Admin Unit Contact Template
Does my Unit need a contact page? Our website is intended for a public-facing audience. If your Unit corresponds with people outside of Biological Sciences staff or faculty, then most likely, yes.
These green message boxes contain supplementary information. They are not part of the template layout.
This introductory paragraph describes the unit's business role. Anyone can get to this page from any other website, email link or search engine. So a good page introduction provides context to orient the reader.
We assist with... The blue informational callout box helps a user determine whether this is the appropriate Unit to contact.
Keep this brief and concise. Most people spend only a few seconds on a web page to determine whether it's relevant to them. If you need to expand on details for a particular audience, use a sub-page.
Undergraduate Students compose >50% of our website users. If your Unit does not directly interact with this audience, having a clear description on this page is your best way of preventing misdirected inquiries.
List services in order of request frequency.
We assist [students, faculty, sea turtles] with...
- General function or scenario A.
- General function or scenario B
- General function C with link to resource with more detailed info. This also appears in the Resources Drawer.
"Contact" and "Hours" are in the left column. Headings only appear if there is relevant information for the Unit.
Contact
This section contains the Unit's primary functional contacts. If your Unit does not have a general contact (corresponding to a ticketing system) for business operations, we recommend setting one up through the Help Desk.
General contacts are beneficial because they separate operational management from an individual employee.
This means:
- Users learn one, stable contact for a business need.
- Inquiries can be triaged within the group if roles, circumstances or internal workflows change.
- You retain a record system for business inquiries that are non-contingent to individual employee accounts.
- General Inquiries
- generalinquiries@biology.ucsd.edu
555-555-5555
Hours
M-F, 8:00am-4:30pm
"Service Level Agreement", "Location" and "Mailing Address" are in the right column. Headings only appear if there is relevant information for the Unit.
Service Level Agreement
Location
Urey Hall, 1700-1800 Suite
Mailing Address
University of California, San Diego
School of Biological Sciences
9500 Gilman Drive, Mail Code: 0346
La Jolla, CA 92093-0346
"Staff" and "Resources" Drawers are optional depending on whether there is relevant information to share.
These drawer names remain consistent from Unit to Unit. This is intentionally done so that the User can rely on the same organizational schema for finding information from Unit to Unit.
It is not necessary to list all Staff with individual contacts within the Unit. You may decide to only include those with public-facing roles. Alternatively, Units might choose to list staff names and role descriptions, but exclude personal emails and numbers to encourage correspondance through the case system.
Include Group Leader. The dean's office has asked that all Units include the Executive Level Group Lead in Staff information so that reporting structures are evident.
Two main styles are available for listing contacts.
- Resources contain links to information managed by the Unit or commonly referred to by Clients of the Unit.
- Do not put detailed instructions directly in the Resources Drawer. Link to pages or files.
- Do your best to group content containing > 7 items using headings or bulleted lists and sub-lists.