ll make the basics work first, but we need ongoing guidance on where to take development beyond that.
When we have the prototype we’ll be making it available to our beta testers. If you haven’t yet registered as a tester, we’re still looking for volunteers so if you’re keen to get involved please read our last blog entry to find out about our registration survey.
Goodbye 'userresearchforlite’
lite.feedback@digital.trade.gov.uk is also the address for suggestions for new features not currently provided by SPIRE, and to let us know what we should definitely keep, definitely improve or definitely scrap from how online licence applications work now.
Followers of these updates may notice that we have a new email address. It’s true, the famous userresearchforlite@digital.beis.gov.uk has been honourably discharged as the project has moved over to the new Department for International Trade. The old address still works, but the new one’s better.
And that’s the directive we’ve held to throughout this project: ‘the new one’s better’. Please do help us with your insights so we can make sure that turns out to be right!
4 comments
Comment by Daniel Dillon posted on
With regard to the workbasket it would be good to see
- A visual or easier understanding of the progress of the licence application (e.g. 80% complete)
- Predicted completion date for the licence application
- The ability to create a user-specific format to the page or filters available so that it opens with the information you require.
- The ability to re-order menus to have the most frequently used at the top
Comment by Chris Lockie posted on
Thanks Daniel, I'll pass these suggestions on to the design team.
Comment by David McAllister posted on
It would be helpful to see the full application form when it is completed, Maybe you could let people print it off or save it once the licence has been granted.
Comment by Chris Lockie posted on
Thanks for your comment David. You'll be able to access all your approved licences from within the application management system so in that sense they're saved and viewable. We're not sure about a print option but we'll give it more thought.