Completing the HLD User Journey Section

Introduction

The user journey section of a high-level design document (HLD) for ShareDo is essential for helping the subject matter experts who have been involved in the definition, understand the features and functionality that will be available to them. This section breaks down the user experience into manageable chunks, detailing both functionality created by configuration and core product features. By providing a comprehensive view, subject matter experts can see the entire picture of how their teams are going to work within the system in a way that makes sense to them.

The remainder of the HLD will outline configuration changes to the system. Business users may have varying levels of interest in this detailed configuration section. While some business users may want to delve into these details, many might not. Nonetheless, it is vital that subject matter experts gain sufficient understanding of the design to ensure it aligns with their business requirements, and the user journey section is designed to ensure this happens.

How to approach the user journey section

During the definition process, you will be pulling together detailed artefacts such as work type hierarchies, data dictionaries, and process flows, as well as key business requirements. It is usually useful to get to a point in the definition process where you have enough information to picture the end-to-end solution before starting the user journey section. There may be some areas, though, for example, client onboarding, where it is useful to write out that user journey as you complete that section of requirements analysis and play it back to the business.

The ShareDo core accelerator pack HLD documents provide a framework for the user journey section that will allow you to re-use some of the common components. You can obtain a sample core accelerator HLD from your Customer Success Manager. It is best practice to start from an accelerator base for this section rather than starting from scratch. 

As a solution architect it is also a useful exercise to detail out the user journey section as it often provides a different perspective on the solution and requirements and can help identify gaps in the practical day to day running of the solution.

Tips

  • Leverage a ShareDo Accelerator Pack: Utilize the ShareDo Accelerator Pack as a foundation for your user journey section. This pack includes many reusable components that can streamline the process and ensure consistency.
  • Use Visuals and User-Friendly Language: Enhance the section with screenshots and simple, user-friendly language. This will help to illustrate the features and make the content more engaging and easier to understand.
  • Understand the End-to-End Solution First: Before starting on the user journey section, complete at least part of your definition process. This will give you a comprehensive understanding of the entire solution, which is crucial for accurately depicting the user journey.
  • Consider Different User Perspectives: Ensure the user journey addresses the needs and experiences of different types of users, such as partners and fee earners. This inclusive approach will help to create a complete and effective user journey for all stakeholders.
  • Playback session: Have a playback session of the user journey with the subject matter experts. Talking through this section can often help them better understand the solution and identify any gaps in the definition process.

Sample Sections for a User Journey

Logging In

This section details the user experience when they first log into ShareDo. This is usually a fairly short section of the document as a separate section will cover the different elements of using the workbench. 

Account Creation - how will the users receive access to their account. Are there external users that need to be considered here too? What will the user see when they first login to ShareDo? Will they be using single sign on or another mechanism to access the system.

What the user will see - what will the user see on login, a brief explanation of left and top level navigation. 

Sample Text

When you log into ShareDo, you will be able to access it seamlessly using single sign-on (SSO) with your existing Microsoft credentials.

  • Workbench Overview: After logging in, you will be directed to your personalized workbench. The workbench serves as your central hub, displaying essential information such as pending tasks, recent activities, and important notifications.
  • Top-Level Menu: The top-level menu allows you to:
  • Left-Hand Navigation Menu: The left-hand navigation menu enables you to:

Your Workbench

This section details the views and functionality that will be available to a user from their workbench.

Objective: Your primary objective here is to ensure that the end users understand the different segmentation and viewpoints they will get of their workload. It is important to focus on the business needs being satisfied by each viewpoint when writing this section.

Although a starting point can be taken from a core pack high level design document this section should be tailored to highlight any key business priorities for the end user. For example, in a Real Estate implementation, it may be important that the users are able to filter and sort by completion dates. There may also be custom summary views on the workbench aimed at helping the business gain an overview of workload.

Sample Text

When you log into ShareDo, you will be presented with your default workbench view. The workbench provides different ways of breaking down your work. Some of those views will be summary views of the work you and your team are carrying out, others will be granular task level views for things like approvals. 

Filtering and sorting work

Many of the workbench views contains lists – these lists can contain things like lists of matters or individual lists of task. 

Every list gives you the ability to filter and sort the information in it – to filter a list click on the top of the column and you will be given the option to apply filters and sort the list.

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This is useful for searching for specific clients, due dates, task owners, etc. It allows you to get useful views of your work that may only previously have been available in reports.

Clicking on an item in the list opens it. Double-clicking on an item, where applicable, opens the item in ‘full page’ mode.

Available Views

View Description
My Tasks My tasks allows you to prioritise work and ensure that important task are not missed. This view gives a list of all tasks they you currently own. You are able to see the due date of the task and high level details about the task.
Team Tasks

Team tasks provide a central place where all of the activities being undertaken by your team can be viewed. This ensures that tasks are not siloed or hidden away and that in the event of illness or absence things aren't missed. 

This view shows the tasks that are assigned to you and any members of your team. As well as the standard task fields you are also able to filter on the owner of the task.

My Matters This view shows a list of all matters on which you hold the role of matter owner or matter admin. You are able to filter on key matter field including client.
Team Matters This view shows a list of all matters being worked on by you or your team. As well as the standard filter options for matter you are able to filter on the matter owner role.

Creating an Instruction

This section should details the process a user will go through in creating an instruction. Although a core pack can be used as a base here this section often needs a significant amount of customisation as it need to cover off processes that are often different from firm to firm.

Objective: Allows the business user to understand how ShareDo will facilitate the onboarding / file opening process including any touchpoints with other systems.

A good approach to this is to complete the definition sections for new business intake and file opening and then use your process diagrams as a guide for running through the process. 

Common elements to consider are:-

  1. What are the different methods by which an instruction is received e.g. email, mass upload. Cover off how these are handled and included screenshots if possible.
  2. What happens to an instruction once it is received - how does the person picking up the instruction receive it - what kind of key information will they see.
  3. What processes need to happen to the instruction in order to process it:
    1. Conflict check
    2. Qualification
    3. AML
    4. Risk Assessments
    5. Quoting
    6. Engagement process 

Matter Management 

The matter management section of the user journey should describe some of the common features / functionality available to a user when they are working with a matter. This section often covers off some of the standard widgets and functionality that are available to end users and so there should be a large amount of re-use from the core packs.

Matter Plan

The matter plan section is used if a matter plan is visible on the matter portal page. It aims to convey to the user how they may best use this and content will vary depending on the use case and functionality enabled on the plan. 

Objective: Ensure that the benefits from using this widget are clearly explained and that the functionality that will be enabled is clear.

Sample Text

Each matter will have its own plan – as the matter moves through different stages the fee earner will be able to change the status of the matter. This will allow everyone to see where the matter is. For the commercial work type this will include the ability to set ‘Pen with Us’ or ‘Pen with the Other Side’ – when looking at your matter portfolio or your team portfolio you will be able to see how long the matter has been at a particular stage. The matter will display the plan and will show any key dates you have set against it in a timeline view.

A screenshot of the matter plan showing a timeline and key dates

Key Dates

Key dates are often a critical part of an implementation and this section should be used to describe how key dates will be used in the implementation and how they can be used to help run the matter. 

Objective: Explain how key dates will be used, where the users will be able to see them and what the benefit is. Ensure that functionality around reminders and any automatic setting of key dates is understood at a high level.

Depending on the implementation some of the following items can be highlighted

  • Automatically set key dates - some key dates will be automatically set by the system
  • Notifications - the ability of the user to add notification to key dates
  • Key dates appear on the plan - depending on configuration these can be dragged and dropped on the plan

Sample Text 

Key dates can be used to track the important stages of a transaction. They can be used to document when something is due to happen or when it has actually happened. As the key dates are set in the system they will appear on your matter plan so you can see a timeline of when they occured.

You are able to use the bell icon next to a key date to set a reminder.

Participants

The participants section is often a section that can be taken from a core high level design with little change. The section describes what participants are and how they are useful to the business.

Objective: Ensure an understanding of participants and how the information will be displayed in ShareDo.

Sample Text

ShareDo allows you to capture the parties involved in a matter. Information such as names, addresses and expertise can be captured. This information can then be pulled into precedents, used for conflict checks or used to contact the parties. 

A case team will be captured on the matter to show the team working on the matter. The case team can either be changed individually on each matter or can be changed in bulk (for example if someone leaves).

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Documents

How ShareDo works with a document management system is often a source of confusion for end users and business subject matter experts. This section needs to help the end user understand how they will interact with their DMS system from within ShareDo. In particular it is often not well understood that documents won't be stored in ShareDo itself.

Depending on the functionality being used and the type of project you may also wish to highlight some of the key document functinality available such as document bundline or document splitting.

Objective: Ensure the solution for storing documents is understood including how users will generate and access documents.

Sample Text

ShareDo sits over the top of your iManage document repository. Any document that is created or loaded into ShareDo is stored in iManage. You will be able to access all matter documents from the documents page on your matter.

Documents can also be bundled into a package by dragging and dropping documents from the file into a ‘bundle’. Equally any documents that are received bundled together that you wish to split out you can use the document split functionality. 

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Precedents

For most ShareDo implementations the generation of branded precedents and emails are critical to the implementation. This section should describe to the HLD reviewer how those precedents will be accessed and the key functionality around previewing etc. In some implementations such as for plot sales or commercial real estate you may also want to describe here how client / site variations on precedents are handled. 

For any implementation using formevo or docusign integration it may be useful to give a brief overview of that functionality.

Objective: Describe how precedents and emails will be generated. 

Sample Text

Fee earners will be able to preview and produce precedents. The precedents widget will allow them to filter and search from a bank of precedents. Where information has been entered into ShareDo that information can be pulled through into documents – for example client name and address information. 

Precedents can be sent out via email or post. Where a precedent is sent via email ShareDo send from the users own email address. The email will appear in the users sent items list as usual and the email will be automatically field into iManage.

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Communication

The communication section of the document should describe the different communication mechanisms that are available as part of the solution. Often this is a subset of standard communication offerings from ShareDo but this should help the fee earner to understand how they will communicate both internally and externally using ShareDo.

Objective: Detail all different communication options that have been agreed as part of the definition process so the review can understand how these will be handled by ShareDo.

Sample Text

Email

You will be able to send emails directly from ShareDo using your own email address. ShareDo will have a bank of your email precedents that you can select from or you can create your own emails. If you want to have the full screen to write your email you can click on the maximise button to make the email canvas larger.

You will also be able to use the outlook add-in which will allow you to file emails and access precedents directly from Outlook.

Comments

ShareDo offers a social media style @ functionality. This allows comments (including images) to be captured onto the matter – if a comment may be of particular interest to someone or you wish them to be notified a comment is added you can ‘@’ them. To notify the whole case team you can use @caseteam.

Summary

The user journey section is designed to help the end users involved in the definition process understand the solution that has been designed using pictures and business friendly descriptions to help bring the solution to life. The solution accelerator high level designs will help provide some base content for this section but ultimately you will need to tailor this content to fit the style of communication needed by your business users and also to help articulate how their business needs have been met by your solution design.

When this section of the document is complete it is always useful to have a playback session to the subject matter experts involved in definition to walk them through this and identify any points that need clarity or further refinement. Often bringing the solution to life in this way will help them to identify gaps in the solution or to understand better how ShareDo can help them in their day to day lives.