A suite of notification emails I created for our internal job scheduling tool to update project stakeholders about the status of their job requests. I designed the emails, wrote the content and created the HTMLs, ready to hand-off to the backend dev team.
Header - Brief Sent Confirmation
Header - Brief Update
orking in a busy in-house design studio comes with many challenges. Multitasking, urgent projects, last minute amends, dropping everything to help out a colleague (or remembering to get through those tedious compliance training courses) are all a blessing and a curse, depending sometimes, on how much coffee you had that day. Thankfully, at Sodexo, I've always had great colleagues to rely on, so everyday challenges like these were always easier to deal with. As a creative team, we've always been very tight-knit when it comes to being organised in our daily tasks and we always knew who is doing what job at any given time. When it comes to relying on each other to deliver great work, on time, this is just the standard for us.
Within the business, there are many other colleagues from other departments (ie. marketing, beneficiaries, internal comms, HR, Finance, even the the CEO) who all brief us in various jobs, projects and bits to do and up until recently, there wasn't an efficient way of communicating to them which designer does what and when. This meant that a lot of the time, we were asked who's working on what project, how much time does it take to do anything and when will the work be delivered. As a studio however, one thing that we had on our side was our internal creative scheduling tool, custom built and developed in-house, many years ago (long before I even started working there) that notifies us which colleague has briefed in what and when, as well as deadlines and creative requirements.
The system works well for us as a creative team and it helps us keep our jobs lists organised so we can deliver the work on time. However, this wasn't communicated well to our stakeholders and we always received a lot of questions regarding scheduling and who is the assigned designer for a particular job. The emailing notification system that we had in place, was very basic and didn't contain information such as the job number, name of the designer who will be working on the project, whether the job is in progress or even if the brief was received at all by Creative. The existing email notifications were incomplete, unfriendly and not very useful in the information conveyed. As the business developed over the years, the emails remained untouched.
So, when the opportunity to redesign the entire email notification system presented itself, I immediately jumped at it. As a designer and colleague, fully immersed in the day-to-day activity of the studio, I knew exactly what the pain-points of the system were and I had many ideas on how I could bring improvements and communicate more efficiently what we needed our stakeholders to know, every time they submitted a new job brief. The goal was to provide an education of how our studio works, what our best approach is and how we can mutually help each other to best maximise our time so we can work better together as departments and as colleagues.
ur scheduling tool was a powerful aide to us, but we recognised this needed to improve and evolve with the growing business requirements, as well as with our team needs. After a few consultations with my Creative team, the solution was all in how we notify and communicate to our stakeholders when and what is happening to their job briefs. These needed to be sent out whenever we updated our jobs dashboard individually.
Before I started, I knew well to ask some of our key colleagues from departments we normally work with about the kind of information they needed to know from us. This, combined with the pain-points we, as a creative team, were familiar with on a daily basis, gave me great perspective on the content I wrote for the emails and the level of information I needed to include in them. I wanted the tone to be friendly, warm and reassuring offering help, support and guidance through the ins and outs of kickstarting a project and seeing it to completion. I knew the way we communicate these things matter to our colleagues, so I brushed up on my UX and UI design knowledge (as you do) by reading a few pieces on the matter. I needed to know I'm doing it right.
The look and feel of the emails is based on our internal creative portfolio site (not possible to show here, as it's an internal URL meant only as an inspiration outlet for our colleagues) that most Sodexo employees should be familiar with. Another goal was that these emails needed to be distinct from any internal communications piece we received on a weekly basis from internal comms, so these emails can be instantly recognisable and easy to search for in Outlook.
Once the designs and content of the emails were finalised I then proceeded to create them in basic HTML and some in-line CSS. This needed to be simple and responsive and to work flawlessly in Outlook, which I achieved after the usual few bug fixes. I also want to mention that collaboration on this project with my colleague, Mark Fleet, was pure designer-dev work relationship goals as he was the main developer in configuring the system for these emails (no fancy email automation platform for this, just good old PHP) and who patiently helped me perfect these emails so they go out flawlessly every time. I couldn’t have done it without him. (Hey Mark, if you're reading this, thank you, yay!)
Confirmation email: brief was received by the Creative team.
This is the first email stakeholders will receive after they send a brief to us through our internal system (not possible to show here). This is to confirm the studio has received their brief request. This email also functions as a quick and helpful reminder and how to guide on how the studio works. In the lower half, I saw the opportunity of featuring a strong CTA as a reminder they can also browse the studio's creative portfolio for ideas and inspiration, which is another opportunity to send them back to our portfolio (not possible to show here) where they can access the brief form. Questions such as "how do I submit a brief?" and "where can I access the brief form?" are now non-existent.
Project allocation: the job is now in progress with a designer.
Project allocation update email to communicate which designer will be taking a job, so the stakeholders can email them directly for more information and project updates. In the lower half, I kept the opportunity of featuring a strong CTA as a reminder they can also browse the studio's creative portfolio for ideas and inspiration, which is another opportunity to send them back to our portfolio (not possible to show here) where they can access the brief form. Questions such as "how do I submit a brief?" and "where can I access the brief form?" are now non-existent.
No updates/activity: reminder that a job has stalled.
Sometimes, for whatever reason, a project will stall. When this happens, we as designers need to update the status of the job in our creative dashboard, which triggers this email. This functions as a gentle nudge to remind stakeholders that they have jobs in progress with us and they need to let us know what’s happening with these so we can update our weekly work schedule. In the lower half, I kept the same portfolio CTA just like in all other emails.
Ready for billing: confirmation that a job is now complete.
The last email of the series communicates to stakeholders that a job has been completed and /or delivered and marked up for billing. Occasionally a job will be reopened, but updating the status of these jobs helps us in keeping good hygiene of our weekly job schedule. In the lower half, I kept the same portfolio CTA just like in all other emails.
verall, the creative team has noticed a massive reduction in emails asking questions from stakeholders about deadlines and how long a project will take, as well as questions about when is the best time to put in a new design brief. Questions about how and where to send their briefs have also been practically non-existing since the launch of the revamped emails, as these make it really easy to access the briefing system (not shown here) by providing a direct link to it in each email sent by our scheduling tool.
The new notification emails have invaluably assisted all teams that have ever briefed in jobs to Creative and that are involved in delivering creative assets and marketing projects across the business. They are now able to manage their time and expectations effectively. This also means that all teams are able to focus more on creating the assets and campaign pieces rather than worry about when something will get done and delivered, not to mention that it ultimately helps Creative stick to the deadlines specified in the briefs.
