Still struggling with the new website? Here are some tips and tricks to help you make the best of it.
Login function
The For Government website has a login function which has some pretty nifty features. But it’s not necessary for you to have a log in to access our advice and not everyone will be able to create a login.
But if you do log in, you can:
- specify what agency you work for
- pin pages
- save searches
- register for events
- join knowledge sharing groups and forums
- get notifications when selected web pages are updated
- see content specific to your agency only (some non-recordkeeping pages).
However, not all of you will be able log in. At the moment the list of those who can log in is based on certain government email addresses, meaning some people can’t log in. We’re the first agency to join the website with such a large client group and we’re working with the For Government team to see if the list can be expanded.
Keep in mind, no content under the Recordkeeping section is restricted – everyone can access it without having to log in.
Linking to publications
If you need to link to a particular publication, there are a few things you can do.
First, you should link to the webpage it lives on wherever possible – this link won’t break if the publication changes or is updated, and will always point to the most current version of the document.
If you do have to link to a specific document (e.g. a schedule), you will need to edit the hyperlink first. You see, links on For Government have a special token that prompts the most recent version of the document to download. But this link won’t work from outside of the site.
Hyperlinks look like this: https://www.forgov.qld.gov.au/file/21946/download?token=WLaR5ARZ. This is the special bit that you need to remove: /download?token=WLaR5ARZ. The remaining link will usually take you to a document landing page where you can download the document.
Linking directly to a schedule is a little bit easier as they’re set up slightly differently. For schedules, you can just copy and paste the hyperlink.
Printing a page
Want to print a page or save it as a pdf? You can do that too!
Click the ‘print’ button at the top of the page, or ‘print this page’ underneath the table of contents for pages that have one. Easy done.
Keep in mind, as with printing anything – check the settings. Do you want landscape or portrait? Which printer to use?
Now depending on your printers and devices set up, you might have an option to ‘Print to PDF’. You might need to tell it where to save it, and adjust a few settings. When we did testing, this actually worked better in Internet Explorer than Mozilla Firefox as their print functionality works a little differently.
Navigating a page
Now this might seem completely logical to most of you, but there are a couple of ways to navigate a page.
Obviously if a page has a table of contents, you can use that to jump down to the section that you want. The table of contents automatically collapses each section so you will then need to click ‘Read more about…‘ to see all of the advice.
You can also click ‘expand all’ under the table of contents to open all of the sections. This is handy if you want to search for a particular keyword or just want to browse the page.
If you click on an example or a link to another page, it will take you to a new page. When you navigate back, it won’t always take you back to exactly where you were, particularly for pages with collapsed section. An easy work around is to right click and select ‘open in a new tab’. The example then opens in a new tab in your browser, and you don’t lose your place. We are looking into how we can fix this though. The exception to this is links to glossary definitions – they’re special and open in a little pop up box.
Search function
The search function works across the whole For Government website. Because of the way the site is set up, it can’t be limited to certain sections.
When searching the website, make sure you include as many keywords as you can, or better yet the title of a page or publication that you’re looking for.
Glossary
The glossary, like the search function, is for the whole website. But this one can be limited by topic (recordkeeping) just by using that term in the search box.
You can find a link to the glossary on the main Recordkeeping page, which will show you all of the recordkeeping and archival terms we use.
We’ve also linked to glossary entries in our advice, so you can check a definition as you read without having to navigate away.
Schedule search page
As you (probably) already know, the schedules have their own special search page. It’s no longer possible to just browse the list of schedules all on the one page but you can search for a schedule using keywords, agency name, QDAN number, schedule type, even date issued if you know it. A little tip, though – if you search by the date issued, make sure its day month year in full.
Can’t find something?
If you can’t find something, be it advice, a form or template, or a publication – use the search function. If you don’t want to do that, or still can’t find what you’re looking for, you might have to do some digging. Think about what section it might be under or page it might be on that you haven’t tried already.
Still can’t find it? Send us an email and we’ll point you in the right direction.