Coming soon: a new navigation area for staff

We are making some important changes to the way you'll navigate Care Opinion in future.

If you use Care Opinion as a member of staff, you'll be very familiar with the stripey yellow bar you see when you log in.

This "navigation area" is how you reach the different pages of your subscription, change subscriptions, or change views.

But I'm here to tell you (and there's no easy way to say this): we are getting rid of it. The stripey yellow bar is being retired.

Instead, in the next few weeks we'll be updating the site so that, when you log in, you'll see this:

Where's the yellow bar?

We've replaced it with a lovely green menu button (top left). Just select that to open the new navigation area.

You can close the navigation area by selecting the green button again. If you are on a mobile, you can just swipe it closed.

What's in the new navigation area?

The new area has all the links you are used to from the old yellow bar, plus some new features. And more to come.

Let's run through what's there now, from top to bottom. Refer to the screenshot above to identify each item:

1. Your name - linking to your profile page

2. Link to your subscription page (if you have more than one subscription)

3. Statistics on how many times the stories in your subscription have been read

4. A selector to change your subscription, if you have more than one

5. A selector to change your page view from subscriber to public view

6. A navigation area with links to important pages in your subscription

7. Recently read stories area - open this for links to stories you've read recently

Depending on the page you are on (a story, a service, a search, etc), your subscription, and your role within the subscription, other sections may also appear in the navigation area.

Why the change?

We're making this change for a few important reasons:

First, more and more people are using Care Opinion on small screens or touch screens (mobile phones, tablets). Our new navigation area works really well on a mobile phone. You'll be able to do more without having to sit at a computer.

Second, we want to add extra features to some pages, such as the ability to save notes alongside stories. We can add these features into the new area.

Third, some people found it confusing when the yellow bar scrolled off the top of the screen. The new navigation area doesn't disappear, even when you scroll the main page.

We really hope you like the way this is developing. As we make tweaks to improve it further, we'll keep you informed. And if you have feedback or ideas for us, just respond below, or drop us a line.