The Veteran-centered purpose

“As a Veteran, caregiver, or family member visiting the VAMC site, I need to understand details about a new or ongoing situation affecting a health care system up front so I have the information I need to navigate my care.”

Content intent

The intent of a Situation Update is to provide a site visitor long-form, detailed information about a situation described in the banner alert. The banner alert is only designed to be a short, tweet-like notification. To provide more detailed information, the banner alert provides a link that leads site visitors to more detail included in the situation update.

You can have more than one situation update that display newest-to-oldest on the Operating Status page. This is particularly useful for long-running situations such as COVID-19 or for evolving situations such as inclement weather.

Before you start

To create a Situation update you must:

• Have an account in the Drupal CMS
• Have a Editor or Publisher content creator role
• Have access to a VA Medical Center section
• The VA Medical Center must have an existing Banner Alert

Learn more about roles and permissions

How to do it

1. Find the VAMC system operating status content type for your VAMC system.

• On your homepage after logging in, find the section you want to edit under Sections and click on it.
• Set Content type to VAMC system operating status.
• Click Filter.
• Click Edit next to the VAMC system operating status for your system.

2. Scroll to the section of the form called System-wide alerts.

3. Click the Edit button in the far right column of the System-wide alerts section. 

4. Scroll to the section of the form called Situation updates.

5. Add a situation update.

• Click Add situation update.
• Check the box next to Send email to subscribers via GovDelivery if you want a notification sent  along with the update.
• Enter a Date and time.
• Enter the Update text.
• Select a Date and time to appear as the timestamp for the update. 
• Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Save to add the update and send out notifications (if selected).

6. Complete the Editorial Workflow.

• Select a Save as state.
• Enter a Revision log message.
• Click Save.