Web Change Request FAQ
A Change Request, commonly referred to as a "CR" has a unique number which allows for the efficient tracking of changes to the web. The information below will assist you with affecting changes on your website.
In what format do you want the changes sent to you?
What are the preferred electronic formats?
What are the discouraged electronic formats?
Why do I have to review the implementation before it's published?
How quickly can you publish this request?
Why can't you make a change to a PDF?
Why do you have test servers?
In what format do you want the changes sent to you?
It depends on the types of changes. Generally, electronic formats are the best (see other questions for more detail), especially for new content. If there are small changes that are easily described, put it in an e-mail. However, if you are reviewing larger amounts of text and have many small changes, either enable revision tracking (if the program supports it) or print it out and do the markups in pen. You can fax or inter-office the markups to us.
What are the preferred electronic formats?
- Word Documents
- Text Documents
- PDF (if they are for publishing as is)
What are the discouraged electronic formats?
- HTML - we are very particular about the HTML we use and write - most tools do not generate the code that fits our development
- PDF (if we need to extract the text) - PDF is a presentation format, not an editing format, so it is difficult to extract more than a sentence or two from a PDF.
- JPG, GIF, BMP, or other bitmap images (if we need to extract the text) - these images do not store the text so there is no way to extract the text except to read it and retype it.
Why do I have to review the implementation before it's published?
Reviewing the implementation allows FAST Dev to improve the quality of the content being delivered to your customers. This process ensures that FAST Dev has not inadvertently injected an error into the information about to be released to your customers. Additionally, you can have one more chance to review the information that you are going to communicate to your customers.
How quickly can you publish this request?
Our general policy is to promote the implementation of your request to our test servers in no more than two business days. Often we can do this in less than two business days, but it depends on the overall volume of requests on that day from the rest of the division and the availability of the group and team members. If you need your request up more quickly you have two options. First, you can indicate in your message that there's some urgency to the request and any deadlines that may be associated with the request. We will do our best to respect your situation's urgency. Second, you can indicate that your request can be directly published to the production servers. We will put the implementation on both our test servers and our production servers. This will save the time normally spent in communicating about reviewing your request's implementation on the test servers. However, if there is an error in the request, or FAST Dev accidentally injects an error into the implementation of the request, it is immediately viewable to the public.
Why can't you make a change to a PDF?
The Adobe PDF file format is not intended for editing. Adobe's Acrobat program does allow for some minor in-line text editing, but nothing further. It is Adobe's position that you should edit in an editor (like Word) and distribute your document in PDF. Thus, if we don't have the original document, we will not be able to do any significant changes to the PDF.
Why do you have test servers?
Test servers provide FAST Dev with a couple of important features:
- They allow FAST Dev to experiment with and perfect new ideas and technologies without being in the public view.
- They also allow FAST Dev to improve the quality of the services provided by allowing the review and change of information not in the obvious public view.
