Onboarding: Michael Skinner

[jilladams]

Projected start date: 4/22/24

Team info

• Onboarding buddy (short check-in meetings the first week): Lori Pusey
• Team name: Sitewide Facilities
• Delivery Manager name: @jilladams
• Product Manager name: it's you!
• Discipline lead name: Mike Collier will be your practice area coach

Welcome to the Sitewide Team! 👋

We're thrilled to have you join us on this journey! 🎆🎉🙌

The onboarding materials below are organized by:

• chronological time to complete (day one, week one, week two, month one)
• and category

There's a lot to digest but don't worry, you'll have an onboarding buddy to provide support, your Delivery Manager can answer questions, and you'll have the support of the entire team, who have all gone through this process before and are eager to answer any questions that arise. Come back to this ticket any time to refresh your knowledge on a specific topic covered below. Have fun and we look forward to getting to know you! 😊

Our mission

In contract language:

The Sitewide team’s mission is to increase VA’s ability to deliver consistent, accessible, quality information across the VA.gov ecosystem. In accordance with the 21st Century Idea Act, the Sitewide team has a strong emphasis on integrating with or creating single-source- of-truth (SSOT) content structures. The Sitewide team subsequently uses these structures to build experiences on VA.gov in a predominantly unauthenticated user-space targeted toward Veterans, family members, and beneficiaries while other teams may, in a future state, access these same content structures via the Content Management System or other application programming interface (API)-based infrastructures in other experiences such as chatbot, mobile app, or other experiences to ensure accurate and consistent messaging. Sitewide builds and maintains these experiences using the VA.gov design system as well as user- centered design, mobile-first and accessibility-first practices.

The VA's north star is to "continuously deliver high-quality digital experiences for the benefit of all Veterans and their families." From a CMS-perspective, our vision is to craft a seamless editorial experience that empowers editors to create Veteran-centered content.

Our team

The Sitewide contract team consists of 2 product teams: Facilities and Public Websites. Our teams are cross-functional and consist of Product Manager, Delivery Manager, UX (Research, Design, Content strategy, Accessibility), Backend engineering (full-stack/Drupal), and Front-end engineering. We also closely collaborate with the CMS team and Platform teams who own the platforms we build on.

Day one

Day one

Your top priority is any onboarding paperwork provided by Contract Onboarding folks. Start tasks below after that.

Process & Principles

• Read through our Sitewide team norms, which will also give an overview of how we apply the USDS playbook and VA.gov platform code of conduct.
• Watch the 1/31/2024 State of OCTO recording and review the related slides, to understand OCTO's vision and north star goals for this year.
• Read the VA's Office of the CTO (OCTO) engineering excellence guiding principles [post in DSVA slack]

People

• Meet with A6 Contract Onboarding Specialists (COS) to get an introduction to the paperwork process. They'll schedule.
• Sitewide Team org chart (Mural) - take a look and bookmark this for future use
• Get to know your team: Read your team members' user manuals
• Create your own User Manual: duplicate the template, fill it out, and save your manual in your team's folder.
  • Share your user manual with the team in #proj-sitewide Slack, once you've created it!

Week one

Week one

The goals of this week are:

1. get background paperwork completed as quickly as possible
2. start gaining context for what we're doing and why

Access & Delivery

Paperwork
You'll receive an email from A6 COS directing you to the paperwork you should fill out for secure access to relevant VA systems. Federal contractors are required to complete many of the same forms as federal employees.

• Complete & submit your initial paperwork according to instructions, including setting up your fingerprinting appointment.
• When you are notified to complete your e-QIP (the online version of the federal standard investigation form, SF 86), it will require a lot of background & family information. Review page 7 of the SF 86 guide in advance for the list of information you'll need to collect to complete e-QIP.
• Our team uses a shared Google Drive for internal team documents or drafts. VA doesn't have access to view Google products while on the VA network. Use Github or downloadable files when sharing with VA.
• Trello for retro boards & daily scrum. (Workspaces are limited to 10 members on the free plan.)
  • Facilities: https://trello.com/w/sitewidefacilities
  • Public Websites: https://trello.com/w/publicwebsites3
  • Sitewide UX: https://trello.com/w/sitewideux

Process & Principles

• Read about our teams' Agile / sprint best practices
• How do Agile 6 and our partners work together on this project? Discuss with your Delivery Manager.
• Read your team's Charter:
  • Facilities
  • Public Websites
• Check your calendar for invitations to team ceremonies.
  • Scrums
  • Planning session
  • Refinement session(s)
  • Demo
  • Retro

People

• Familiarize yourself with our team's shared Sitewide Team calendar
  • Ask your DM to give you write access to your team calendar, if you have not already been invited
  • If you have time off planned, add to calendar as OOO
• Let's start introducing you to the team and key stakeholders. If you're on a meeting where you don't know someone, feel free to kickstart an introduction. Everyone in the ecosystem is friendly and interested in connecting.

Context & History

• How does the team fit into the larger OCTO ecosystem? View the CMS-driven product portfolio mapped to product teams and business partners (Mural)
• How are products owned today? View the History of sitewide product portfolio
  • Discuss with your Delivery Manager and Product Manager for more context on your team's products.
• Contract - Feel free to look over the Sitewide Performance Scope of Work and ask your Delivery Manager anything you would like to know about your contract.
• For history of the VA's Drupal CMS itself, watch the Drupal GovCon presentation about the project.
• For history of the modernized VA.gov initiative and why the VA Medical Centers changed their websites, watch the 2-minute YouTube video.
• Why are Vet Centers important to Veterans? Watch the 2-minute YouTube video.

After Fingerprinting / SAC Adjudication

After Fingerprinting / SAC Adjudication

After you've been fingerprinted and received government confirmation (SAC Adjudication), your Delivery manager will add you to VA Slack and VA Github.

Note: Prior to eQip transmittal, the VA may grant network access. However: VA contractors should not access the VA network until the eQIP has been transmitted to the DCSA. Please refrain from accessing VA network (via CAG, Azure or otherwise) and do not request a temporary access password until you have submitted your eQip and received a transmittal notice.

Slack

• OCTO (DSVA) Slack: https://dsva.slack.com/. Update your profile, to include at minimum:
  • Profile photo
  • Title, Team, Agency (in Title)
  • Time zone
  • Contact information: agency email, and phone if you're willing
  • About me: VA email once you have one
  • Calendar URL - Get the sharable link for your Google Calendar from Settings/"Access permissions for events" and add it to your Slack Profile. This will allow team members in other organizations to easily schedule with you.
  • Github alias
  • Working hours
• Your Delivery Manager should add you to appropriate Slack user groups for the DSVA workspace (e.g. @public-websites-team, @facilities-team. Also @sitewide-engineers for eng.)

Channels

• A6/agency workspace = #proj-sitewide
• DSVA workspace = #sitewide-program, and your team channel e.g. #sitewide-public-websites, #sitewide-facilities
• VA Slack Channel Overview describes useful channels to be aware of / join. Note that many are going to be dependent on your discipline. Feel free to join whichever you think will aid you and your work.

Github / Zenhub configuration

Github + Zenhub are the tools required for sprint boards, epics, estimates, and issue tracking for our team, as well as code version control. To work successfully:

• New Hire: Create a Github user account
• New Hire: Add your agency email address to your Github account at https://github.com/settings/emails
• Delivery Manager: Creates a Github request to add your Github user to the Dept of VA Github organization. This will provide you with access to view VA repositories.
• New Hire: Accept the Github org invitation. It will appear as a yellow banner at the top of https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs
• Delivery Manager: After invite is accepted, add user to the VFS-CMS team. You must be added to this team to contribute to va.gov-cms repository code and issues in Github.
• New Hire: Install the Zenhub browser extension in your browser of choice
• Delivery Manager: Log into app.zenhub.com, click "Invite your team" button in lower left sidebar, invite new hire via their agency email address. This will generate a license request that must be approved by Zenhub admins within the VA. In the meantime, new hires may see a "You do not have a license" message when they log in to app.zenhub.com.
• VA Zenhub Admins: Must approve the license request. If they're slow about it, in DSVA slack, use @zenhub-admins to mention and request help. Licenses might not be approved until after the new hire has been fingerprinted.
• New Hire: Verify Zenhub access by logging into app.zenhub.com, using Google auth with your agency email address. Do not use Github oauth. It's no longer supported by the VA.

Github documentation

• New to Github and markdown? Learn about writing on Github or watch a tutorial video. Required for ongoing product documentation in https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/va.gov-team/tree/master/products.
• Intro to CMS Team Github - describes an overview of the CMS product in terms of repositories and architecture. Drupal engineers will require this information but UX and Product Managers should strive to build a working familiarity with the CMS

Sprint boards:
You can view team sprint boards using either the Github view with Zenhub browser extension enabled, or the Zenhub webapp view.

• Facilities: Github view, Zenhub webapp view
• Public Websites: Github view, Zenhub webapp view
• Sitewide UX: Github view, Zenhub webapp view
• CMS team: also runs their sprints from the same repository, and any repo / workspace changes should be mindful of not impacting their Github view, or Zenhub webapp view

General VA Access

The VA.gov Platform team manages VA.gov tooling and network access. In order to receive access to many tools you'll need day to day, you must file a Platform orientation ticket and complete the required steps in that ticket. (There may be some overlap with steps in this ticket -- if you have feedback on how we could reduce overlap, send notes to your Delivery Manager!)

• Open a VA.gov Platform orientation ticket.

SOCKS proxy: SOCKS is a VA Network proxy that will allow you to access some VA systems from your local machine, without being on the VA network or a virtual machine. To gain SOCKS access, you must complete your Platform orientation ticket. More details on SOCKS in the "After eQip Transmittal notice received" section.

Week two

Week two

The goal for this week is to get you set up with the tools you need to be successful. We will pair you up with a buddy on the project that is in your same discipline to help inform which ones are relevant and which aren't. The most important thing is to complete your eQip in order to unlock SOCKS access, as it will give you access to our systems so try to prioritize that.

Context & History: What products do we support?

• OUTDATED but useful for high level context: CMS product sheets (PDF download), describe various CMS-driven products. Points of contact and links may be broken.

Access & Delivery

• Opt out of Google Analytics collection on VA.gov.
  • More information: https://depo-platform-documentation.scrollhelp.site/analytics-monitoring/google-analytics-opt-out
• Opt out of analytics for Platform's website by clicking https://depo-platform-documentation.scrollhelp.site/?internal-user-opt-out=true. You will not get a confirmation message and will have to do this for every browser and every time you clear cookies.

After eQip Transmittal notice received

After eQip Transmittal notice received

VA Network access

After you receive eQip Transmittal notice, you should receive an email confirming that you have been approved for remote access. The VA network is required in order to access Drupal CMS and other VA tools. VA Network access typically requires a VA Personal Identity Verification (PIV) card with a chip reader.

VA network: SOCKS proxy (after your Platform Orientation)

SOCKS is a VA Network proxy that will allow you to access some VA systems from your local machine, without being on the VA network or a virtual machine. Until your paperwork is approved and you receive a PIV card, using the SOCKS proxy can provide earlier access to some VA Network tools. Configuring SOCKS is the first priority when your eQip transmittal is received, for anyone who will require access to Drupal (UX, engineers, Product Management, etc.). If your role doesn't demand immediate access to the CMS, you may be able to wait until you receive a PIV.

To gain SOCKS access, you must:

1. Complete your Platform orientation ticket. When complete, the VA Platform team will add you to the VFS Team Roster located in Atlas. This will allow you to get SOCKS access.
2. Complete your eQip paperwork
3. Receive an eQip transmittal confirmation via email

When those are in place:

• Follow instructions in: https://depo-platform-documentation.scrollhelp.site/getting-started/accessing-internal-tools-via-socks-proxy to configure SOCKS. Read instructions closely: you'll need to file another ticket during the process, and include a screenshot of your eQip transmittal notice.
• Optional Core Tunnel set up for SOCKS proxy on all browsers on Mac

Setting up SOCKS can be a complex process. Post in #sitewide-program Slack channel if you need help from a current member - we're happy to help.

VA Network: Virtual Machines

The VA Network can also be accessed on Virtual Machines (VMs), using either the Citrix Access Gateway (CAG) or Azure.

If you need virtual machine access prior to receiving your PIV card, You can contact Enterprise Service desk via provided instructions to set up your remote desktop access manually.

Once you have a temporary password, you can get on the VA network to access the links below. See VA network remote access options.

If on Windows:

Windows users must use the Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD).

• Azure virtual desktop OIT link
• Instructions. You'll need network access to reach that link, which you should receive instructions in email for how to achieve.

If on Mac / Linux:

Mac users will also use Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) eventually. As of Aug 2023, if you are a new hire on Mac, you are a guinea pig. Do your best with these instructions, ask your DM for help if they don't work, and ask your DM to update this issuetemplate with correct notes after it's all sorted out. Mac users have 2 options:

• 1. Azure web client: https://client.wvd.microsoft.com/arm/webclient/, IF you have a PIV card. There is an Azure desktop client but it won’t work on a mac because the mac application doesn’t support PIV authentication. . (Try using Firefox and make sure pop-ups are allowed, at least for the MS domain if not globally (they are not allowed by default). Enter your VA email address. Connect your PIV card reader to your computer, and insert the card in the reader. Select ‘Sign in using an X.509 certificate’.
• 2. Citrix Access Gateway (CAG): use your Enterprise Service desk credentials or PIV card to log onto CAG and request an exemption here

Drupal

Drupal is the VA's content management system (CMS) of choice. For anyone on our team, it's beneficial to have a CMS user account so you can login, look at settings, and understand how Drupal works at a high level. If you need help completing the technical steps here, schedule 30 mins with your Delivery Manager.

• Drupal production access: (SOCKS or VA network required) - in DSVA #cms-support channel, use the Slack workflow to file a helpdesk support request. Ask the helpdesk to create a Drupal user for you in prod.cms.va.gov.
  • DevOps team members require an administrator account. (SOCKS or VA access with PIV card required)
  • Standard practice for other roles is to have minimal access in prod (content editor or even a blocked account) and full admin access in lower environments.
• View Topic Dives (short presentations on specific topics). Topics include site alerts, release and deploy, Facility API, etc.
• Browse the VA Drupal CMS Knowledge Base articles.
• What is Drupal? Link list for Drupal context and community
• If you have a Drupal.org account, add your Agency & VA. Drupal.org > Login > My Account > Edit profile > Work tab > Add your agency, and "Department of Veterans Affairs" & save. This will help our team track Drupal open source contributions.

Tugboat demo environments

Tugboat is a development server platform where you can preview CMS code changes pre-production, along with staged changes from branches in other code repos (content-build & vets-website). SOCKS is required for Tugboat access.

• Tugboat for engineers
• Tugboat for non-engineers SOCKS required

Month one

Month one

By this point you should have enough context and access to be able to start contributing. Work with your team to identify specific issues to focus on.

People

• Who are our VA points of contact? Discuss with your Delivery Manager or Product Manager.
• Who should we know on the platform teams? Discuss with your Delivery Manager or Product Manager.

After background check cleared

After background check cleared

This is your last access hurdle! Congratulations.

After your background check is complete, you will get an email to get your Personal Identify Verification (PIV) card.

• Contact your local VA office (where you got your fingerprints taken) for information about getting your PIV card.

  • Review a video about the benefits of the PIV card and VA network access.

  • PIV card will help you get remote VA network access.

    • Purchase a card reader, if you don't have one. A6 IT recommends these options: USB or USB-C
    • Use your PIV card to access the VA Network (whether via CAG or Azure).
    • Set a calendar reminder to access the VA Network every 60 days. If not accessed every 60 days, your access will be removed. You may be removed from VA Github or other toold, or required to re-complete your eQip and background check. Please avoid that.
• Complete any VA-assigned trainings in the TMS system. If the TMS learning modules malfunction, assign yourself the print version of the module. (Ask in #proj-sitewide-vfs-cms-team if you need help.)

Discipline specific onboarding (UX, developers, helpdesk, etc.)

I've left the Engineering and UX onboarding sections in here for your reference, as there might be a few things there that interest you. But you're primarily responsible for the PM section below.

Onboarding for Product Managers

PM Role expectations & access

• VA doc: Expectations for how VA internal Product Lead / Product Owners work with contractor PMs
• Request access to Google Analytics and Domo

Platform governance

The VA's Platform team provides guidance and oversight on quality for things like Research studies & recruitment, Design system implementation, Accessibility requirements, test coverage expectations, and requirements for launches. Product Managers guide teams through this process, so it's beneficial to get familiar with their guidance documentation:

• Platform Collab Cycle documentation
  • Platform Collab Cycle calendar -- bookmark this for use when scheduling Collab Cycle touchpoints
• Research Overview
• VA Design System

CMS Collab Cycle
As of April 2024, the CMS Collab Cycle will be integrated into the Platform Collab Cycle. New documentation is TBD.

Tracking features shipping

Product Managers are often involved in launch day activity and change management. Our environments are complex, and where the code was written will have a lot to do with when it deploys or how simple launch day will be. It's beneficial to build a basic familiarity with our environments, for that reason.

• CMS & Front-end Repos & Build jobs - cheatsheet - unofficial documentation to help navigate understanding our build systems & channels for notifications
• Front-end deployment dashboard - bookmark this - displays the status of fixes/enhancements as they deploy through Dev > Staging > Prod (for both content-build and vets-website)
• Learn about the different Drupal environments - explains the CMS > content build process and data source / snapshot timing for all lower environments

Onboarding for Engineers

Onboarding for Engineers

VA Platform documentation

• VA Platform documentation - the VA Platform team centrally support all product development teams, including infrastructure and much developer tooling.
• VA Technical Architecture Overview - describes technical architecture of va.gov (+ api.va.gov)

Dev environment configuration

Each repository includes READMEs to help with setup.

• CMS workflow: https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/va.gov-cms#readme. (If you are developing for the front-end, you may not need to set up the CMS repo immediately. It's the home of much engineering documentation for our team, however, so is worth reviewing as a starting point.)
• Front-end workflow: https://depo-platform-documentation.scrollhelp.site/developer-docs/frontend-workflow
• Front-end steps to run & build VA.gov locally

Repositories

• CMS: https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/va.gov-cms - Drupal
• content-build: https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/content-build - Node.js, Metalsmith. Templating layer, "the back-end of the front-end"
• vets-website: https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/vets-website - Node.js / React apps. "The front-end of the front-end."
• vets-api: https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/vets-api - Ruby
• devops: https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/devops - Primarily owned by Platform team, we contribute regex for redirects.

Build systems / Environments

• Deployments: https://depo-platform-documentation.scrollhelp.site/developer-docs/deployments
  • CMS & Front-end Repos & Build jobs - cheatsheet - unofficial documentation to help navigate build system timings / channels for notifications
• Front-end deployment dashboard - bookmark this - displays the deployment status of commits in content-build and vets-website, through Dev > Staging > Prod
• Learn about the different Drupal environments - explains the CMS > content build process and data source / snapshot timing for all lower environments
  • If you are using a non-VA laptop for development you will need follow the instructions on Github to trust the VA Root Certificate Authority (CA) in your browser(s)

VA Design system (DS)

The VA Design System and our products are always iterating, so you'll find our products in various states of compliance with current Design System guidance. We expect that any new development in the front-end uses VA Design System components wherever possible, and that we identify opportunities to bring older products up to modern usage of the DS. It's important to get familiar with the DS to inform your work.

• Review the VA.gov Design System which includes how to provide feedback
• Review the VA DS Storybook
• CMS Design System: documentation TBD

If you ever see places we should be using the DS and aren't, surface those to your Product Manager!

Tools & Resources

• VA.gov tools overview
  • Access to dev & staging to be able to replicate the SSO piece of the login experience (SOCKS or VA access with PIV card required)
  • Test User Dashboard: https://tud.vfs.va.gov/ and Test User Dashboard docs. In lower environments, we are encouraged not to use our actual login credentials to test authed work. The TUD provides a set of test users you can use to login to various environments for testing.
  • Datadog to access monitoring metrics (write licenses are limited, so only read-only might be available)
• GraphQL Explorer - GraphQL acts as the Drupal content API, for building queries that can be used in FE templates. The Explorer (on Staging) will allow you to test those queries.
• Browse the Topic Dives videos - includes CMS content, and non-CMS topics for Facilities & Public Websites teams as well

Onboarding for UX members

Onboarding for UX members

Your discipline lead will assist with onboarding tasks / calls.

• Watch this Jan 2023 UX team presentation
  (Passcode: QPg1Pn9#) for context on our UX work.
• Review the correlated UX Workflow Presentation for Onsite (Mural)
• Join DSVA #design slack channel and request that your agency and VA email addresses be added to the invite for the weekly Monday VA Design/UX Sync meeting (@mention Cailin O'Connor)
• Other helpful Slack channels to join
  • #research-ops - required for anyone who will run research studies
  • #accessibility-help
  • #accessibility-ops
  • #cms-design
  • #inclusive-design

Tools

Install tools and request access from your DM, if not already provided

• Mural - when you have been assigned your VA email address, create a Mural access request, following steps listed here in this OIT document (accessible on VA network). Without a VA email, other users can share the Visitor link to Murals so you can view them meantime.
  • ask your DM to add you to Team folders in Mural.

Team-specific onboarding (Facilities, Public Websites)

Facilities Team Onboarding

Onboarding for Facilities

• Read the Facilities team charter
• Facilities product portfolio notes
• Take your time to look over the Facilities onboarding mural, by product. It's overwhelming at first glance, so we recommend bookmarking to step through this as you have work that pertains to any specific product.

Your priorities on the team

Now you get to start thinking about your actual job. 😉

• We've created a Facilities PM Coverage document to fly over the various meetings, syncs, projects in progress etc. that are in flight currently. We'll discuss this ongoing.
• 2024 CY Q2 Facilities planning (Sharepoint) -- Our Q2 plan lives in VA Sharepoint. You'll be able to access this after fingerprinting, when you receive a SAC Adjudication notice and get a VA Network password from the Enterprise Service Desk, to access on a VA remote desktop.
  • Until then: this is a downloaded copy created on Fri 4/19: 2024 CY Q2 Facilities planning (Downloaded)

[jilladams]

We're kicking off a design iteration for the Vet Centers product that you'll be working on as one of the first places we could use product help. We discussed that in a UX Sync on Thurs 4/18, and recorded the discussion. This will be a good thing to look at once other onboarding tasks for Week 1 & 2 are done:
https://us06web.zoom.us/rec/share/fL_9GprdumrjihYfA-qPexVOkn2Iu9K0ugndJAKm56LATTQs88S4x8wW02U4UV_P.CPvXDxp5JJjkqC7Q?startTime=1713469344000
Passcode: =W=^@i1?

Related epic: #17661

[Agile6MSkinner]

I have SOCKS! Finally closing.