Services are used to show your offerings in the City Services page and in the "I Need To" dropdown on the homepage of austintexas.gov. Services are 250 characters and then a link to an online resource, a phone number to call, an email address to which users can submit a request, etc. They are always action items and do not have their own pages; instead, they just show the content entered (up to 250 characters) on the Services list page.
How to Create a Service
To get to the service, go to My Workbench and select “Create Content.” Then, select the Service content type.
All steps correspond with the fields at right, which are the fields given when creating a Service.
1. Select “Service” in the Editorial Section under your department’s name.
2. You may also add the Page Reference, if appropriate. View additional information about setting the correct Page Reference.
3. Add the title of the service in the Title field.
4. If the service is something provided online (i.e., a form to fill out online or a web application of some sort), select “Yes” under “Online Service.” Otherwise, select “N/A” or leave the item blank.
5. If you would like the item to possibly be listed in the City’s “I Need To” menu, enter a phrase that completes the sentence (i.e., I need to… “Pay my bills online”).
Contact a site administrator to get your service listed in the Home page Service or I Need To drop-down menus, which are located on every home page (Resident, Business, Development, Government and Environment).
6. Services can link to outside sources, such as PDFs, web forms or applications or even outside websites (where appropriate). This means that when the title of a service is viewed on the Services list page, clicking on the title will take users to this other source.
If your Service should link to another source, put the URL of this source in the Link to External Resource field. If it links to a PDF or another page on the city website, remember to only include everything after the "/" in the URL. For example, if you want to link to "http://austintexas.gov/drupalhelp" you would put only "drupalhelp" in the link box.
7. Enter in a phone number for those who have questions about this service. If you don’t have a phone number to add, type “3-1-1” instead.
8. You must also enter in a contact email. The default is “austin311;” use your contact’s email address if you choose.
9. Finally, select the contact department from the drop-down list.
10. Enter text about the Service into the Body section. View more information about the body editor.
Saving & Moderating Content
Once you’ve completed your Service, click Save at the bottom. You will then be able to send it through workflow to be published on the site. View more about moderating content.